After weeks of bashing up and down the Tideway, challenging pieces in all types of weather the Tideway can throw, WEHORR was upon us. At the eleventh hour we Masters women found a sub for the bow seat and became a composite boat with Kingston RC, with thanks to Megan for joining us.
Expertly coxed by Tuyet, we set off through the start at a cracking pace and with months of negative split training, overseen by James Holmes Siedle, we ramped up the power and pressure with every passing kilometre. Not even the chop at the Chiswick Eyot in the second quarter of the race could throw us off our rhythm as we slowly but surely reeled in the Molesley boat, powered past them, and then started our move up a Tideway crew, just a mere dot in the distance at that point!
As everyone Ptrc woman knows (apologies to Aba) nothing makes you push harder than the knowledge of those TSS red and yellow blades and ladies in white leggings just a couple of lengths off your bow ball, so inch by inch we slowly squeezed up on them. From the black buoy to home we raised the pace a pip and emptied the tanks as we chased them down. At the 100 metre race for the line we had their Cox but they just managed to hold us off as they wound for home; but the race was already won!
Some lovely number crunching by Coach JHS found that we had beaten his head race split target of 2:17.0 with most of the race completed in under 2:10.0, hitting 2:0.2 up to and through the finish line. Placing 4th out of 8 in our category we also managed to successfully decrease the gap between our time and that of the winning Masters boat from an Index of 91 in 2015 to an Index of 94 this year, great proof to ourselves that our fitness is much improved thanks to negative splitting guru JHS. But also much thanks too to Ted for lots of great technical sessions with him in the 3 seat. The boat never moved so fast!
Next stop, a repeat of the full Championship course in The Veteran’s head on Sunday the 20th then off to camp in Soustans, France, for some warmer weather and training for National Masters.
Photo references: Ladies Masters, Putney Town Rowing Club, Kingston Rowing Club, JHS, James Holmes-Siedle, Sue Pictor, Sam Atkinson Jones, Camilla Lister, Heather MacPherson, Clare Allen, Emily Longmore, Liz Stoyel, Megan Addis, WEHoRR, PTRC
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