We didn’t even finish our start.
Today, I got up early and worked on my essay for Friday. Then I went to my tutorial and got another essay back with no comments. He said it was better at least, but I still have no idea what his idea of a good essay is. He gave us a copy of someone else’s essay, but he said it was too long. He just said it had some good opinions in it. Anyway, I came back and did some more work, then made some pasta before heading down to the river to watch our boys. They were third in their division. And the second boat bumped the first boat, but then they didn’t get out of the racing lanes like you’re supposed to, and our guys couldn’t get around them, so they had to stop. Well then the boat behind our guys, who they had bumped yesterday, rowed past them and bumped them. So we were all really confused because we were just hearing this over commentary, but we were really disappointed that our boys had gotten bumped, but it gave us a reality check that it could happen to us too. In the end, we appealed and got it. So the boys weren’t officially bumped, but they didn’t get a bump either.
So we waited a while and then got out when it was our time to do so. We warmed up and rowed up past the bridge. We waited around a while and were much quieter today. We really wanted the bump. So our start is 18 strokes, Ray calls 3 draws (3/4 length, 1/2 pressure to get the boat moving), 5 winds (full stroke, with full pressure and bringing up the rate), 5 lengthen (really working on getting the full length out of the stroke, but still keeping up the pressure and the rate), 5 hands (concentrating on keeping our hands in the right place and balancing the boat while keeping the length, pressure, and rate). Then we do a few up-one-down-ones, which is where we slow it up the slide and bring the rate down a bit, but keep the pressure up. We settle into a race pace, usually for around 30 strokes per minute. Yesterday on one of our starts, we got the rate up to 37 1/2 stroke per minute in our start, which is higher than we aim for, but as long as we keep it tidy, pretty good. So today, we got 15 strokes in, and Ray told us to wind it down. We were all a bit confused. We thought maybe something similar to what had happened to the boys had happened to us. But no, the boat in front of us had conceded. We had just started our hands strokes, and we had already bumped. It was awesome. Although, then we had all this adrenaline and energy, and all we could do was sit there and wait for the race to finish before we went the rest of the way up to the river to turn around. But it was so cool. So we’ve bumped twice now. Two more races, two more bumps, and we can get blades. We just have to make sure we don’t get too confident, each day is a different crew, and we’re just taking it one race at a time. But, how cool would it be if I came home with a blade?