Rowing

Before I start talking about rowing, I found out what Cambridge students are called! I got used to being able to call Grinnell students Grinnellians. Cambridge students are called Cantabrigians (and incidentally the City of Cambridge rowing club is called the Cantabrigian rowing club) and Cantabs for short. I don't think there's a name for Churchill students, but students studying various disciplines are referred to by different names... mathematics students are called "mathmos." Sometimes I think British English is fairly manageable, but I have absolutely no intuition for how people decide to abbreviate names for things... for example, I thought, from context that "ents," which always seems to go with a list of planned events was short for events, but it's actually short for entertainments.

I've been rowing crew here at Cambridge and I rowed in my first race out on the river this Saturday. I rowed with the women's novices from Churchill College at Winter Head, which is a 2500 m race on the Cam. This race didn't have a lot of novice teams rowing in it, and so our time of 15 minutes 28 seconds was comparatively slow, but there were several other boats that came in behind us. Actually, this was only the second outing we'd been on where we had actually rowed with all 8 people at one time. The first one was the day before the race, so I think we did well.

Rowing for 15 minutes as hard as you can is really exhausting. I had a blister on my right hand from the day before and it, as well as another blister that formed during the race broke open, which was really nasty and hurt the rest of the day. But fortunately I am getting some calluses on my hands now, so this should get better. And no, we're not allowed to wear gloves for rowing. For people who row in very cold weather there is something that fits on the oar over their hands, but rowers' hands need to be in contact with the oar; it's the rules for races. After the race I was tired and hungry for the rest of Saturday.

So more about rowing... all the colleges in Cambridge (perhaps excluding some very tiny ones?) have teams, so it's not that big a deal to go out with the novice rowers. It's very friendly and accepting, so everyone who wants to try rowing gets a chance. Here at Churchill once we get past the first term we will probably have first and second women's teams as well as first and second men's teams.

As far as how rowing crew works, there are 8 people in a typical boat as well as a cox, who gives us instructions for maneuvering and keeping in time over a microphone. Each person rowing has one oar that goes to one side. I've been rowing at spot number five, so my oar is on bow side (to my left) and I'm roughly in the middle of the boat.

Although power is important in rowing, being in time is in some ways more important. When we were rowing in the race Saturday, whenever we got in time better we would have a big burst of speed. So I found out the crew is kind of different from a lot of sports in the sense that if you're not in time with you're team, you are messing things up for them, so even if it's miserably difficult you just kind of have to keep going, which is pretty rough. If you pull your oar out of the water too late, it gets stuck, which is called crabbing your oar, or catching a crab. Also, when you row you have to turn your oar on the recover, which is called feathering your blade. I think having to turn my oar has been the main source of the blisters on my hands.

Going out rowing on the Cam in the morning is a lot of fun, though. We typically practice about twice a week; the Churchill boathouse is about 10 or 15 minutes by bike from the college. Out on the river, there are lots of swans and ducks as well as people's house boats. And it's a pretty good feeling when everything is going right and the boat starts to move really fast. So I definitely feel like I'm getting the authentic Cambridge experience.