After a very early alarm call (04:15 a.m.) we headed off to Caversham to meet with Matt and Mel and the boat, as we were clearing Reading they were setting up for the Reading half marathon.
The forecast was good and in no time at all we were parked near the Wharf in Devizes, as we collected our race number the girls joined the queue for bacon sandwiches (for them!) and Matt and Lee put in on the slipway.
We drifted down to the start and were away. We were pleased to see less weed than last Saturday and made good time down the first pound, we had a tussle with some fast K2s just below Pewsey and ended up tangled with the foliage, but we were soon off again, going through Pewsey too quickly to stop for the support crew.
We made steady progress but it felt noticiably harder than the run we did last weekend on the same course to Newbury, Lee had a few problems in the pitch black of the Bruce's Tunnel, Matt called time and that got Lee back into the flow of things and we cleared the tunnel without a swim.
Just below Hungerford Lock we had good cheers from Sandra and Simon Jeffs who had kindly driven from Marlow to support us and Simon's NELO boat which is being used by another team.
We met up with some good crews along the way, Owen and Dan from Reading went screaming past us with a K1 hanging on their wash.
Finally we reached a section we knew just 3 miles to Newbury, we were keeping pace with a junior K2 it transpired were from Basingstoke CC and we kept with them till the last 500 yards. We crossed the line with a time of 5 hours and 44 minutes some 16 minutes faster than out time last weekend and in 7th place in the Vets!
We were delighted with the time and another great effort from Melissa and Debbie, well done girls.
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