On Friday afternoon 36 men’s crews and 35 women’s crews lined up and prepared to compete for a place in  this year’s CUCBC’s Lent Bumps. This year, with the reduction in the number of divisions in Bumps, only W1 boats had their places guaranteed and every other boat had to fight for one of the remaining sixteen places in the Getting on Race. The crews had to race against the clock over the Bumps course, which spans a distance of just over 2 kilometres, and the fastest sixteen are awarded a position in the Bumps starting order, although the order in which these top sixteen come is not revealed so that no assumptions can be made about their performance in the Bumps races.

After the entertainment of some questionable coxing from some other boats while spinning to race back upstream during marshalling, it was time for Lucy/Hughes W2 to show that they deserved one of those coveted sixteen places. They had a powerful start and were settled into their race pace over the start line. Girton W2 had set off ahead of us with a large distance between us and them. However, by the time we were approaching Grassy corner we could see Girton up ahead and we began to rein them in even further. With some motivational calls from cox, Marjun Parcasio, and the demand for power 10s the girls kept the pressure on Girton and on the reach you could see that they had easily gained 5 or 6 boat lengths on them since the start. The girls gave it everything they had until the very end and although we don’t know the official time that they completed the course in, we do know that they did enough to win themselves a place in Bumps!

Congratulations to the entire crew, they’ll be starting in position 11 in division 3 on day one of Bumps next Wednesday afternoon!

The Lucy/Hughes team haven’t had a second boat in Lent Bumps since 2012, this shows how much the club has come on over the last couple of years and the enthusiasm of both the coaches and the rowers this year.

Bring on Bumps!

By Jessica Phillips