Meet the Athletes: Lent Bumps Part 2
Despite snowy weather and cancelled races, Pembroke made the most of the last day of Lent Bumps 2018 with bumps from M1, W1, M2, and W3.
Following on from last month’s interview with rowers from M1, this time Kit Smart heard from the women of PCBC; Women’s Captain Mairenn Collins, Women’s Vice Captain Shirley Lo, and Lower Boats Captains Molly Harte and Jenny Hill.
A big achievement for PCBC this term was getting W3 (and M3) into Lent Bumps. As LBC, Molly was in charge of W3, a job which involves wrangling rowers and coaches to arrange outings, and also the occasional pep talk:
Molly: “Quite a lot of our job seems to be begging people to row the next morning, around 11pm at night. People always seem to get sick at 11! Basically what I’ve been doing is planning coaching, organising outings, setting crews. We try to create a nice atmosphere for them. The push this term was to get W3 on for Lent Bumps which was a really big achievement. We started the term like, guys, this is the year we do this. It’s about creating the mind-set. But a lot of it is admin.”
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W3 in action at the Pembroke Regatta[/caption]
Also deserving of credit, of course, are the coaches who generously give their time to keep crews on the right track:
Mairenn: “If you’re not a novice boat you don’t have to have a coach, but they’re really essential. If you have an outing without a coach it’s half the outing it could have been. W1 is coached almost entirely by alumni who are happy to get up at 6am and shout at people from the bank!”
W1, who bumped Girton on the final day of Lent Bumps this year, earned their bump with a lot of hard work. However, it's not all hard graft:
Mairenn: “It is a lot. We do about 8 sessions a week, sometimes two sessions in a day. For me it’s a lot about the crew, you get down there and it’s the same group of people there every time for you and with you.”
Shirley: "I think Mairenn’s right, about the social side. That’s the main motivation for me with rowing. We had a crew meal yesterday to prepare for bumps, we made so much pasta!"
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W2 on the river[/caption]
With up to eight outings a week, many of them early mornings before the sun is really up, what makes students want to start rowing?
Molly: “I didn’t start ‘til my second year. I watched my friend rowing for the whole of first year and thought, that seems like it could be nice but I wasn’t sure. I went through a breakup and wanted to go and do something. I thought, I could try rowing, it’ll be really chill, I won’t get too involved, and now I’m rowing five times a week! It just looked like it could be really fun, and I wanted to be part of the social side of it. I wanted to get fit. It just looked good.”
Shirley: “I started in my first year, and at first was very noncommittal. I went because everyone tried out rowing and I don’t like giving up on things. In first year I said I’d only do so many times a week, and in second year got put into a higher boat and got really into it. The more you get involved the more you want to be involved.”
W1 also did exceptionally well at the Women’s Eight Head of the River Race on the 11th March, rising 160 places overall, finishing 5th out of the competing Cambridge Colleges. M1 were the highest placed Oxbridge College on the day, and the highest placed Cambridge College since 1989.
Bumps results available on the PCBC website