Quintin Head: Race Report

Quintin Head was another astounding day for RUMSBC, with both men's crews performing admirably despite less than favourable weather conditions and substitutions in both boats. M1 came 14th of 27 in their category with a time of 11:22.97, beating off several of their UH rivals with ease and chasing hot on the heels of Bart's. Not ones to let M1 claim all the glory, M2 finished this grueling race in  a time of 12:06.06, placing them 8th of 20 in their category. Boding very well for UH Head, this result put M2 well ahead of many of their UH rivals and mere seconds away from George's 1st crew.

With such excellent results at this stage, we can only hope that we reach new heights in the weeks to come and achieve the success we've worked so hard for throughout the year. Well done men!

Men's Second VIII
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"Quintin Head was the first head race of the year for the men’s side of the club, so as expected there was a mixture of both excitement and nerves during our long marshaling period. However, seeing the many high quality crews race past us, including our very own M1, naturally increased our excitement and made us hungry for the race. Although term one is sprint season, the focus of training is still very much with UH Head in mind, so the crew was itching to see how the culmination of 3 months of training would serve us in our first official head piece.

Clearly it had served us well, as we got off to an exceptional start, steaming past two crews with ease in the first third of the race. Unfortunately our success at the start ended up being detrimental to us for the middle third, as we had no crews to push off of during a very long and boring stretch of water, so sadly the power and rhythm dropped off a bit during this period. Fortunately, we were greeted by a rather enthusiastic King’s crew during the latter third of the race, who came storming up behind us. Embarrassing a good King’s crew is all the motivation we needed to get our heads back in the race and start winding the power and the rate back up, and managed to hold them off in what become a grueling battle to the finish line.

Overall, we were reasonably happy with our performance. Our strong start was certainly very promising, and the focus for training now is to keep that performance going for the duration of the race, and continue to build on that strong finish. This race gave us a good platform to build on for the months leading up to UH Head, as well as giving us the confidence that UH Head is ours to lose." - Jack Merritt, Seat 4

Men's First VIII
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"Having trained hard over Christmas and with the recent success of Winter Sprints, RUMSBC were ready to show their metal at Quintin Head. Despite the forecast of wind and rain, larks and japes were flying between M1, morale high whilst Freddie feasted on a large breakfast of chips. However, we all knew these would leave him not feeling so chipper later on…

Sure enough, the intense warm up of 10 minutes UT8 followed by stretching and a side dish of banter left Freddie feeling peaky and well before we were ready to boat it was evident that his knees were weak, palms sweaty and there was vomit on his splash jacket already. With Freddie functioning at 30% and Will McCaughran claiming he “might row well today” – little help that would be with his training plan consisting of skiing, sailing and “driving my daddies sports car” –, we set to marshaling.

We wound nicely into the start line and, with a deft hand and rousing motivational war cry, Julia saw us through our first overtake. The rowing was choppy, but no doubt all eight (minus Will who’d blown by this point) were farming serious watts and once through Barnes Bridge with a whipping tail wind the boat sat steady (despite bow’s best efforts). Midrace pace was spicy; rhythm was chunky and quads were burning. Once Hammersmith Bridge was in view, we slammed the pedal to the metal, executed our tier system and steamed (or rather splashed) across the line.

We knew we had made Rich proud and estimated we would be around 30 seconds (rowing pittance) off the UL1V. Good job boys." - Sam Gunning, Seat 6