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After travelling for 3 hours, and sweating bullets in one of the M25s finest traffic jams we arrived to represent Churchill, ourselves, and the idea that you can turn seriousity into boat speed at Reading Town Regatta. The other competitors seemed to be a nice mix of tiny schoolboys and ridiculously stacked Americans, still Mark got the body out and gave them the show.

Our paddle up to the start was solid but unspectacular, although as one of our competitors watched our practice starts we showed just how frantically we can row and wound it up to 53. The stake boat start taught us that being able to back onto a stake boat is not something you learn at CUW, although once attached Fiend did get congratulated on his ability to keep the boat straight.

The Serious IV row up to the start

Our race plan, blasting it off the start then paddling to the finish, had to be quickly revised after both boats moved ahead off the start, so we figured we'd give Dr Dave's crazy plan a go. This involved rowing hard and well all the way through, and turned out to be a pretty good idea. By the halfway mark we had moved back to about a seat up, and were three quarters of a length ahead with 200m to go, sparing us a sprint for the finish.

We celebrated in traditional serious IV style (don't ask) and collected our pots and boxes to keep them in from an exceptionally drunk gentleman. At this point Fiend rushed off to one of our beaten competitors to ask if he could cox them over the summer, no really. Having been slightly dubious about the idea of 6 hours of travelling for 3 minutes of racing it was definitely made worth it by our emphatic, face-crushing, pot winning victory.

We spent our evening celebrating with some beer and curry. Our attempt to christen the tankards failed as Mark's had a hole in it, he got beer everywhere, oh how we laughed. If you're thinking to yourself, I want me some Serious IV we'll be at Burton all weekend next weekend (12th and 13th) and at Molesey the Saturday after (19th). Hit us up, we do the good kind of biting.

Much love,

The Serious IV

The Serious IV and their pots

The Blore-Brown prize for the student who while being a stalwart member of the Boat Club, achieves the best results in Tripos, goes to Will Hamilton for 2008. This prize was endowed by Jack and Marcia Miller. Congratulations Will!

Rugby, rowing and academia - what a hero!

As May Week drew to a close, the enthusiastic and only slightly crazy members of Churchill boat club thought it would be fun to go on one final outing. It was also nearly the summer solstice, so the slightly crazy idea was to meet at the boathouse at 3.30 (in the morning of course) and to push off as early as possible.

Lighting down was officially at 3.59, and given the rather early hour everything had to be done as quietly as possible. Getting the boats out was done with the minimum of noise and we decided not to use the cox boxes until past the Railway Bridge. This meant commands were passed down the boat with chinese whispers, and made what we were doing seem even more bizarre!

Lorna is eager to have a go at stroke

By some miracle of organisation we had ended up with exactly 2 coxes and 12 rowers, so everyone managed to fit comfortably into Pink Lady and Lady Bondii. The crews were mixed, both in terms of gendre and skill level, with a wide range from two experienced M2 rowers to three M4 rowers who hadn't been in a boat since Lent term!

Once down past the Railway Bridge the real fun began. There were several unusual races, including a backing it down race, and we then went further downriver and we pulled in just past First Post Corner to allow some seat swapping to take place.

First to have a go in the cox's seats were Dimitar and Ben, while Lorna enthusiastically took up stroke's blade in Pink Lady. Several of us also opted to try rowing on the opposite side to that which we normally do, and our attempts must have made the new coxes job even more difficult!

After spinning at the lock we went back to the Reach and swapped seats again, with several others satisfying the hidden desire of all rowers - to have a go at coxing. There were several more races, and on several occassions Lady Bondii managed to defy the odds and draw substantially ahead of Pink Lady.

By this time the Sun had been up for a while, and despite it not even being 6 o'clock we decided to call it a day and head back to the boathouse. It had been a fun couple of hours for everyone and a great way to round off the rowing year.