Press Release

7th December 2008
C2 Triumph for Hemel Hempstead Canoe Club at Sudbury Essex Winter Series Race
For full results see here

On Sunday 7th Dec Mark Petersen, John Bennet and I went along to the third in the Essex series at Sudbury. Having scraped much ice off the windows of the car first thing in the morning I was wondering wether it was going to be another cold fingers day like last week. However once at the start in Sudbury we were blessed with blue skies and no wind.

The start area at the Sudbury race is a wide section of the river stour and there was plenty of space for pre-start fun and games. The Veterans race set off with a little less spark than usual but eventually someone bothered to take over the lead. From there on the usual characters of Tim Middlehurst and Mark Adams domianated the race with supervet John Bennet close behind.

On this occasion Mark Petersen and I finally got our diaries in order and made it to the start to see if our time trial efforts and training had paid off. We lined up with 3 others in the marathon C2 race to do 6 miles whilst there was another 7 or so C2s in the touring class to do 3 miles. So we had a good field to compare ourselves against.

At the start we were caught slightly off guard as another boat started very much on the "b" of bang and with our boat at a slight angle we were left behind them as "Cautious Mark" put in a stability stroke. Then things changed considerably for the better - we rammed them on the arse and put ourselves on the right wash before I called a sprint and we flew away. By the time we emerged from the first portage they were nowhere to be seen and we could concentrate on building a lead and chasing the K1s and K2 ahead.

The weirs on the river gave us two portages on the way out and two on the way back. On both of them the ground was very crisp - a polite way of saying it was still frozen from the night before. The second weir showed how much the river can move and as we got in just below a large weir there was a massive rush of water before the overhanging willow trees threatened above.

The course's others challenges for the C2 were the large number of 90 degree bends along the route. In a K1 or K2 you simply put the rudder over fully and keep paddling, but in the canadian we had to work hard to get the boat to turn quickly enough. At one stage Mark was putting in a harsh rudder stroke whilst I was pulling from the side as much as possible and we still took a while to get around.

One last challenge was the 180 degree turn at the head of the course, just before the finish line. Whilst we had practised a turn through the railway bridge we were shouted at by stewards until we eventually got the message that the small football floating down the river was in fact the final turn bouy and we should put the brakes on smartly.

After 50minutes Mark and I crossed the line with a sprint finish and smiles all round as the second place crew had still to make the final turn ten minutes behind. John Bennet managed a creditable 7th place in the open over 35 category and was only slightly disappointed not to retain his Fastest Supervet crown. After all he had to paddle for well over the hour and complete the full 8 miles unlike Mark and I

This was a great race in beautiful surroundings with pleasant conditions and we were really pleased to have made the effort to make it. It makes a change lining up on the start line with other C2s rather than the time trial mass starts when you only know how you have done when the results go up. Needless to say there were smiles all round at the prize giving.

Next race is the Essex Winter series 4 in Chelmsford in January. Please come along as Hemel Hempstead Club are now ahead of Leighton Buzzard in the Club points list and are 6th overall. . See Races page.

Slasher Preston