Monday, April 30, 2012

Another Solid Weekend

Hi guys! The four of us had another good weekend of training and fundraising. The training is going really well. There seems to be so much to do and every day is one less. Our entry has been sent off to the HRR office and we are just waiting to hear back. Last time we sent off an entry we were wondering why they asked for everybody's weights only to find out that everyone weighs in before racing starts. Apparently there is a bit of a correlation between the heavier crews and winning at Henley. Maybe we should start eating some pies...

We had our third Erg-a-thon on Saturday.The spell of awesome weather has finally come to an end, and it was noticeable in that we didn't get as many donations from the people walking by. Everyone seemed more interested in walking straight past us. What we didn't appreciate were the crazy guys and the ones that yelled abuse at us. However, we kept up the good work and still managed to raise another $900 which is great!

We started off with not that many people around, but Henry ended up erging in the middle of the hikoi which started down at Britomart. Luckily for us, Joe has a busking permit which allows us to do our erg-a-thons around town as we had Britomart security ask us to cease all activity.



A big thanks to Don Rowlands who came down to say hi and to Wynni, Greg and Abbi for coming down and helping us. With their help we managed to get some money from David Shearer. 





Also, please note that the film being shown at the West End Movie Night has changed from Pirates! Band of Misfits to the new Avengers movie. I can't wait to see it. 

Not only that but the planning for the Great West End Quiz night is coming along well. The date chosen is Friday 18th of May from 6:30pm. We would love to see you there. There will be a page which has the details on it.

Friday, April 27, 2012

Best Wishes and Thanks

Day by day we are getting closer to the Regatta start. Today is our day off which everyone was looking forward to by the crew as the training over the past week has been very good. We had some great coaching which resulted in us picking up some good speed. Now the crew is amping up for a weekend with some longer racing pieces and an erg-a-thon in town.

Also we have the date for the Great West End Quiz Night - 18th of May. We will keep updating as we get everything sorted out.

We also wish the boys in the New Zealand crews that leave today all the best for the first World Cup Regatta in Serbia. Two of the crews are going  for Olympic spots and are trying to add to the biggest team in New Zealand's history.

We would like to thank the guys over at Gym & Tonic for helping us out with fundraising by putting up some notices around Mt Eden Swimming pool. We are loving their support and recommend anyone to go there and try it out. Thanks Patrice and the crew!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Next Fundraiser

Hi all! As you can see time is ticking and everyday our training is gearing toward better performance. Obviously our off water efforts are also important to our campaign, and so far we have raised $3000 which has our accommodation covered, so now we just need to eat!

Our next Erg-a-thon event is scheduled for Saturday the 28th of April from 11am to 3pm across the road from the Britomart transport station. We will once again be slogging it out for 50 minutes in front of the public and putting a face to the West End Rowing Club. We will have our signs up and be an active presence throughout the day.




We are the green dot on the map and hope to see you there.


                         
View Larger Map

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Lessons Learned

So this post is going to be a bit of a background for us.

We are four guys from West End Rowing Club, based out in Avondale in Auckland, New Zealand. Brad, Henry and Joe were in the Senior 4x which won Gold at the New Zealand National Championships in February this year. After a successful season like that, you start to ask yourself what is next. Then Brad, Henry and myself began to toss around the idea of going to the Henley Royal Regatta.

The three of us were in the last West End crew to go over. We raced in the Thames Challenge Cup. A race for Club level 8+s. West End had won the event at the NZ Nationals and set a new best time as well so we thought that we would have a good shot at it. We asked the guys and when they indicated their interest, we started to get the ball rolling on organising everything.

After putting together a training program, we got into the groove of training, however it wasn't as cohesive as was planned. But we made the most out of our opportunities. We all learned a lot over the campaign, especially when it came to fundraising. I hadn't really done a lot of fundraising personally over the years and so it was a new challenge. We ended up doing a 12 hour and 6 hour Erg-a-thon in town. It was a great way for us to raise money as we had to still be training, but at the same time the boys were on the street meeting people and talking about the Club and Henley and our crew. We also had two quiz nights held at the Club and these were great fun and a great way for us to introduce the crew to the Club and its members. Not only that, but then we also received funding from various sponsors that one of our crew managed to organise. These sponsors were a massive help.

We realised that the funding was pretty crucial, not only in terms of having money for accommodation, but as a good team building exercise. Through each of these events, we were learning to co-operate with each other out of the boat and building Club spirit. This was one of my most memorable seasons, purely because we got to do so many cool things together.

The training wasn't ideal last time as a lot of people had other commitments during the training so we often had to resort to asking people to fill in all the time. I think we had something like 18 or so people fill in, a few of them girls. The other problem is that with more people, time constraints became a factor of the training, so we were limited in the amount of preparation that we could do. In the end it didn't work out too badly, but it could have been better.

Once we were finally over there and had progressed through the first few races, every day became a little more cut throat as the men were separated from the boys. The racing through the week went well with us progressing each time, although there was a rather close one on the second day. Come the final day, it was strange that the boat tent seemed almost like a ghost town after it being bursting with life at the beginning of the competition. We went out with everything that we had and we were beaten by a better crew on the day.

But that didn't detract from the event in the slightest. We had travelled from the other side of the world to pit ourselves against crews from America, England and Ireland and come up trumps all except the one time. Even now when I look back, it was an incredible journey and one that I will always remember. Winning at Henley is extremely hard and the few that do win deserve their praise, however there is also a lot of honour in becoming a Henley Finalist. And I am glad that I can call myself that.

This time it will change.

Monday, April 23, 2012

Our first post!

Hi all and welcome to the West End Rowing Club blog for the Henley crew for 2012.

Over the next two months we will be putting up posts of what we are up to and the events that we are doing for fundraising plus you will get to meet each member of the crew.