Ingredients and instructions for a fabulous Henley Womens Regatta 2010:
Added 22/06/2010 by Emma Drew
Take the following:
One Cox
Eight Girls
Take out one coach...
...then add two back in
Trailer Driver Trace
A big bunch of freshly picked Bristol groupies (added Pimms optional)
Blood
Sweat
Tears
Cook at very high pressure for ten months until 6.5 stone lighter and firm to the touch.
Yes our moment of glory had arrived. All the months of hard work, outings in all weathers, training camps, step tests, 2k tests, hours of endless ergs, emotional ups and downs, a total lack of cheese and wine (ouch)...all led us to this weekend.
Our Henley dream started with the qualifying time trial on Friday morning...this was a good start literally. We stormed it down the course, gaining on Wallbrook who started in front of us, and we seemed to get a good time as it looked as though from the draw, we were seeded! Go Viridor!
 - Viridor in action
This gave us some confidence for our first race on Saturday morning against Reading. Again, the start was good, we pulled away from them with relative ease...we heard them make a couple of pushes along the way..not really gaining on us, but on Diegos confident call, we put two pushes in anyway what the heck. They stayed relatively close for the entire race, but clearly not close enough we beat them by half a length and matched the course record of 5.04. Bonus!
Our second race we knew without a doubt would be close one. Agecroft, our long standing rivals were our competition. Nerves kicked in but also a dogged determination that we would not let them walk away winners at least not without a darn good fight to the death.
Matthew Pinsent himself started our race...a good omen I thought. Again, even though Agecroft have a cracking good start as a team (as observed by a member of the Drew Support Team who watched them in their previous race)...we held our own and gained a few seats on them. 500m in and we were side by side...
 - Racing Agecroft in Round 2
You could not have gotten a closer race the whole way down...
 - It was neck and neck the whole way!
We gave a VERY good push near the end, even gaining a couple of seats on them but they came straight back at us, and led to Agecroft beating us by a mere foot, a photo finish, and a joint course record for the day of 5.01 for us and Agecroft.
(BTW Agecroft went on to lose in the next race to Mortlake AA by one and a quarter lengths...HA!). The final was won by Thames Rowing Club with a time of 4.58.
We were all of course devastated that we did not get a chance to race on Sunday which was our aim...but to finish on such a close race has made all the hard work worth it, and after a storming weekend at Reading Regatta the weekend before...Team Viridor will always be winners!
 - The crew with their Reading medals
And besides.......there is always next year....................
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