As you can see I called my self Minty so could you change my username for me when you have the time Danny?
Thanks
Anyway, basically I'm in the nations best J15 2nd VIII, for those of you who don't know I'm talking about Rowing!
Yes, I row for my school Hampton (England) and this year we started Sweep-Oared rowing (One blade (blade=oar)) as opposed to sculling which requires 2 blades (for obvious reasons you can only scull in a single).
I made the 2nd VIII (B team) at the 4 position.
Heres a crappy diagram of a boat:
^ 1
| 2
| 3
| 4
| 5
| 6
| 7
| 8
| COXEN
Arrow shows direction the boat goes and the numbers correspond to seat numbers. The Rowers DONT face the way the boat is going.
So in Winter months you do head races (Time Trials), in the Summer Regattas (All start at same time).
There are 2 big races of the year; Schools Head and Nat Schools.
Schools Head was on Tuesday and was the big competition we were in.
There were 3 J15 (our age group) VIII events:
Champ VIIIs - Big Schools A Team, row a long course.
1st VIIIs - Little Schools A teams, row short course
2nd VIIIs - B teams from all schools.
The Short course ran from Hammersmith Bridge past Harrods Furniture Depositry past Fulham FC to Putney Bridge. Or you could call it hell for rowers (very rough water).
So in our race we overtook 3 crews and we finished in 6mins 43 secs
Results here (J15 2nd VIII):
http://www.wsbc.org.uk/shorr/results...sults-ssbe.pdf
As you can see we also beat The 1st eights and were the fastest crew on the short course all day.
So we get medals each and a pink flag for the school!
Heres some pics of us racing:
http://www.bigblade-photos.com/rowin...202nd%208.html
My head is at the bottom of the first pic and the second pic too.
I'm really pleased as I'm one of the best crews in the Nation as everyone races this race (well nearly) and I thought I may as well boast about it!
But our coach has now said: The hunters (us originally) have become the hunted (us now). Looks like we've got plenty more weeks of pain before we go for gold at Nat Schools!