World champs 3 - Wooooooooooooooooooooooo!

They did it! Grainger and Watkins did it! It really was a great race to watch - domination from the start and a perfect end to the 2010 World Champs.

Here are a load of photos blatently stolen from Peter Spurrier's brilliant photo album. I feel a bit bad for essentially pinching them, but his photos really are excellent. (All of his photos are amazing: have a look at them at http://www.intersport-images.com/gallery-list. There's even one of me! :-D

EDIT: I hope he doesn't sue me.... :-S

HIGH FIVE! High five for being WORLD CHAMPIONS! High five for making it look EASY!

Medals. Oh yes.

Here's a bunch of other ones I like too.

Frida Svensson jumping for joy, literally. 

Here's a couple of the women's pair, because I love the W2-, as demonstrated yesterday.

SHIIIIIIIIINNNNYYYYY!

Also, the lightweight men's 4- really deserve a mention, winning gold by 0.07s.

I  imagine they're all simultaneously shouting "FUCK YEAH!!!!!".

The last word has to be with Alan Campbell though, with his fucking outstanding sunglasses (and his barely-being-able-to-stand-up post race).

Good man.

World champs 2 (or "here's a bunch of videos for you")

Flipping heck. Another 50m of lake and Svensson would have been in serious trouble. Oooooo. I love tight racing. OooooooOOOOOooooo. I think I still enjoyed last year's W1x final more though (where Kath Grainger got the silver  - she did a similar thing to Svensson but was overturned in the last 500m. She just jumped in the 1x for that season and ended up with a silver at the World Champs.... what an athlete.)

Woo! Yay!

Watching this I remembered this race, which pretty much left me speechless.



No one should win an Olympic final that easily. No one.

There's also this. If Frida Svensson goes out of the start like a train, then have a look at what this French pair do:



Mental French-ists!  MEEEENNNTTAAALLLL.

After the men's 2- race today no doubt they'll be lots of speculation over the future of Hodge and Reed. Will Jurgen keep them in the pair or move 'em back into the 4-? OOOooooo.

Rank	Boat	500 m	1000 m	1500 m	Finish	Lane
1	NZL	1:37.51  (3)	3:17.79  (2)	4:56.18  (2)	6:30.16	3
2	GBR	1:36.96  (1)	3:17.48  (1)	4:55.55  (1)	6:30.48	5

Anyway, I must go to bed. The best is yet to come with the W2x tomorrow....

World champs - A legend is born

I really need to do some work but I just got massively excited by all the action in NZ so just had to write something..

GBR W2-  SILVER!!!

Now, I must admit I was really really ecstatic watching this race because I know the two girls in the boat (casual name drop right there...) I mean, even though I knew the result before I watched the race, I still felt the need to swear profusely at the screen.

This is not an exaggeration. I was that excited :-)

Watch it here. Great stuff! Huge congratulations to the pair of them.

Frida Svensson: Epicness on a plate

OK, I'll update this when I've watched the race (it's not up yet) but this 5'8" Swede has overturned the great Ekaterina Karsten to take the women's single title. This is a SERIOUSLY big deal. It's apparently the second race that Karsten has lost in seven years.

I was seriously impressed with her in the semi - she went out like a goddam TRAIN and I respect that. I mean, semifinals are pretty much the most savage races of the regatta (if you don't come in the top 3, you have zero chance of making the final and getting to race for medals you see...) and she made it look like everyone else was pootling out the blocks. Linkage here. Really worth watching for some fucking hard-as-nails racing.

Wow. Just wow at that woman.

The wonders of tea

Sorry for not posting for a little while, I've been having a slight work crisis... But anyway, enough self-pity! Here is a story that has a very important moral at the end of it, so pay attention.

This is for everyone who's ever had one of those days.

Lecture fail

Work fail

Tesco value toasters only have three settings: "Burn", "Cremate" and "Spontaneously combust". I think Tesco value toasters pretty much define the phrase "false economy".

Stupid carrots. Why don't they taste nice?

I seem to be magnetically attracted to wet floor signs. I always walk into them.
Even though they're fucking BRIGHT YELLOW.

Spatial awareness fail.

FUCKING STICKY UP ROCKS. I HATE YOU.

Equipment fail.
This actually really fucked me off. I mean, you don't buy this for it to only last 8 months. Especially when in 5 of those months it never got used anyway on account of it being SUMMER. Fucking cateye Wiggle rage. I have had to emergency buy a head-torch while Wiggle sorts my stupid light out, so on the plus I do now have a kick ass head-torch. Even if I did have to spend money I don't have on said head-torch so I can actually get home from the department without dying. I blinded some pedestrians with it accidentally on the way home too. I do look a bit stupid wearing it too BUT IT'S A HEAD-TORCH and head-torches are awesome. Mainly because I can pretend I'm exploring a subterranean crystal cave or long lost tomb and I'm not just wearing it so I don't get hit by a car. But cateye bike light rage. RAAAAGGEE.

EDIT Wiggle have since sorted it and I now have a new one (their customer service is pretty bang on actually...)

Whrrrrrrruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrghhhhh!
Why am I always wearing a fucking white hoody when this happens ay?

:-)

Will do something more wordy + ranty + maybe funny next time. If fortran hasn't got the better of me...

EDIT: OK, either a cup of tea or a weights session. That'll make everything better. Squats always make everything better.

I'm also going to shamelessly point you in the direction of the "Homeless drawings" tab at the top of the page, in case you've not found it already. (I've just looked back over them and thought "Fuck me, these have been touched by the crazy fairy a bit haven't they?" But meh. I like chasing stuff.)

EDIT EDIT: Watch this. It is beautiful rowing. BEAUTIFUL.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Edited to add more swears. There was nowhere near enough originally. Sorry.

Why you should look after your coach

Let me recall a conversation I had with my coach the other day at weights.

So, to set the scene, I had stopped swearing at the weights for enough time to wonder over to Peter as he sat on his throne (a.k.a. the static pec machine thing that no one uses) from where he distributes his pearls of wisdom. Namely "More weight!" or for me "Less weight!" or "Use your bloody glutes!". He looked a little zoned out, to say the least.

There was some mild scolding for not telling me before so I could've bought him a muller rice or something (how amazing are muller rice???). We then had a nice conversation about how awesome homemade rice pudding was before I drifted off to do more squats.

The sad thing is that Peter's now introduced a swear jar for the gym, so I am going to be either (a) very poor very quickly or (b) will get *really* inventive with the word "badger". It's part of his plan to do the movember thing with the Cambridge WCS group, though it seems a little unfair to me as the guys just have to put in less effort than usual by not shaving while I have to shell out a load of £££ because I like swearing more than everyone else put together.  VERY UNFAIR. It does however promise to be a rather amusing month:

The hulk hogan

The handlebar. He'll have to speak with an accent for this one I think

The grizzily. Probability of getting arrested for something increases exponentially with time.
EDIT I've also just noticed he's now got one arm a lot shorter than the other. This will probably not happen if he grows a beard. Probably. 

 But anyway, the lesson of the day: look after your coaches, people. Unless they demand money out of you for swearing. Rage.

***Digression***

So, I've had a pretty crappy weekend (cue sad violins). Basically I've just started my Part III project (title:Pre-mainsequence stellar evolution in population synthesis and N-body models" Oh yeah.) and desperately want to do a good job of it, so I spent the weekend learning Fortran.  I was initially naively full of enthusiasm and energy (though the energy was provided by coffee) and attacked it with gusto.

I am not a programming genius.

Nothing like grim realisation!

Click for bigger-er. And yes, I have a picture of Kath Grainger as my background. Do you really find that surprising? This photo is a couple of strokes from the end of the 2003 W2- World Champs final (spoiler - they won). It's easily my favourite race ever (you'll have to watch it to see why - watch it here). FUCKING EPIC. Hero worship? YES. I am sooooo looking forward to her 2x in this year's World Champs.

But I should probably stop procrastinating and actually do some work now :-(

Stuff that I'm sure only I do

This post could also be entitled  "How to get funny looks from strangers" or "Reasons why I'm single" :->
Here is an insight into the life of Anna Railton.

Who is completely not crazy.

Honest.

Watching Masterchef

 OK, so not completely out of the ordinary. However, whenever I do, I always seem to be eating something so incredibly un-gourmet it's ridiculous, e.g. a mug of custard (made from Bird's powder), or tuna from a can or a bowl of plain rice because I'd already eaten what accompanied it by the time the rice had cooked.

I am never going to make pancetta foam. Mainly because

{time to make pancetta foam} << {time for my brain to register the presense of bacon and OM NOM NOM NOM NOM}

Ditto with the elaborate puddings - all their constituent ingredients would have been eaten long before anything resembling the recipe could be constructed.

New maltloaf flavour excitement

OK, this is a little embarrassing. No one should get as excited as I did when I first saw this:

New packaging is crap though. Mainly because it doesn't match my cycling jacket now. Bastards.

They can levitate you know.

Quickly followed by...

Bearing in mind that I was wearing (used) rowing kit at the time, the other customers of the Ely Tesco must have had their fingers poised over the "call" button on their phone with the number to the nearest mental institution pre-dialled as I ran round the store almost crying with joy clasping the said baked product close to me.

Obligatory new maltloaf ranking:

Fruit loaf < Banana loaf < Cinnamon and raisin loaf < Maltloaf < Large maltloaf < 50% extra free large maltloaf*

*Have you seen these? They are huuugggggee.

So it wasn't even that good. Certainly not worth getting arrested for breaching the peace over. UPSETTING. Worth trying though.

Crying over split milk

I do this. I am not ashamed. Milk is the elixir of life. Without it there is no porridge, no coffee, no rice pudding NO ANYTHING GOOD.

Buying stuff in powers of 2

I attribute this to spending too much time in the maths department. Essentially, I only really feel comfortable buying stuff if it is a power of 2, i.e. if I wanted a cucumber or multiple cucumbers, I would buy one cucumber, two cucumbers, four cucumbers, eight cucumbers etc. Probably not 16 cucumbers because that is a lot of cucumbers.

Things get tricky if there are 3 for 2 offers. Three is sort of alright, and nine is fine as it's square. But not six. Six can go an die in a fire. It's a horrible number. A good way round this is if there are different flavours of stuff, I can get two of one kind and one of another.

Fucking hell. I've just read that through and realised how incredibly autistic I sound. But I suppose normal people don't do maths degrees. They certainly don't also walk round a city with tea in a mug with equations on it either because they want to and because they can. Not that I've ever done that. Obviously.

Anyway, this is why I usually end up massively overbuying food and why shopping in Sainsury's is like a weights session with my 8 cans of soup, 8 cans of chopped tomatos and 16 pints of milk.

Talking to the Master

For those who don't know, each college in Cambridge has its own Master who is someone whose had a long and distinguished career in something or other. The Master of Pembroke is a former head of MI6 and happens to quite like rowers. This is how I found myself in this position the other morning:

I like to wear slippers in the library and I was on the way to the library. Hence the slippers.

So that's how I ended up talking about rowing to a former intellegence chief while carrying purple fluffy slippers. I am fairly certain this has never happened to anyone in the history of the world ever.

I am now going to attempt to erase this event from my memory.

~~~~~*****Mind bleach*****~~~~~

Better.

Cycling round Ely as dawn breaks listening to Eminem's W.T.P.

Is it bad that I think some of Eminem's stuff is really clever? Probably.

But this is mainly because this is incredibly specific. I bet you've never done October trials wearing BB leggings, your college one piece and this either.

WIN!

Either that or The Prodigy (They call me Spitfire!!!! Oh yes they do!). Or Tallis. Or Charlie Parker. Or Sinéad O'Connor, who is incidentally the only folk-type singer I can bare to listen to. I went to the Cambridge Folk Festival this summer and it was all fine until they opened their mouths and started singing. 

I don't really like banjos either.

For some reason as soon as they do this, all enjoyment is completely sucked out of the music like some sort of  harmonic black hole. Once you go over the harmonic black hole event horizon you will form such an incalculably deep loathing of the artist that you will not ever be able to dispell it, even if they stop singing, produce a ukelele and play the Baby Elephant Walk on it while doing a handstand.

As a result of this, for most of the folk festival I could be found in the club tent listening to small timers playing the hurdy gurdy. Now that's an instrument and a half.

But yes, my mp3 player is a little schizophrenic to say the least. I see nothing wrong with listening to Pendulum (Immersion was the official sound track to this year's October trials - which is funny because it was In Silico the year before) then switching to Bach's "The Art of Fugue" without pausing for breath (which is so awesome it cannot be put into words. Contrapunctus 9 pretty much always makes me cry). 

But now you all think I'm some sort of music-y pretentious prat. But whatever.

Bach = max {Human achievement}

Fraid so medical science, NASA space program, Millau viaduct. You just got owned by a guy with a harpsichord from the 18th century.

 __________________________________________________________________________________

EDIT: OK, so in reply to this:

Don't get me wrong, I love the bridges. Heck, I'm the daughter of an engineer!

Certainly, the Millau viaduct is nothing short of majestic (and it's a bit mental! Serious kudos to the french for going "Yeahhhh. Fuckit. Let's build a bridge 300m high. Because we are french and we can."). I'll be in so much awe when they manage to span the Bering Strait too. But a "few old tunes"? At the end of the day, a bridge just gets you from one place to another but Bach can repair holes in your soul. IN YOUR SOUL.


And I am very opinionated and am not going to budge on this :-)