Update in Progress

Unfortunately, the blog fell out of use (again) but we will be back soon!

Watch this space for more information regarding RURC's performance and events over the past few months, and future ones.

Most importantly, however, a sponsorship deal is currently underway with Rowperfect!

See you soon.

Easter

Well, the University has finished for the Easter break which means two things to us at RURC: Tour and Summer Rowing!

I'm honestly not sure which is the more exciting prospect. We rattle on enough about both to the Freshers in the club.

Anyway, at this point in time Tour has come and gone, with Roehampton among other universities piling onto coaches and driving down to Rimini, Italy, for a week. Unfortunately(?) there are no rowing facilities so we cannot compete like the other sports teams on the trip. However, this does give us a well deserved break on the beach and in the bars. Though, that didn't stop us from rowing, as the traditional sand 8+ below shows. Nor did it stop us from winning, as we can home with the Runner Up Men's Football trophy, kindly "donated" by Aberdeen Uni.

At least we tried

Needless to say, we had difficulty recollecting most evening events and I'm not sure how appropriate what we do remember is for the blog. I can assure you, however, it was absolute carnage.

Just a taster of what happened on tour.

On to Summer Rowing then, with a likely move back to Barn Elms Boathouse and the prospect of BUCS Regatta, things can only get better for RURC.

Oh yeah, and we had this little thing taken.

Two Months In...

It's been a while since our last update, I completely forgot to get a January update done. Sorry about that.

It's been a busy start of the year, despite the cancellation of Weybridge Head due to snow. Roehampton crews entering both Quintin Head on our home turf, the Thames Tideway, and the BUCS 4s & 8S Head in Boston. Results have improved greatly, with the men's eight coming 16th of 25 in Quintin, and only 20 seconds slower than Kingston! and the women's eight placing 24th of 28 boats. The results were less impressive at BUCS and I can't find them at the moment (they appear to have been taken down from their site) but the good news is no boat placed last.

Coming up in March we have Women's Head of the River on the 9th, Men's Hammersmith Head on the 10th, and Men's Head of the River on the 23rd. Please come down, braving the weather, to support us, it really helps when you're in the boat!

I'll post some photos of our recent races and antics, including the images that graced the RSU Naked Calendar, and try and track down the BUCS results before next month's update.

Quintin Head 2013

L-R: James, Richard & Mike bright and early after the Superbowl

The girls

And the guys

Happy New Year!

First off, happy new year, and welcome back to rowing after the Christmas break, which I'm sure has ruined everyone's fitness.

Since my last post the club have competed in the BUCS Indoor Rowing competition at St. Mary's, placing very well, especially from some of the freshers. I'll edit them in once I find the actual times and places. There were also the club's yearly fancy-dress Christmas races, and a selection of Hettie's 600(!) photos will grace the blog in time.

Outside of the sport, the team have been models as the April team for the Roehampton Student Union's naked calendar, raising money for the three RAG charities of the 2012/2013 year, and our five-a-side football team (which is made up of more footballers than rowers) won the University's tournament last term.

This year we've got a few races to train for and look forward to, including Weybridge Head on the 19th of January, Quintin Head on the 26th, a trip to Peterborough for BUCS on the 16th of February, followed by the Women's Hammersmith Head on the 24th, so expect to see us out on the river burning off our Christmas dinners!

Where Did The Time Go?

Wow, it's been a while since this old thing got updated! Lots of news to cover, then.

Firstly, you'll notice it isn't Sam writing this, it's Mike. This is due to Sam's decision to vacate the position of Club Captain so he can focus on studying, which I'm told is fairly useful at University. So far there are no plans to replace him, with the committee working as a team to make decisions and me in charge of the blog.

Secondly then, I should extend a huge welcome to our Freshers, whom we've whittled down from the enthusiastic masses at Fresher's Fair to a solid group of novice rowers. They've stuck with us despite awful weather delaying and cancelling outings as well as that horrible realisation that rowing's bloody hard work. The majority of these guys and girls have, of course, been initiated into the club with the alcoholic equivalent of a 12k ergo.

As for our performance as a club, thanks to the hard work of our new coach, Olivia, we entered 4 crews into Kingston Small Boats Head. Jo Crouch and Imogen Griffiths finished 138th overall, but second in the WNov.2x event, and Ryan Livingstone came 140th, overall, and 9th in the Nov.1x. Unfortunately, I had an accident and ended up in the river, completing half the race in the St. John's Ambulance boat. This, therefore, meant that Richard Swoboda and I didn't compete in the Nov.2x event later, due to concerns over my lowered temperature.

That said, we'll be entering many more races and training just as hard as before, though with a lot more complaining because of the cold. There's also more social events coming up, with the Male and Female Team Bonding nights on Wednesday 28th November and a Christmas Dinner is in the works for some time in December.

I'll do my best to post more regular updates regarding the club. I don't think we get up to enough to warrant weekly posts, but fortnightly or monthly should work out fine.

Looking Forward to 2012/2013

The new academic year (and with it the new rowing season!!) is nearly upon us and Roehampton University Rowing Club are looking forward to welcoming our new intake of freshers very, very soon! If the number of hits to this website in recent weeks and the number of people connecting with us on Facebook is anything to go, we are looking at a bumper influx of new members riding the wave of British rowing success this summer at the London Olympics.

Our club is one of the best, and most open clubs at the University of Roehampton and was recognised by Sport Roehampton as their 'Club of the Year' at their annual awards dinner earlier on this year. The club has seen massive growth in the last year both in terms of numbers and equipment, so there has never been a better time to join us. To give you an example, we have gone from a team of around 10 committed members in 2010/2011 to around 40 in 2011/2012 and have gone from owning no boats to owning upwards of 10 in the same timeframe. This season should be the tipping point in Roehampton University Rowing Club becoming a successful club on the UK University scene.

Rowing is synonymous with the "train hard, play hard' attitude and R.U.R.C is no different with us boasting the best social events and activities of any club on campus thanks to our amazing social secretaries. We're a club that wants to do well competitively too and we intend to train hard this year to improve our standings in the big races led by our new squad captains, Richard and Sarah. If you've rowed for 10 years, or have never rowed before, our club is the place for you at Roehampton.

Please take the time to look through the tabs on the right hand side for all the information you need about our club. Today i've updated our committee page with all the details of our 2012/2013 committee, so you can get to know us prior to freshers week and have also updated our 'Races and Events' page with key dates throughout the season. Key for you as freshers though is to take a look at the 'Learn to Row at R.U.R.C' page which has been updated with some key dates and information regarding your first few weeks with us.

We're massively looking forward to seeing you all at Freshers Fair on Friday 21st September. We'll have a strong presence both inside and outside the tent so feel free to ask us any questions you may have about rowing at Roehampton. If you have any questions in the meantime however, please e-mail:-

rurowing@live.com

Please also connect with us on Facebook by searching for 'Roehampton Rowing Freshers' and joining our group.

R.U.R.C Team Photo 11/12

Roehampton University Rowing Club 2011/2012

R.U.R.C End of Year Awards

Inter-Club Head Men's 4+ Winners - Sam N, Dave, Mike, Rich and Sam S

Inter-Club Head Women's 4+ Winners - Jana, Diana, Ryan, Tessa and Amy

Inter-Club Head Men's 8+ Winners - Sam N, Rich, Dave, Amy, Jeppe, Jan Erik, Sam S and Hannu (Henry missing)

Inter-Club Head Women's 8+ Winners - Amy, Tessa, Diana, Jana, Sarah, Rach, Elisabeth T, Elisabeth S and Isabel

Coach of the Year - Franki Lucas

Male Rower of the Year - Hannu Oskari Hara

Female Rower of the Year - Tessa Polder

Most Improved Male Rower of the Year - Ryan Livingstone

Most Improved Female Rower of the Year - Elisabeth Tvedt

Male Social Member of the Year - Mike Benson

Female Social Members of the Year - Elisabeth Stromneses and Isabel Bjorge

Outstanding Contribution to the Club Award - David Bedford

Outstanding Contribution to the Club Award - Amy Austen

Special Contribution to the Club Award - Sam Sears

R.U.R.C win 2011/2012 Club of the Year at Sport Roehampton Awards

On a magical night on Froebel campus, Roehampton University Rowing Club walked away with the prestigious 'Club of the Year' award from the 2011/2012 Sport Roehampton Awards. The award recognises the giant strides made by the club this year in terms of it's organisation, it's structure, it's membership levels and it's equipment, all of which will hopefully provide the basis for 2012/2013 to be R.U.R.C's breakthrough year from a performance perspective. 

A massive well done to all of our members in 2011/2012 - here's hoping for another successful season next year :)

R.U.R.C collecting their award

Club Captain Sam Sears proudly showing off our award

This year's brilliant committee (minus Sam Kirby and Eirik Christiansen)

TOUR!!!!

See below an overview of R.U.R.C's time on Tour this year from Social Sec Rachel Esker!

"On the 9th of April the biggest social event of the rowing calendar had begun, Salou Tour 2012. It had been a lot of hard work organising coaches as unfortunately the rowing team had been split up into three groups all on different ones! After a 28hour coach journey we all made it to Salou in one piece.


On arrival we joined the 9 boys who had been travelling with the university of Kent at the pub the Rio Grande which would become our regular for the week, and had our first drinks in Salou!
As we headed into the evening on the first night the theme was wedding, as you can see from the pictures some of our lovely rowing boys looked amazing in their dresses! (Ian Esplin in particular with his rather fetching wig!) With the use of the R.U.R.C beer bong getting significant use over that night and the rest of the week. The whole team ended the night in one of the main clubs Kiss, and was a fantastic but blurry start to the tour!


The Next morning was beach day! 
With the weather being nice we decided to have some games which involved a relay race and a dive into the sea 3 times. As you guess with this being a social event there was GIN involved. We then started our next game in two teams, dig your own rowing boat with all the trimmings in the sand! That’s right the space for the cox, riggars, oars and amongst other parts such as the bow ball! Thank you to all the seniors who made the events of the beach day run smoothly.

As we progressed into the evening the theme for the second night was pirates, tonight I was glad that Sam Sears was about for help with the pre drinking events he was a huge help! Again we played numerous games and endedup in a club called Snoopies which I can safely say we did not leave until about 5.30 in the morning.
The Thursday unfortunately we had some rain throughout the day, so we decided as a team to go out for dinner, the whole 28 of us went to our favourite little pub once more, the Rio Grande. Numerous pints were drunk and we all had some good food! The evening events that night were Greek and Roman style with everyone dressing up in Toga’s, and we even had Gladiators, Medusa and a Minotaur! It was the night where we allowed a senior fresher switch. This meant that for one hour the fresher’s were in charge of the whole senior team. Much to our dislike we had to eat cat biscuits that were covered in vodka and sambuca. Little did they know it was going to be turned around the next day! We headed to Pacha that night, where we saw so epic pole dancing from Mike Benson. 

The Friday we had an early start as we had a booze cruise that set sail at 10.30am! So we all dragged our self’s out of bed and headed down to the beach to catch our boat.
Being dressed in our R.U.R.C hoodies was an experience that many people had ever experienced on a booze cruise before as normally it’s the weather for bikinis and shorts. But despite the cold weather Amy day continually danced away in her bikini! It may have helped that we had a three hour free bar which was supplying us endless amounts of sangria and beer. A few of our lads were the first into the water when we stopped the boat! Which was then followed by some of our more daring girls. Some even got a trip out in a rib boat out into the sea which they all enjoyed.
Friday was our final night on tour, where our team all wore our tour tops which we were all given individual comical names, some more embarrassing than others! We had a few games for the fresher’s as pay back for the events of last night, a sausage with cheese in the middle with wiped cream comes to mind… We left about 1.30am after all the games and fun and when all the booze had run dry. R.U.R.C ended up in both kiss and snoopies with many of us not sleeping as our check out time 7am! And congratulations to Jeppe who got named our Tour hero for 2012!


I would like say a big thank you to Sam Sears for his help throughout the evenings. Along with Sarah Fort and Richard Swoboda on the last night and everyone who came to help carry with drinks! The fresher’s for being such good sports with everything that we did. Amy Austen for sitting through the meetings with me. Thank you for our lovely gifts that myself, Amy and Sam received on the last night. And as ever we missed our other Social Sec, Sam Kirby as you can see from all the pictures he was around through out the week even if it was only a cardboard version of himself! We said a goodbye to our third years who will not be joining us on next years tour who each and everyone of them will be missed!
It was a pleasure being your social sec on tour and I loved every minute of it! No doubt we will be doing it all again next year!

Rachel!
xxxxx"

Last Week of Term

Sadly, this week has been officially the last week of the 2011/2012 rowing season. That is not to say, Roehampton University Rowing Club will not continue to train and compete over the summer! Be sure to keep checking back for updates about our performance at this summer's regattas.

The main event this week was the unveiling of he names of two of our fleet of boats. The first, our club single scull, has been named LAURA after our coach during the 2010/2011 season, Laura Fisher, who really helped start the club on our current upward curve. See below for a photo!

The second boat, our club quad/four, previously named Kees Van Daam, has been re-named David Bedford. This is in recognition of Dave's (a current 3rd year) commitment to the club over his time with R.U.R.C. See below for a photo of Dave with his new boat.

The other big event at the club this week was our first ever annual Inter-Club Head Race Championships, where our crews raced against each other to be the best at Roehampton. I'm pleased to say the races were a success, and congratulations to all of the winners! Trophies and medals will be given out at our end of year meal in May.

THE BEACON

2 New Boats, a New Sponsor, a 'ROCK' Social and the Head of the River = 1 Very Eventful Week!

The clue is in the title - this has certainly been one of Roehampton University Rowing Club's busiest weeks EVER! The first big news of the week came in the form of Men's Squad member Jeppe Fensholt approaching us about the possibility of his dad's company becoming our new sponsor. We obviously thought long and hard about this (not too long though!) and graciously accepted. As such we are pleased to announce that our new sponsor for the coming season will be Murmester Fensholt & Sons A/S of Oslo, Norway. They kindly donated £600 to add to the money from our massively successful London to Brighton bike ride fundraiser, thus allowing us to purchase our new 1987 Empacher VIII from our neighbours Quintin Boat Club! That means that overall our fundraising efforts raised not only the £2000 needed to buy the boat, but we still have a good amount of money left over to hopefully purchase a CoxBox. What an achievement! We collected our new boat on Friday morning, and used it for a short session with our newly painted oars before using them both in anger for the first time at Saturday's Head of the River, but more on that later! The VIII has been coded as ROE018 in recognition of the 18 people who started and completed the bike ride, and has been named THE BEACON after the famously steep hill just before Brighton on the ride's route. We'll be sure to add some close up shots of the boat later this week, but for the meantime try and spot it in our HORR pictures below! Massive thanks again to everyone that donated to our fundraiser, our new sponsor, and also Mark Chatwin and Alex Page at Quintin for helping us out with the purchase.

A sticker carrying this logo will be added to THE BEACON very soon as part of our new sponsorship arrangement

Not content with purchasing one new boat last week, R.U.R.C also had a hand in purchasing another. Men's Captain Sam Neal, Treasurer/Fundraiser Diana Lava and Hannu Hara have chipped in together, with a contribution from Sport Roehampton, to purchase a single scull. The idea being the 3 private owners can use it at their leisure for their own training whilst it can be used by other club members at R.U.R.C sessions. We think this will be massively useful going forward. The boat is a 10(?) year old Burgashell Super Carbon purchased from Monmouth Rowing Club in Wales. It was kindly delivered to us on Saturday as Monmouth too were competing this weekend, and was rowed back to TTRC by Club Captain Sam Sears, who had an amazing time in it apparently! The boat has been given the ID ROE101, and has yet to be named. Check out below for a pic of the new boat, and also a pic of the Croker oars which came with it.

R.U.R.C's new single!

Wednesday night saw our latest social, this one being 'ROCK' themed - think KISS, Black Sabbath etc. Safe to say, as always with R.U.R.C the night was not only brilliantly attended but also massively enjoyable. Thanks again to Rachel Esker and Sam Kirby for being so dedicated to getting our rowers drunken and disorderly! Think the below photo sums up the evening nicely!

Amy, Rachel and Sarah at last week's 'ROCK' social.

And so onto the weekend, and the biggest race of the head season - HEAD OF THE RIVER. Roehampton University Rowing Club entered 2 crews into this years event, which is a massive achievement in itself when last year we were struggling to put together 1! The boys in both crews did us proud, and despite a few set-backs in the preceding week, each crew put in a performance we are all happy with. Our 1st VIII came home 381st overall, 54th out of 64 in their category, in a time of 22:03 which despite worse conditions was quicker than last year! Our 2nd VIII came 394th overall in a time of 24:04 which is comparable to last years crew, and in itself is a massive achievement. See below for a few selected pictures of the boys.

Men's 2nd VIII - Toby Ballentyne, Antonis Mavrommattis, Mike Benson, Diana Lava (Cox), Ryan Livingstone, Tom Sykes-Brown, Reece Pawsey and Ben Thompson. (Matt Dodd not pictured)

Both crews!

Men's 1st VIII - Sam Neal, Jeppe Fensholt, Jan Erik Haavik, Sam Sears, Amy Austen (Cox), Richard Swoboda, Mike Bretton, David Bedford and Hannu Hara

RURC brave the London to Brighton Cycle

On Sunday the 26th of February, R U R C took on the challenge of cycling to Brighton. We faced 58 miles, with food in our backpacks and no other means of transport than our bicycles. The event was a success! 20 participants, both amateurs in cycling and a few proficient cyclists, took part in the event in order to raise money for the Club.

The team filled a car with bags of food, changes of clothes, spare layers and tools for anything that could possibly go wrong. Rachel Esker, our fantastic Social Secretary, drove the support car, and even tried her hand at cycling.

The route was successfully completed by every participant in 7 hours! None of us quit or gave into the exhaustion and pain. And despite the two punctures and the one fall, the team got to Brighton alive and ready to enjoy their time there.

RURC did what no other team has done in Roehampton, and had their first over-night social event away from London. It was a great success and kick started at a Whetherspoons near the Travel Lodge the team stayed at. An event that I am certain the team is more than willing to repeat next year.

The route took the team through a few hills, country roads and a lot of gorgeous scenery all the way to Brighton; but it was completed with great enthusiasm and support. RURC are extremely grateful for the support that was given for the event. Thank you to Putney Cycles for the fleet of bikes, RoeActive for the continuous use of the gym. Rachel Esker for the support car, Steven Coates for videoing the event (hopefully we will be able to post this soon!), Robin Dodson for his expertise in the route and supporting the cyclists. Thank you as well for every participant for having the courage to set off at 7.30 am on a Sunday and putting your bodies through hell to raise money for the club. All the proceeds are going towards our first boat that will soon be purchased and named. RURC are extremely proud of this fundraiser and promise to make the next one amazing. Thank you for everyone who sponsored us and helped make this bike ride possible. We enjoyed it just as much as we hated it. Some members of the team are considering cycling it again this Summer for fun, so if you want to cycle with RURC get in touch with one of us. Until the next torturous, challenging and epic fundraiser event!

BRIGHTON PIER!