It has obviously been a huge disappointment for most athletes around the world not being able to compete in the summer season of 2020. However it didn’t really stop us rowers. Towards the start of isolation, Mark Cushway, our coach, suggested we almost carry on the season as usual, through online virtual racing! Mark asked us one morning what team we thought would be best to challenge, so we chose TSS (Tideway Scullers School) as we have a good relationship with their team and they are one of our main rivals. The first virtual race we were set out to do was 2x1800m with a 4 minute interval, mimicking the scullery which would have been at Dorney, racing 1800m, turning, then racing back down the course. Both Tideway and Lea R.C. originally had two crews each, an A and a B crew. Once all athletes and coaches had joined the 10am Zoom call on the Saturday morning. The race started with a “GO’’ from Mark. Unfortunately you couldn’t see how the other team was doing, so you just had to trust you were going fast enough. Once the race was done, we all sent photos of our ERG screen to the coaches and they calculated the overall time. Lea R.C. won out of the A crews but Lea B lost against Tideway B. Tideway of course wanted a rematch! This time over 6.8k. Again on Zoom, the race took place at 10am. Tideway came back and beat us in both the A and B categories. So we will definitely be racing against them again to take the title off them!
Marlow Depeza
Junior Vice Captain
April 2020
Comments