13 March 2011

Warrington 5-Feb-11

On a very wet day in Warrington the Northwich Crews were in action at the Head of the Mersey event. Competing over two legs, Northwich Ladies had a great return securing two first places with a Junior and Senior Team. The event is two legs of 2000 metres both up and downstream to create an aggregate time.

The WMasD 4+ crew  of Cox Jonty Moore, Bow Carolyn Macritchie, 2 Elaine Hemsted, 3 Carole Riddell, Stroke Clare Briegal secured their first place by an aggregate time of 1 minute 36 seconds. This senior team of ladies has been racing together since the autumn at the Agecroft Head and remains unbeaten in the North West.  MasD is an average age of 50 or more.

The W.J15A.4x+ Junior Ladies of Cox Libby Weltman, Kate Meehan Stroke, Ash Hudson, Beth Chaplin and Sam Over achieved an aggregate time of 15 minutes 18 seconds, securing their first place by almost a minute over the second placed Runcorn Crew.

Ian Adamson

Hampton Schools 5-Feb-11

The prestigious Hampton Schools Head took place over the weekend with two of our local rowers combining. Ed Grisedale (Northwich), Tom Ford (Grange school) winning Gold in the J18 2x at this major event on the rowing calendar.

To add further glory and medals, the local boys teamed up with Runcorn’s Alistair Young and George Patrick and were narrowly pipped in the Quad, winning very notable Silver. They lost out to the Leander crew by just 0.2 sec!

Ian Adamson 
 

Learn to Row

‘We began rowing last summer as participants on the 2010 Learn to Row course. In
September, we became members of Northwich RC and joined the Women's novice crew
during the autumn. As part of the winter training, we attended Ergo training
with the Senior Women. Prior to rowing we both kept fairly active and this
definitely helped rowing on the indoor rowers. Having demonstrated a good level
of fitness we were encouraged by the senior women to enter the National Indoor
Rowing Championships on the 31st January, despite having done little specific
training. We were keen to set a baseline time so that we had a goal to work at
over the coming 12 months and increased our training in the fortnight leading up
to the event.

When race day finally came around we arrived at the Manchester Velodrome knowing
little about how the event would run, so we were quite surprised to see a
commentator and a big screen with our names on! Despite rowing in different
categories we raced next to each other with 12 other contestants.


Kerry completed her race in a time of 8:25.7 earning her a silver medal whilst
Vicky completed her race in 7:50.9 earning a bronze medal. Having had our
official photographs and recovering from the race itself it dawned on us how
much we had achieved in such a short space of time and although we both came of
the rower saying 'never again' already we are thinking ahead to next year in the
hope that we can win even more medals and set even better times.

We were overwhelmed by the encouragement and support that we received from other
members of the club and friends / family and would definitely encourage anyone
thinking about taking up rowing to come and join us at Northwich’

Vicky Cheshire and Kerry Clarke