Gregory Mulholland

I am really not too good about posting regularly. Bumps was last week. I have described Bumps before and linked to the Wikipedia article, but neither of those can describe what it feels like to be there.

Bumps is a set of races on the river Cam. It also consumes your life during those 5 days. This year, I was bank party (on-shore helper) for the Kelly’s boat every day in addition to racing in mine. Each boat marshals upstream from the start about 40 minutes before their race is set to begin. Here is a cool picture Kelly took of the other boats marshaling.

On the way from the marshaling point to the starting area, everyone is allowed 1 or 2 starts, depending on the weather. This year, it was just 1. Here is Kelly’s boat doing a start:

And here is mine:

Then, it is a leisurely row to your respective starting station to wait for the race.

For those of you who have rowed before, Bumps is a combination sprint-head race. Boats are staggered, so you can see the crews seeded behind you, but you can’t see any crews in front (obviously). Rather than being a start staggered by time, it is a start staggered by distance. Boats from the college boat clubs line up along the side of the river in last year’s finish order. A cannon is fired, this marks the 4 minute count down to race time. The cannons are only about a foot and a half long each, but they do pack a punch.

If you are nearby, its more of a feeling than a sound. It definitely adds to the suspense of the event. The 4 minute gun is typically when everything really begins to happen. By this time, your stroke has given you the on-land talk while marshaling. People are thinking about de-kitting (British for taking off all the warm clothes you brought and leaving them with your bank party). Finally (this one is for you, Donny), because you are pulled into land, you can get out and use the facilities (bushes) before your race.

When 1 minute before race time comes, another cannon fires (now see why there are three cannons?). Because the next one will fire at the start, one member of the bank party keeps time. This way, the boat and other bank party members know about when to expect the gun. It has been drilled into me, though, that cannon fire is an inexact science, so it can actually fire about +/- 5 seconds from expected. When 30 seconds has been counted, another bank-partier begins to push the boat off with a 3m long pole. A good pusher keeps the boat straight and moves it into position quickly. This is a very important job. Also at 30s, the counter begins to count aloud.

With 12 seconds to go, crews are in starting position. With 7, everyone squares blades. With 5, the count stops, and the gun could come any time. Then you hear the bang and all hell breaks loose. First, every boats bank parties are running alongside yelling. They usually have whistles to tell their crew about their progress. 1 blast means within 1 length. 2 blasts means within half a length. 3 blasts means nearing overlap. Finally, a bell ringing or just general haphazard blowing of the whistle means “I can’t control my bladder you are so close to bumping the crew in front of you!” or something like that.

Bumps is like a series of 100m races. In a most races, you know how far you are going. You will race 5k or 2k or whatever. In bumps, you row as hard as you can for 100m. If you don’t get bumped or bump the crew in front, you row as hard as you can for another 100m. You do this 25 times until you row over. You can see the crew behind chasing you, but you can never see the one in front. It is one of the most intense psychological games I could imagine.

Kelly and I each rowed four races. Her boat started in the 3rd women’s division. They got bumped on the first and second days, rowed over on the third day, and got bumped on the fourth day. I think everyone in her boat was proud of their performance. They were a fairly novice crew and by the end of the week were rowing quickly.

My boat was bumped all four days and got what is referred to as spoons (as opposed to blades, which is what you get if you bump every day). Although from an object point of view we didn’t do so well, everyone in my boat agreed that we got much faster every day. Much of our crew was fairly inexperienced as well, but we matured greatly as time went on and turned into a quick boat. Below, you can see the bumps charts for this year’s races: men’s and women’s. On the left is the starting position of each of the boats. On the right is the position of every boat after the last day of racing. The zigzag in between is the boat progress on each day.

Women’s:

Men’s:

There is a gallery of my bumps pictures at http://g-amor.smugmug.com/gallery/4423531_KTfEt#259909089 Be sure to check it out.

After the last day of bumps was an exciting night of Boat Club Dinner. I will write a post about that and get the pictures up soon.

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