BLADES

Hi, as you can see below is a pic of a boat with 8 men and 1 girl with bits of willow stuffed down the back of their shirts. Here in Cambridge every summer the local rowing clubs have a week of evening races called bumps. The River Cam is windy and narrow and therefore boats cannot race side by side, so we chase each other down the Cam over a pre determined course of about 2k. Each club enters both men and womens crews which are distributed throughout different divisons based on the results of a earlier race.

My club,City of Cambridge (CCRC) enetered 8 mens and 5 womens crews this year. My crew was M7, made up of men with less then a year rowing and a couple of maturer lads with various knee injuries. We were extremely lucky in that one of the top girl rowers in our club, Emma took the time to coach us over a couple pf months. She was greatly assisted byu the girls capt, Jo, who coxed us as well. Both women are extremely good rowers and were simply inspirational in the help and time they gave us.

So, CCRC M7 entered four races, one held each evening between Tues and last evening. We won every race and bumped all four crews we were pitted against. So each row back to our club house we stopped and followed the tradition of putting willow in our clothes as a sign of victory.

When we won our last and hardest fought race on Friday, we were automatically given Blades. Blades is the rowing term for oars. We were one of only 5 mens crews from over 50 to achieve this and it was totally unexpected. We can now buy a blade inscribed with the crews names as a memento of our effort.

So, all in all, a great week.

We got BLADES.