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It was an early start to our third race day of the season. Most of the team met up at the LRC before making our way to Runnymede.
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Together with Typhoon and Windy Pandas, we unloaded our boats from the trailers, set up camp and prepared ourselves for competition.
Wraysbury's home ground was a pleasant enough venue with its grassy banks and picturesque surroundings. It was only two-lane racing for the 200m sprints, and we were soon to discover this would not be a day of fair competition between even the two boats on the water at any one time, as the lane closest to the riverbank got very shallow towards the end of the course, considerably slowing down crews in that lane.
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Our first 200m heat of the day: the team pulled off a sharp start, locked in timing, and it was a great performance overall. Rage clocked a respectable 51.33". We dropped the ball a bit in our second heat, finishing in a time of 55.25". After a team talk and some reflection on how we could improve in our next race, we shaved off seconds again to finish in a time of 52.84".
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In our final 200m race of the day, Rage clocked 54.19" in the 'slower lane' against Worcester. We took off at the beginning and were out in front all the way, until we finally hit that dreaded sand bank, when the invisible brakes immediately came into play. Our fellow competitors crossed the line in a time of 53.76". Despite being a very strong team, some of Worcester's paddlers shook our hands and confessed they felt terrible for 'stealing our victory'.
At the end of the day, winning is great – but what matters to the coaches more than victory that is knowing that our team won or lost races giving them our best shot, and we couldn't have asked for more than what the team gave.
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5km White Water Adventure and Tree Tussle
Rage has traditionally been strongest at sprint events. Wraysbury BDA presented us with a 5km challenge, which the team bravely accepted.
The 5km event involved an abundance of shouting, drumming and fierce competition all the way. Rage put up an epic fight against other teams. Wash hit us from all directions, teams tried to pass each other everywhere we went, and water cascaded into the boat as we battled it out on the race course.
We fought hard against Cambridgeshire Royals who played parallel tag with us as our dragon heads took turns surging ahead of each other. However, neither team would allow their opponent to break away. We were neck and neck for quite some way, before Rage finally (after a series of passionate 'power up' and 'Ken Chow' calls) managed to pull ahead.
As we finally approached the sharp 5km turn, Jen (still facing the team and completely engrossed in drumming) suddenly felt the thwack of a tree branch on the back of her head.
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We hadn't quite made the turn...and our boat had plunged head first into some bush. Jen looked down at the team, and watched row by row of Ragers get slapped in the face by bits of tree as we continued to drift forwards.
Colourful expletives erupted from our boat as we shouted "KEEP PADDLING...!!" Dave Taylor struggled whilst attempting to wrestle his way out of a bit of tree with his paddle: "I... £%€K -ing... CAAAN'T!!" :D Pete also momentarily disappeared behind some greenery and rustled amidst a few leafy branches, before finally reappearing again on the other side :D
Although we had finally got a whole boat length past Cambridgeshire Royals after our previous legendary effort, we had just been stalled again. They narrowly missed crashing into the back of us. We did a quick reverse before continuing on our course, as they took advantage of our fate. Despite losing precious time due to the crash, the race still felt strong, consistent and controlled. We played catch up with Cambridgeshire and a final battle for the finish line ensued.
It was a good result for Rage in terms of long distance racing (especially considering the tree encounter), and we ended up clocking 24.41", finishing in 9th place out of 20 teams.
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LRC Ladies have come a long way over the course of a year. This time last season, we were barely scraping to get enough numbers between Rage, Thames and Typhoon to enter a single boat between us.
This year, record attendance meant our club put forward 10 girls to represent the Rage faction of our combined LRC effort. Two LRC boats were entered and we said before getting on board, that regardless of what boat we all paddled on, if there was to be a victory, that this victory would be everybody's.
Ladies racing at Runnymede was an adrenalin-inducing experience. As Stuart Cole from Thames put it, "to hear all four clubs chanting with one voice as the ladies stormed up the race course was the highlight of the day for me."
LRC Ladies has been a great way of bringing our clubs together. And it is through this combined effort that we have now climbed to (and maintained) position 1 on the ladies' league table. Way to go, LRC!
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Happy birthday this month to Lucy and Will Ip :) Do you guys remember this photo from last year with Colin the Caterpillar?! Time flies.... :D
Lucy received a pretty pony birthday card (that could be coloured in). Will had just paddled a few sessions with us and we were already threatening to dunk him! Thankfully we didn't scare him off – he's still with us :)
Happy birthday, guys! :) xx
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