After the success of both our Mens and Women's 1st Eights at the Quintin Head last Saturday (see pics below) Roehampton University Rowing Club jumped straight back into training on Tuesday morning with a nice ground frost and ice on our oars to accompany our (nearly) frostbitten hands! Despite the cold, the Mens 1st Eight had a good session back together working on a few technical elements ahead of our next head race in early March. The session was messy, as they always are when you are working on improving technical bits, but the guys really stuck at it and we're confident that next Tuesday's session in the eight will be all the better for working on improving our technical flaws this week. The girls were a few down on Tuesday due to illness, but got out in fours as preparation for BUCS (now 2 weeks away) really heats up. Both Amy and Sam will be announcing R.U.R.C's final BUCS crews very soon, after which the plan is to fit in as many training outings as possible in before race day to make sure we are as prepared as possible.
On Wednesday our two 'Learn to Row' members came down again despite the cold, after intending to give them their first taste of life on the water, a strong wind and a changing tide put paid to their outing on safety grounds. Next week hopefully! Both Ian and Kathinka worked again on the ergos, and showed off impressive techniques for only 3 weeks training - great news. Wednesday also saw our Men's 2nd Fresher 4+ get out on the water with their coach Rachel, working towards BUCS, and despite the aforementioned difficult conditions they appeared to have a good outing, and are becoming relatively well drilled as a crew. Two more good sessions could just see them in a position to challenge the 1st Fresher 4+ in the race itself on the 18th February. It'll certainly be interesting to see how the two crews fare! Finally on Wednesday, we saw the re-emergence of our Men's Training 8+ after last weeks poor turn-out. With the changing tide making things difficult, we decided to wait until it had turned completely before putting them out on the water, and so the crew took part in a relay race on the ergos to wind down some time, which looked like great fun. When finally on the water, they endured a difficult session i'm told, but looking forward we're happy with their progress ahead of March's head races. The Women's Training 8+ on the other hand carried on where they left off last week with only 2 members in attendance, meaning they were left to do ergos unfortunately. Thanks to Annabel and Aimee for their commitment.
Wednesday night saw R.U.R.C's biggest social of the year to date, with the annual 'Pub Golf' competition being held in the Student Union and Putney. Our members looked great in their golfers outfits, but it seems not many could remember much about what actually happened! The sign of a good night it seems! There are un-confirmed reports that the team containing Club Captain Sam Sears, Richard Swoboda and new boy Ian Esplin may have won, but the rumours are unsubstantiated at present! Thanks to Rachel and Sam, our Social Secretaries (below), for organising the event!
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| Sam and Rachel at our Pub Golf social |
(For those interested in this weeks R.U.R.C football scores (as i'm sure you are!) R.U.R.C F.C drew their game with top of the league Georgie Thompson F.C 6-6, with Row Your Boat F.C unfortunately suffering their second loss of the competition in their game. The teams were without some of their stars who were involved in pub golf though, so next week we're expecting some big wins!)
