We found fremitus, GB trials and IV's head

So once again it's been a while; somehow balancing rowing, vetting and maybe the occasional social event means writing our blog goes a little by the wayside. Ultimately this means we suddenly realise quite how much we've done and how much we've got to tell you of our trialling adventure this year.

Since we last wrote we've been to GB trials and raced IV's head, as well as sitting a couple of exams (as clinical vets we now how multiple exams a term and have come to realise #everytermisexamterm can be read in more than one way!). Plus, we're getting to do more stereotypical vet activities - yes we did have a cow rectaling practical and are still struggling to understand how our non-vetty friends don't find the revelation that we managed to locate fremitus and various organs inside the cows as exciting as we did.

Back in mid-November we adventured to Boston, and to probably one of the few stretches of river in the country that can match Ely for blandness in parts, although both do provide views of the Cathedrals from the water:

The first day of trials was a 2k erg test. Being used to doing these in Goldie (the University boathouse in Cambridge) surrounded by the rest of our team-mates, with loud pumping up music and the members of the squad not testing cheering you on, we found ourselves in a very different atmosphere. We were tested in a sports hall with two lines of ergs and different groups of people being tested every 15 minutes, meaning you get to witness the pain of the 2k many times over before you have to do your own. However, it was exciting, knowing that you're in a room of future Olympians does helps you raise your game. Day 2 then bought the 5k single scull, always an interesting one for predominantly sweep rowers used to only one blade and having a cox to tell us what to do. Never the less we finished, stayed dry and managed to pretty much hold our ranking positions from the 2ks. More excitingly the end of the 5k also heralded the end of our autumn soiree into sculling and our return to sweep rowing in preparation for IV's head.

IV's head was our first Tideway race for the season and the first race representing CUW for many of the new members of our squad. With most of our boats going off in the 400s it made it almost a test of bladder strength, staying warm  and not getting too hungry before we even started the race. After our couple of hours of marshalling though and some interesting start orders we were off amongst many junior crews with the plus of giving us lots of crews to overtake but also the negative of having to negotiate a river filled with crews. After our first taste of Tideway racing for the year we started to look forward to our next taste of the Tideway with our Trial VIIIs race later and our  first chance to race the 2015 Boat Race course side by side and on the Boat Race tide- a daunting yet incredibly exciting prospect.We'll let you know our thoughts on Trial VIIIs in the next installment, it definitely deserves it's own post!

We only wear trackies on Thursdays...

 Unbelievably we're now half way through our first term of clinical vet school and two months into our trialling year and are gradually learning how to balance the two (most of the time).

We're pretty sure our vet year group think we're a little odd,  for a variety of reasons:

1. Our Hackett jackets have become almost a uniform. Given we're all so attached to them and never leave home without them it means we're constantly matching, something other members of our year have commented on on several occasions. We like to think the rest of our dress is a bit more variable - we only aim for one trackies day a week and on rotations even have to go for "professional" dress, resulting in us looking like we almost don't row (atleast when we're inside and not wearing our jackets anyway).
2. As the vet school is on the opposite side of town to the station, our arrival back from Ely necessitates a sprint cycle through Cambridge to make it to 9am (or more accurately 9.12am by the time we arrive) lectures. Piling in sweaty and loudly dekitting doesn't exactly make for a stealthy entrance.  
3. Along with our fellow fourth year vet triallist Claire, we now travel everywhere as a pack. 
4. Our lecture theatre is the most uncomfortable ever made and whilst most people bring in their own cushions, our ingenius solution is to sit on our seat pads.
5. Eating between every single lecture, even the ones straight after lunchtime. Then clocking the calories on My Fitness Pal.

Ultimately, to the rest of our year we must look like the rowing equivalent of Mean Girls - only we like to think we're a lot nicer and we rely on BBC weather rather than our other assets to predict what the Ely weather may be like.

In other very exciting news, we competed in Brit Champs a couple of weeks ago. Coming so early in our season, Brit Champs is a challenging one to prepare for, with limited time in race crews and minimal race fitness preparation. The day ended with an exciting final in which we won the University pennant and came third overall! Possibly the best part of the day was standing on the podium with a multitude of big rowing deals, who dwarfed us- all standing about a foot taller than our crew. Brit Champs is a great event from this perspective, looking across to your opposite number on the start line and seeing that it's an olympic champion is an experience you really don't get very often!

Looking up to the olympians in more ways than one.

Bronze medallists!

We also got to go on a trip to London last week for the President's challenge, leading to more country girls in the city fun. Unlike our last trip to the capital this time we managed to avoid getting stuck in any ticket barriers; although getting stuck crossing the road we did have to be escorted across by a man dressed as a giant banana. There was also the obligatory dash to the train at King's Cross, challenging in blazers, pencil skirts and heels to say the least. Getting to go the BNY Mellon offices again was exciting though. Highlights definitely included Esther's calamity acts; her powerful coin toss into the crowd (she may be a cox, but she really doesn't know her own strength- just ask her what her party trick is) and the shield somehow falling off the stand while we were having our photo by it.

The Challenge.

Coming up we've got weekends to the Tideway, GB trials and IVs head to look forward to before the end of the month, more on those to follow....

It's been a while... Our Musings on Summer Training.

So we're already back to trialing for the 2014 Boat Race, a surprise to none of our friends that we've decided to trial for a third time. It definitely would have been a surprise to us if you'd asked us two years ago if we'd trial for at least three years, or if you asked us after some of the colder, more miserable Ely mornings where you'd probably have heard us bringing out lines akin to Redgrave's classic of Atlanta '96. But here we are again, through love of rowing, enjoying a challenge or sheer stupidity (possibly a mix of all three) who knows.

Since we last posted we've had the highs of BUCS regatta (with vast improvements on our Boat race performance), the excitement of Henley Women's as well as College Bumps rowing and coaching. We've also had our last long work experience free summer holiday...

Summer gives the opportunity to train in different ways; take a break from the erg or the boat and get away from the Cambridge bubble for a few weeks. Our top 5 great things about summer training are as follows:

1. Runs in beautiful places; running is great for when you're away without much equipment and has the added bonus of finding some amazing views. some of our examples...

Barefoot run along here anyone?

So glad I had my phone to capture this! 

2. Bemoaning the loss of a squad to train with leads you to finding new training partners, leading to competitive training against siblings (we will not be beaten by younger siblings, or older ones for that matter, even if our UT2 jog ends up turning into a near sprint.) Being keenly observed erging by the dog, who is also very keen, even if you have other opinions to try to help lick off your sweat between pieces and the long suffering friends and boyfriends who having put up with you disappearing off to train all season suddenly get the joy of accompanying you.

Nothing escapes the watchful gaze of coach Henry.

3. Sun; making the most of every opportunity to work on the tan lines, plus even erging in the sun can be (almost) enjoyable.

4. Tour de France inspired cycling challenges; home to Cambridge, to the beach or just out to explore the countryside- spending a day out in the open is great (until you come across a hill).

5. Training whenever you like. From early morning barefoot runs along the beach to late night erging under the stars, suddenly training is able to fit around your life rather than your life around training.


Four weeks into the season, summer training already seems a very long time ago, but we're enjoying being back with the squad and back in the boat and are looking forward to our first race of the season. Plus, we're now clinical vet students, more on this to follow!  

Losing a boat race

For those of you that didn't already know the other side came out victorious in this years women's race. This is something we could gloss over and not chose to write about, but seeing as we have been building up to the Boat Race since we started the blog we thought we should also give you our thoughts on the race itself and what it's like to lose the race you've been training for for 6 months.


The view from the bows - Caroline

I always joked that about the bows being great as you get to cross the line first in the boat. However, the Boat Race this year also taught me one not so great side of being in the bows, in being able to see the race slipping away. Up off the start and we were flying, having the race we wanted and had planned, (although admittedly the weather conditions we had to face weren't ones that we would have put in our ideal race.)  Then Oxford started to move on us, initially we were holding their pushes and pushing back out again, but then they started to move through us seat by seat until eventually even in the bows they were out of my periphery vision. Further forward in the boat you can always kid yourself you've got contact, in the bows you know otherwise, or at least any contact between the boats is marginal. Saying that I never stopped believing, we'd trained and visualised this race to 6 months and not once in those 6 months did we consider losing. It wasn't until we crossed the line exhausted, lungs and muscles burning that you even start to contemplate the fact you've lost and there's no celebration to take away the pain of the race, only a sense of shock and disbelief, the voice of our cox talking to us, willing us to sit up and breath.

I remember the paddle from the finish line to the pontoon, hands too cold to grip the blade and muscles too tired to move, yet as always we just did whatever our cox told us to do and made it back to our coaches and supporters. To everyone who had been there to support us over the last 6 months, through the highs and lows and who had to watch us lose powerlessly from the bank. Knowing what to say to friends and family who have travelled for miles only to watch you lose is impossible. I imagine it would be impossible in any state, let alone in a state of utter exhaustion not able to think straight, I think my main fall back was hugging everybody. Those moments were in some ways the worst, feeling the disappointment of feeling like you've let everyone you care about down, but, at the same time they were the moments that made you remember that there are people out there who didn't care if we won or lost for any reason other then the effect it had on us, they were there to watch the culmination of our training and support us whatever the outcome, (they also made some pretty awesome banners).

One of the awesome banners.

I think the real feeling of losing didn't begin to sink  in until I was back at the house lying on my bed with a lost feeling. Everything I'd trained for was over and this year the result hadn't gone the way we'd wanted. There was the solace however that we'd had our best race to date and we were continuing to get faster everyday in the build up to the race. The Boat Race may be over for 2013, but there are new challenges, new crews out there to beat and personal targets to reach. Some of my non-rowing friends think it's crazy that I want to keep rowing, but it's what I do and what I love (after all it's what gets me up in the morning) and in the words of Winston Churchill; "success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts."

Despite not winning this year, we've had  so many great memories and made loads of awesome friends.

From the stern- Holly

The feeling of losing is something quite different to what I had imagined it might be; I've heard people say before that it is like a bereavement, but I think this depends very much on the circumstances of the loss. I don't remember much of the race itself, just that it passed very quickly. A couple of moments stand out; Esther calling that she was on the four seat after the start and the amazing surge of confidence that came from that. Secondly, putting in pushes in the second km, convinced we were gaining ground despite Oxford being out of view from the stern. I never thought we were going to lose until they could be heard cheering as they crossed the line ahead.  

Initially, the feeling was shock and not knowing what to say or think. I thought it would be difficult to enjoy the evening but it turned out to be a great squad celebration of how far we'd come since September. Like for Caroline, it didn't sink in properly until a couple of days later, after hours spent re-running the race in my mind, watching the video over and over and coming to the conclusion that we gave it everything we had on the day. It was the race of our lives and we crossed the line with no regrets; like Em (our 7 seat) said "we left everything on the water".

Having believed something so completely, and having a goal that had taken up so much space in my mind and life meant that the loss left me feeling very empty. It was not until we discussed as a group where we wanted to go with our rowing over the next few months, agreeing that we wanted to take the eight further, that some of the hole left by the Boat Race started to be filled a little. If anything, I put even more into every stroke and repetition, knowing that it all adds to the bank for 2014, not to mention the races we have lined up before then. The loss made me think about why I row; obviously I'm here to win, but I love the friendships formed, the constant stream of goals to work towards and the opportunity to push myself further every day. There's no way that I feel any of the time spent rowing with CUW over the last two years has been wasted and I don't regret any of the sacrifices I've made to row. Bring on summer rowing!    

Onwards and upwards.

Race Week

It's been a while since we posted about the weigh in and a lot has happened. Primarily, as most of you will have guessed, the Henley Boat Races took place 2 Sundays ago on a very cold, very wind swept Dorney Lake. Before the race we stayed in Henley for 10 days, in a big three storey house just behind Leander. The Blue Boat have been doing this for a good few years, so we can train on the water that we race on. Race week is so much fun, so we thought we would give you an insight into what living with eight  rowers and a cox in the run up to the biggest race of our year is like...

As we're tapering we only do two shortish outings each day, the first one normally about 10am- when it's actually light- woooo hello lie-ins!! Thus, you would think that we would have loads of time to finish all that outstanding work, write blog posts, finish that dissertation... but no. Somehow, time flies past and by the end of the week you have loaded some papers onto your computer and only written one sentence. Oops. 

It's impressive how much food the nine of us got through in a week. Even though we're doing so much less mileage, we seemed to spend the whole time we weren't rowing eating. The house had a massive aga, which we mastered usage of quite well (we won't mention that one half baked lemon drizzle cake...)  there were multiple shops and many shopping lists to be written, our individual food habits also became evident, there were multiple tubs of nutella eaten and seeds were written off by our coach as an unnecessary item, he had very different views on the jaffa cakes however! All in all, there was a solid effort to maintain our weight advantage, which we found at weigh in round two (which took place on the Tuesday of race week alongside the challenges for each race) to have extended to 4kg per person. Like we said, all muscle.

The classic HBR weigh in shot, at least we know how to smile!

One of the highlights of each day, other than the lie-ins and mealtimes was the daily arrival of post, and there was lots of it. Suddenly we all felt very loved as we received cards, exciting packages and words of wisdom from friends, family and ex-members of CUW. We managed to line the book case with our cards and the windowsill rapidly filled with flowers, it was like all Christmasses and birthdays came at once. There was also the event of making cards for the other crews, involving cutting up magazines to make "witty" cards, Farmers Weekly proved to be particularly useful this year, who knew how amusing a magazine it really was?!

Just a selection of the many, many cards.

There is also lots of time to be filled with what can only be referred to as niche chat, in jokes of the crew that generally no one else dares question us about, this year Mike the inflatable shark sparked some interesting questioning from our coach. Although it's fair to say that generally our coach chose to ignore the "niche chat" rather preferring to sit in the arm chair in the corner of the room either on his phone or "napping" to try and ignore us, however not all our comments passed him by, some being bought up by him at the dinner at the end of the week.....

Mike the shark- the epitome of niche.

Our evening entertainment involved watching a variety of girly films including Pride and Prejudice, Notting Hill and Mean Girls- talk about pandering to stereotypes!  

Mid way through the week we had a surprise visit; nothing like the shock of opening the door to find Matthew Pinsent standing outside! As the umpire for our race, he came to chat with us but had turned up a day early, probably a good thing as he missed out on the previously mentioned half-baked lemon drizzle. Further encounters included Tom James after the race, who seemed somewhat bemused when the entirety of the slightly inebriated CUW piled onto him for a photo.  

CUW- always winning the party.

Hopefully that's given you an insight into the strange world of race week, right now we've enjoyed a chilled out Easter and now it's back to training for summer (if it ever comes) races and into the throes of exam term...

The weigh-in

So this year was the first year where the men's and women's Blue Boat crews were announced and publicly weighed in together. Initial thoughts: great! Always pro sexual equality, after all we put in the same amount of training as the men do and until recently/probably even still many people don't know about the Newton Women's Boat Race. The number of times we've told people we're training for the Boat Race, only to be met with blank looks, and "I didn't know they had a women's race". Well this is changing, not the fact that there is a women's race, the first one was in 1927, but the attention the women's race is starting to receive is definitely on the rise. On the whole this is great, although it is hard to fathom that anyone is interested enough in our everyday lives to want to come and watch us train at 6am on a cold winters morning, taking photos and recording "sound-bites" of our outings. For us this is just what we do everyday, we no longer really know any different, we do it for the love of rowing and the desire to win, not to attract media attention or to impress anybody.

So back to the weigh-in and yet another trip to London, yet more trains, more tubes, more excessive volumes of people and lack of animals and open space. This trip had the addition of going to a London office for the first and potentially last time, definitely not our dream place of work. But the view was pretty good:

There's even a little bit of grass visible

There were interviews, including the exciting addition of a "Which Blue are You?" scarf - light blue, obvs, which is part of BNY Mellon's advertising campaign of the Boat Race. This now saves our multitude of twitter followers (we wish, probably comes back to our unexciting lives the lack of them) from the daily re-tweets to try and win one.  There were tricky questions such as: if you could have dinner with a famous person who would it be? Trying to pick someone that would be interesting, with good conversation (no rowers then), wouldn't be trying to eat all your food (that ruled out Miranda), wasn't already shot-gunned by one of the others (David Attenborough sadly was already taken) and is real (unfortunately that was Mr Darcy out) proved to be not all that easy.

There were photos, having to alternate with the "other side" for some of them, always a challenge. Although we did have the instant win of saying in our drive for equality with the men we should also be allowed to wear trousers and not skirts. This proved especially useful for the photos of us sitting on the floor pretending to row in Newton's rowing boat decorated floor.

Then for the weigh in itself and time to put on our unisuits, adjust to avoid any VPL/camel toe situations and out into the room full of press, so many cameras. One reporter said we looked nervous walking into the room in our unisuits. I'm pretty sure it wasn't the unisuits that were the problem, you could have made us walk into the room in designer dresses we still would have looked a bit out of our comfort zone. Take a photo of us rowing at 6am in lonely Ely, no problem, we'll be sure to provide you with some of our most attractive effort faces I'm sure, that's our comfort zone, but a London office surrounded by cameras, not so much. Then it was time to hit the scales, a slightly strange experience having your weight projected out to a room full of press with you unable to see it. We have no problem about our weight, we don't train day in day out multiple times a day not hoping to build muscle and subsequently that will mean we should gain some weight. After all muscle weighs more then fat, however, it is still a strange experience having your weight professed to absolute strangers.  In the men's race weight plays a far bigger role, in the history of the men's boat race the heavier crew traditionally has the advantage. In the women's event though there are not the same statistics whether or not it is beneficial to be the heavier crew or not. In the end it all comes down to muscle mass and body fat percentages and thankfully the scales weren't portraying those figures for the world to see, they're saved for the body fat analyser scales that are kept safely at home. The real test of how much muscle we have and how effective we are at using it to propel our weight will come in less then two weeks now on the 24th March, when we line up on the start line against the other side. Then the numbers on the scales and the flashes of the cameras will be forgotten, all that will matter is how fast we get from the start to the finish, and more importantly will it be faster then the dark blues?

Just in case there weren't enough photos we ended up taking a few of our own

GDBO GBBO

Last week, inspired by the Great British Bake Off, we decided it was high time we put our baking skills to the test. Much youtube and recipe book research followed and we finally came up with this masterpiece of a cake:

 Original thoughts were that this may have to wait until after the boat race...buuuut cream cheese frosting. So. many. layers. And obviously our penchant for ganache couldn't keep us away. After about a second thinking about it, all thoughts of sticking to the 'podium diet' were cast aside in favour of an attempt at a slightly scaled down version. As a small aside, the 'podium diet' refers to a certain boat race weigh in, and the attempt to look ok in a unisuit whilst standing on a GIANT pair of scales with GIANT numbers, gives a whole new meaning to the eternal search for the (Ely) beach body.

We began by making chocolate fudge cake mixture, which proceeded to take a long, long time to cook, probably because we made so much mixture to form as many layers as possible. 

So much mixture and a massive bowl to lick out afterwards

Meanwhile we made a lot of ganache and cream cheese frosting (which can definitely be regarded as a recovery food- protein, carbohydrate...what could be more ideal?!) of which we managed to consume a fair amount and drop several spoons into whilst still waiting for the cakes to cook. 

Recommended snack; 1/2 spoon of ganache, 1/2 spoon of cream cheese frosting, mix and enjoy.

Eventually after far too many spoonfuls of the ganache and cream cheese frosting the cake was eventually cooked. Thankfully, yet again the weather was freezing meaning we had the perfect outdoor cooling space for the cake, much to the bemusement of the people walking past the kitchen. Next for the precision slicing of the cake, it always looks so easy on tele - we can tell you it's not that easy especially when you're too impatient to leave the cake to cool properly, however, it is good preparation for the steady hands we'll need for surgery one day.

Holly's concentration face

Then to add the cream cheese frosting, or at least what was left of it after us snacking on it for a good hour or so and start layering.......

Then for the ganache, definitely our favourite part of the cake!

Oozy ganache

A bit of decorating and we have our GDBO GBBO cake:

The cake lasted less then 24 hours it was that good/we'd done enough training we definitely needed that much of it to recover. However, in hindsight our impatience did mean this cake ending up slightly subsiding, attempt 2 however was structurally much better:

We'd like to think this is just the beginning of our baking careers, we've got the whole of race week living together to look forward to lots more baking projects, taller cakes, more layers, different flavours of ganache, etc. Mary Berry should watch out or at least Mel and Sue, we're backing ourselves to make the next series of Bake Off in one way or another, although maybe we should wait and see how the weigh in goes first.....

Sooo many layers!