Your roving reporter was out in the sunshine (yes, sunshine) at Chester today sniffing out Pengwern racing action at the postponed Chester Long Distance Sculls. The book of lame excuses stayed on the shelf and its sister tome “Compelling Reasons” was opened last night. Don’t you just love kids for their timing of visits to A&E; consequently our mixed double had to scratch.
Racing conditions were more than acceptable, however Stew’s forecast of a slight cross wind on the “long straight” was slightly off by a few points on the compass, making it an energy sapping head wind.
Andy W found that checking the heel restraints on his shoes that confirmed they were regulation 70mm failed to notice a more serious issue. Racing onto the aforementioned long straight with head wind (had I mentioned that already?) his right shoe had, as we call it in Engineering circles, a catastrophic malfunction and disintegrated. The reminder of the race was master performance in half-feet-out sculling.
On the whole the Pengwern competitors were pleased with their performances. Pete and Malcolm put in a respectable time but missed out on a medal by dint of age handicap in their combined category.