Summer Eights: A review :)

Saturday heralded not only the end of Britain's got Talent but of course Summer Eights too! This of course subsequently meant the end of early morning training sessions, erging and various other fitness practices. Strangely enough, I kind of miss rowing already despite the fact that I'm sure I'll benefit from the extra time I will gain for the last 3 weeks of term.

Summer Eights dominated fifth week which was particularly chaotic as a result (fittingly, chaos was my essay topic...) though on the upside, I didn't have time for introspection and the traditional "5th week Blues" which everyone gets.

Anyhow, Wednesday was our first race. In this first test for the Jesus Men's IV (though we were technically the IIIs), we had a hard draw. We basically had to bump Somerville II before we got bumped by Green Templeton I (unfair that they're in our division as they include 3 OLYMPIANS?!?). Anyhow, it was a tall order but our tactic was to go out hard and fast...which we did and it *worked*! We slammed into Somerville II and then a split second later, Green Templeton rammed into us! Phew..what a close one! The graduates of Green Templeton weren't amused at being beaten by a men's IV crew! As we bumped, we had to race another time literally straight after as we were now promoted to the division above so no one chasing us though we were chasing St Hilda's I. Oh dear...within a few strokes, I caught a crab!! It was horrendous...if you don't know what this is...well, let's just say it slows down the boat a lot! Luckily, I recovered quickly but I still felt soooooo guilty as I've never caught a crab in all our training sessions before! Though feedback from others suggested we weren't going to catch them anyway but still... :( I apologised profusely.

Thursday's racing again had two races. The first one, we simply had to 'row on' as we didn't have anyone to chase but were being chased. We did this successfully. However, I got the biggest leg cramp EVER straight after so had to do a lot of painful stretching out...my calf was positively quivering. Regardless though, I didn't want to let the team down so set my mind on the second race. With this, we knew we had to bump otherwise we would once again face Green Templeton who were climbing up the divisions after us. However, this time bow's seat broke so we were an unbalanced 7 man crew for most of the time! No chance of a bump here either. OH CRAP. I'm glad it was an equipment problem and not something that I did...I was properly scared that I was going to catch another crab; especially as I had only 3 hours of sleep as I had finished my essay at 6am :(

Friday was kind of inevitable. With no one to bump, we would have had to row over the whole 1.5km without getting bumped by Green Templeton though unfortunately this didn't happen (would have been a miracle if it did!). We did scrap the bank which made their bump even more easier!

Saturday was the final day and although we were now chasing Green Templeton, our aim really was to 'row over' and not get bumped by Lincoln III. However, what happened nobody could have anticipated! The start gun went around 10 seconds faster than everyone expected but we reacted quickly and got a quick bump on Green Templeton who looked as if they had steered into the bank in an unexpected start! WOOPEE! However, the calls of bow meant that our celebrations were short lived as a second later, we had steered into the bank with me (number 2) and bow getting scratched by a bush of nettles and bow hit his head on the stone bank! My rigger was bent and crushed and the oar had been sanded down. The bow had to be sent to hospital though luckily he returned later in good condition. As for the bump, Green Templeton (sore losers) appealed and their appeal stood!?! Not sure why as EVERYONE was unprepared by the unexpected start gun! Despite the protests (even by Jesus's head of law tutor), our counter-appeals weren't listened to. ARH! Annoying and a very anticlimatic end to our Summer Eights campaign though overall, we did ourselves proud as Jesus's Men's IV crew.

I'm definitely pleased I took up rowing for a whole year as I tried new things and met new people so all good in my book!

P.S. Phew. What a long post! Back to my essay :)

EDIT: Changed the picture to a *REAL* one of our first race (found on facebook!) - look how close Green Templeton were to bumping us! We're the 'middle' boat!

Rowing on(wards!

Whoop! On Friday we raced in the 'rowing on' qualifying stages for Summer VIIIs and we've since found out we qualified with a time of 2 minutes and 56seconds for a 1.5km course which is pretty good (apparently...I don't really know much about the timings).

Anyhow, so yesterday and today, we had more training sessions...v. manic as yesterday I had the international festival OXCIA stall to run as well as rowing in the middle of the festival. However, was really glad as it was the last event for this term (as most my committee have finals)...hopefully this will free up time for work, esp. my dissertation research which I've done zilch on :( (yet managed to blag my abstract submission...)

Today is equally busy with rowing, the Synthesis concert (which we'll be prepping for before the 7.30pm start) with Sphere....and sometime during the concert, have to squeeze in peer supporting as well. Manic and no time to study chaos (really!) for our next essay as I'm experiencing it right now :/

P.S. Guess what the picture is meant to represent...

College envy....but only a bit!

Today was a day of non-productivity...was supposed to make a start on our philosophy essay but nope didn't happen.

Anyhow, started the day by going through my inbox + some grocery shopping which of course took hours (literally) as 1) silly OXCIA troubles that need to be sorted out 2) I've realised that a lot of what I buy are time-dependent offers so the shopping list has to be edited each time to take advantage of the offers available today. I'm such a cheapo.

Then I had to dash off for a mammoth rowing session (without any lunch as it's at the inconvenient time of 12.45pm where you'd have to eat pretty early in order not to get cramps) which went on till around 3pm. Woah...we were pretty crap at the beginning (boat rocking all over the place, people catching crabs - guess what that means!?!) but then towards the end we were definately in our stride - very fast and steady racing. Good stuff! Ha ha..I enjoy actual rowing so much better than the prep/fitness for it which I'm not good at anyway!

Then (a bit smelly as the person in front kept splashing me) I went straight to Corpus Christi's tortoise race. It's an annual event but this was my first time. It was sooo cool! Though I missed the actual race (yeah I know, how can you miss a *tortoise* race!) - mainly because I couldn't see anything - I did do other stuff.

Firstly it was a chance to meet my corpus christi crew (I just said that for alliteration..!) which was made up of my counselling friends (I don't go to counselling, I mean training!) and people I met in China last year and people who I'm going to China with this year! It was brilliant just to be around them and all the other friendly Corpus Christi folk. And their college was gorgeous! Lots of greenery, a conservatory and that grand quad at the front! Sigh....one of my friends said "why is Jesus so ( )".....she said it half jokingly of course! Our loyalties are tested....not broken :)

Oooohh and burgers for a £1!! As well as raffles, put-your-face-in-the-painting-hole-and-get-splashed-by-your-friends thing (what IS that called?), second hand book stalls, sweet/cake stalls and more! Ah...the weather was good too! Oh yeah and Blue Peter was filming there too! The winning tortoise (from Corpus Christi...fixed anyone? :P) will race on their show...alas, the presenters weren't there. Could have got my foot in the door perhaps.......

I have to admit. This was one of those brilliant Oxford days. I've always said, Oxford's like marmite..well..kind of. You can't really dislike then really like marmite can you?!?

Anyhow, sorry Karl. You'll have to wait.

First essay out of the way...

Ah...the 5am essay finish for the day that you have your tute (and I started reading relatively early for this essay!)....I'm feeling déjà vu and it's only 1st week....I also have predictive abilities and anticipate that I'm going to have many more 5am essay finishes this term....grr....maybe stuffing my 2nd year with extra-curriculars wasn't a great idea :/

Oh well, I was reasonably sprightly in the island biogeography tute which was very interesting! Tutorials are definitely the best thing about Oxford..funnily enough. However...I came back to find out that I wasn't so sprightly/alert after all...the toast I had toasted at 11am had burnt to a black crisp when my flatmate found it. I'm half relieved, half worried that our smoke detector didn't go off.... :O

Then from 3am to 8pm, I was out the flat going to various meetings and trainings etc (including my first trip to the gym...HILARIOUS. Felt like a fish out of water as I pretended to know what all the equipment did....ha ha...took me a while to figure out that the cycling thing had to be cycled on for a bit before the display and buttons would work!).....blimey it's been a knackering day.