LVRC successfully runs it first Corporate day

On Thursday 1st August the club hosted 12 members of staff from Amey, a large UK infrastructure organisation, as they took part in a team building day.

Their IT dept had been persuaded to take part in the team building day at the rowing club, by one of their colleagues Jo Harrison, who is a club member.

The club’s usual Learn to Row programme takes place over 2 weeks with sessions of 2 hours at a time, gently building skills and confidence. The Amey employees were taken from raw recruit, to race ready over the course of 1 day!

With the day dawning fine, clear and windless a team of 8 club members arrived to prepare for our first ever team building day. Our first thought was, thank goodness the dock is behaving itself today. Then as candidates arrived had tea/coffee and found their way around, the day got started.

The candidates were split into groups, half in the gym on ergos and half on the water, swapping halfway through the morning.
We broke for a very nice lunch courtesy of M&S and a chat with everyone, who seemed to still be enjoying the experience.
The challenge for the end of the day was to row on the ergos for 5 minutes and then take part in a mini regatta in our matched coxed Explore quads.

Everyone excelled themselves on the rowing machines, had a rest and then got into boats for their race.
They had all learned the basics of the rowing stroke and had practised the racing start instruction of “attention – GO”. The course was 300 Mtrs just a little longer than the grey ship, it was competitive, fast and furious with dramas, as crabs were caught and oars recovered. But in true rowing tradition- there was only one winner!!!!

Our club president, Neil Meadows, had come along to present medals to the winning crew and then everyone had a celebratory orange juice.
The feed back from the staff members was very positive, with a couple of pointers as to how we could improve on the experience. For a first time venture by the club, into this type of event we have learned a lot and look forward to hosting more.

A big thankyou to all helpers who gave up their time and gave of their experience to make it the success it was.