GCBC ERGATHON SUCCESS!!!
Report
On Monday 16th January GCBC started its absolutely momentous task of erging (and cycling for coxes) 2012km in under 24 hours in order to buy new blades for the women and a men's scull.
The system was basic: split the day up into 48 half-hour slots. Get 8 ergs and 1 bike. Find GCBC members to occupy said ergs and bike for said slots and ask them to travel 6km each whilst on them. It should be simple...And it was! Thanks to the great commitment and enthusiasm of everyone in the club a HUGE number of people signed up to help us in our efforts. We had fifty five people participating on the day, more than I ever expected, and their dedication to getting the job done was extraordinary!
The day started off relatively smoothly. Our problem of only having seven ergs has kindly been solved by Pembroke College Boat Club (many thanks to you) who had lent us one free of charge for our event. We spent an hour and a half setting up and cleaning the ergs in the Old Kitchens whilst quelling a minor panic concerning the turbo trainer and bike, which simply were not going together, before 12pm rolled round and it all kicked off.As soon as it started, the km's started mounting up and up and up and nothing could stop them. The wee hours of the morning, which according to the schedule had looked like it would be the slow point of the day, proved no problem to the dedicated ergers and coxes who simply ploughed right through.
And from 6am GCBC were heading for the finish line and we knew it! By 0930 on Tuesday we had hit our initial taget of 2012km, but still nothing was going to stop us and we kept pushing on to see just how far we could take it.Massive power got put down in the last half hour as those left headed home in style. By 12pm Tuesday we had completed 2303km as a club, a huge achievement and one which I think truely reflects the enthusiasm and great attitude of the club right now.
I want to congratulate and thank everyone involved, it could not have been done without any of you. Special mentions go to Watkins for hitting his 100km target (and potentially surrendering the functioning of his hands for the next couple of days in the process), to Marshy for beating Joni, to Joni for his mega attempt at preventing Marshy beating him, to Ella for beating Tom (although in fair play, we should take a bad back into account), to Rachel Coy for being a machine on the night shift, to Hannah who managed to look happy in EVERY SINGLE PHOTO and to Calum for setting up the great tracking system. Thanks go out to Conferencing for helping us out with the room, College for allowing it to happen, PCBC for the erg and the Wisemans for the kind use of their turbo trainer. Any other amazing acheivements I missed feel free to add them in comments below!I would also like to thank on behalf of GCBC everyone who has so generously donated to this cause so far. The amount we have raised in just the past couple of days has been extraordinary and we are very grateful for your support.
Best Wishes,
Ellie Stone
Photos
Thanks to Marshy and Ali for these photos! Head over to https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150529639084855.394287.507234854&type=3&l=cebb9a8ff9 for Marshy's album.
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Results
A complete listing of the participants and their distances can be found at 2012km Ergathon.xlsx. We felt Watkins deserved special mention for his effort!
Tracking System
The tracking system used to record distances and to display the current proress was written by Calum and has been released along with some other bespoke tools used by GCBC under an open source license. Check it out at https://github.com/CalumJEadie/gcbc-tools.
