Sean Bowden

The start of the season in early September with the new squad now seems a long time ago. Gone is the sunny and warm weather, nice water to row on every day and a bunch of new faces all looking forward to the adventure ahead.

Now we have the gritty reality of tough conditions on the river and the steely focused and hardened look of guys on a mission. It’s still good fun of course, but everyone knows that every stroke matters and that the clock is ticking, so there is little room for error. Time is a precious commodity that seems to gain in value the nearer you get to Boat Race day.

Training for the Boat Race is always hard. The 4¼ mile course and strong opposition demand the utmost respect, so the physical preparation of the rowers reflects their need to endure a long fight and be able to produce the same accurate and powerful strokes over the full distance, with their fiercest rival next to them trying to make their best efforts count for nothing.

In a race with such history, and with little left for the loser to pick over, everyone knows what is at stake. So, each year the teams reassemble and start this journey again looking to build new crews from the next batch of hopefuls and battlehardened veterans. Form is not always easy to judge, so often the crews only really get the full measure of each other after the umpire drops their flag. The rowers need to be ready for that moment and perhaps more ready for that than anything life has so far dealt them.

The new squad assemble well before the academic year starts and are very quickly thrown into a programme of high-volume training and continual assessment. Building fitness is a big part of this, but most often the bigger challenges lie in the need to develop the synchronicity and uniformity of technical execution demanded of the sport at this high level.

This year we have enjoyed the arrival of several good rowers from a range of programmes which has brought to the team a lot of energy and experience but also a good challenge to meld these different styles into the high functioning whole required.

This year we’ve not been helped by the weather, with the river in flood almost every day, or so it seems. Whilst the race sometimes must be won in atrocious conditions on the Tideway, too much training on bad water has a cost on the technical development of the rowers. The Boat Race is, after all, about challenge and working as well as you can with what you have. Difficulty can of course be a positive and makes the rowers dig that bit deeper in training and commit that bit more of themselves to the boat and the team to see the job done.

It is mentally testing too with the rowers having to carry that extra burden of immediate reward for their efforts not always being forthcoming. Whilst the coaches tend to be anxious by nature as they look at every angle and try to figure out the next move, rowers tend to be a far more indefatigable bunch, and I’m sure this Oxford crew will put any difficulties aside and relish the chance the race presents.