Zoe de Toledo - cox, Olympic silver medalist, World Champion, medic, mince pie expert

Ep 1. In the very first interview of the podcast, I'm joined by the fabulous coxswain, Zoe de Toledo - super-cox, Olympic silver medalist, World Champion, Boat Race survivor, medical student, coxing educator and mince pie connoisseur. She's someone I've wanted to meet for years, and she totally lived up to expectations.

We had a great chat about all things rowing and coxing, and in under an hour managed to pack in Zoe's thoughts on:

• Passing the time in lockdown
• How coxing helps her as a doctor
• Her career progression as a cox
• Why coxing is about more than just being small and shouty
• The infamous Boat Race 2012
• The Rio Olympics and crew cohesion
• The mystery of the perfect crew
• Mince pies and the abominable love child of Father Christmas and Percy Pig

If you're interested in learning more about coxing from Zoe, check out Chattercox - she's also on Twitter and Instagram at @chattercox1.

For Zoe's in-depth investigations into the best mince pies on the market, head to @themincepiereport on Instagram.

If you enjoyed this interview and would like to hear more, please, please subscribe on any of the podcast apps, and if you're an Apple user and fancy leaving me a nice review, that would be amazing!

Now, then. My fourth episode is going to be an Ask Me Anything show - your chance to ask me anything you like, from the deep and serious to the silly and trivial. Pop your question on social media (I'm @girlontheriver on all channels) or email me at girlontheriverpodcast@gmail.com. You can even record your question on your phone and mail me the sound file to girlontheriverpodcast@gmail.com and I might play it on the show.

If you fancy getting hold of episodes a day early and accessing some fab bonus content such as extra episodes,  behind-the-scenes videos and invitations to join me in Zoom workouts, check out my Patreon scheme.

You can find my blog at Girl on the River.

Huge thanks to Aaron of Broken Oars Podcast (another great rowing podcast which you should totally check out) for the beautiful music, and to Illya Derigs for the brilliant artwork. Also to Bethan and Mike of Low Key Audio for mentoring me from complete novice to published podcaster.

Transcript

Patricia Carswell: 0:03

Hello and welcome to Girl on the River, the Podcast, where each week I'll be talking to people from all around the rowing and sporting world about anything and everything to do with rowing. I'll be asking Olympians about the secrets of their success. Atlantic rowers about how they stayed alive and campaigners about what fires them up. I'll also be talking to sleep experts, dietitians and physios about staying healthy, and consulting rowing gurus on the best technique. Today, my guest is a cox who has won a gold medal at the World Championships and a silver medal at the Olympics, alongside multiple successes at the British champs and at Henley. She's now in her final year as a medical student and provides coxing education through her enterprise Chattercox. She is, of course, the fabulous Zoe de Toledo. In our interview, Zoe tells me about her coxing experiences and how they've helped her as a doctor and why coxing is about more than just being small and shouty. She talks about the infamous Boat Race of 2012, happier times at the Rio Olympics, and the importance of crew cohesion. She also tells us about the abominable love child of Percy Pig and Father Christmas. Zoe, welcome to the podcast.

Zoe de Toledo: 1:32

Thank you for having me - I'm very excited to be here.

Patricia Carswell: 1:34

Well, I'm particularly excited because we've never actually met - in all the years that we've been corresponding over Twitter, we've never managed to meet. And we got so close a few years ago, when we were at the Vets' Head and you were boating in front of me. And I was standing literally right behind you and I was just, I was overcome by kind of fangirl shyness and I didn't say anything. And then I was like, Oh, no, I wish I'd said hello.

Zoe de Toledo: 2:01

I'm so sad you didn't, that would have been so nice. But next time.

Patricia Carswell: 2:05

There will be a next time - tell me there'll be a next time!

Zoe de Toledo: 2:08

Eventually we'll leave the house!

Patricia Carswell: 2:11

So tell me, how your lockdown has been?

Zoe de Toledo: 2:15

It hasn't really been very locked down. Well, it's gone through phases, I suppose. So it started... when it all kicked off, basically, the medical school completely shut down for four months, no online teaching, no nothing, just you know, we'll pick up where we left off when we can. And actually immediately, almost within a couple of days, I think I got a cough. So my husband Alex, and I decided, you know, we didn't really know much about it at the time. But we decided not to be on the safe side, obviously, he was still working in the hospital, so to be on the safe side we needed to both isolate. So we did that. And we actually had a really fun 10 days, two weeks, you know, we just did a lot of silly things, played a lot of board games and had a lot of themed days. So you know, we had to, for example, a Mars themed day where we watch the Martian the film, and we baked potatoes because that's what he eats in the film. And we played a game called Terraforming Mars, which is a big board game where you're colonising Mars and stuff. And we did various themed days, which were quite entertaining. But obviously, life had to go back to normal. And then Alex went back to work. Obviously, he is a trauma orthopaedic surgeon, but he actually volunteered to be deployed over into the ICU for a while because he has some ICU experience. And I felt like I couldn't really sit at home and do nothing. So eventually, I managed to get a ... what started as a volunteer position ended up being paid, and working at the hospital here in Oxford, doing staff testing for COVID. So testing asymptomatic stuff for COVID, which I'm actually still doing now, which is really nice, packing it in around my studies. And then July time, we picked up where we left off with medical school. We did, we kind of crammed the end of what was my penultimate year, they crammed it together to finish it as quickly as possible. Now I'm in final year and they've had to adapt and cram a few things in and then have moved our finals back a couple of months to try and accommodate some of the time lost, but it's just going to, I think, be a bit of a furious one. So in a way, not much has changed because I'm still going out, I'm still going to my placements and things like that. But I think the difficult thing is, you know, not getting much opportunity to see family. But I think I'm pretty lucky really, you know, I have good space here. I have a garden, you know, I live with someone. I see people every day when I leave the house. I have opportunities to exercise and I think I've been quite fortunate really, in the grand scheme of things.

Patricia Carswell: 4:48

Well, yeah, it's definitely a time to kind of count your blessings, isn't it? If you've got any you've got to hold on to them, and I think it's the only way to get through, is look on the positive side of it. So with your medicine degree you're coming to the end of it at the end of this year, what happens then? Do you know what you're going to be doing next?

Zoe de Toledo: 5:06

So I'll look to... I'll do two years of foundation training, possibly three, depending on how things go and how things work with with Alex as well. And the first two years, you do are fairly general and then you start looking at applying for specialist training. I'm hoping to stay here in Oxford, obviously, because Alex's job is here, but that is yet to be decided by the powers that be. And then I have a few things. Excuse me, I have a few things that I'm interested in, but I haven't really quite settled on what I want to do yet. So I'm just trying to take the opportunities in the last bit of medical school and, you know, in the first couple of years of my career to settle on what it is that I want to apply for, specialties wise

Patricia Carswell: 5:52

Do you think your coxing skills will come in useful? Do you think there's a there are transferable skills that you're bringing over?

Zoe de Toledo: 6:01

Yeah, I think one of the biggest ones is in communication, and communicating within a team particularly. And I see, you know, really good examples of this in the hospital and really bad examples of this. And actually, a few years, it might, it might have been my first year in the senior team, actually, Tom Evans, who was both a doctor and a rowing coach, did a really interesting talk with us about the parallels between medicine and rowing. And a lot of it was about communication and having a shared language, and kind of having the same goals and those kinds of things, which was really interesting. And I think it's something that's really stayed with me, because I do see it all the time, within our, within my practice day to day now. And I think, you know, being able to talk to people is massive, and knowing how to communicate with people who are, you know, particularly unwell, in pain, struggling... there are definitely parallels with trying to communicate with people who are six minutes into a lung busting race, and they can't really think properly anymore. I think there is something to be said for those skills that I gained on the water, to how you take that into how you're communicating with people now. So I think that's probably the biggest one. And then obviously, the other, perhaps more obvious one is generally just being able to cope with pressure. And I think that, you know, you can learn that in lots of different walks of life. But I think I learned that from rowing, and how to stay calm and stay logical when you feel under pressure, which is obviously hugely important.

Patricia Carswell: 7:42

Yeah, cuz then when you're coxing a race, when things go wrong, which they will, and unexpected things happen, you've just got to have that poker face, haven't you? You've just not got to let the crew know what's going through your mind.

Zoe de Toledo: 7:56

Yeah, no, absolutely. And you've got to work out how best to assimilate information and get that across to people. And even under those really high pressure situations, and just generally, you know, make a decision... make them

Patricia Carswell: 8:09

I can see that would be really important as a doctor because what you want when you're when you're ill, what you want in your doctor is someone who's completely in control, completely calm, just feels like they know what they're doing. And if everything's kind of going off around you, that's the one kind of calm centre that you want to be there. And that's something that you have learned and learned and learned over the years. So it must just, you must be able to sort of click into that.

Zoe de Toledo: 8:38

Yeah, I think I mean, I hope so. I think so. Obviously, there are still times when you are going to get stressed. But it's it's learning, like you say how to, to some extent you have to blag it, don't you? You have to be able to put on that poker face and just say, yeah, you know, this is fine. I've got you and like you say, just have that calmness and be collected and, and let someone feel like they can trust you basically. Yeah.

Patricia Carswell: 9:07

So at what point... you started coxing at school, didn't you?

Zoe de Toledo: 9:10

Yes.

Patricia Carswell: 9:11

At what point did you become aware that you had a talent for this?

Zoe de Toledo: 9:17

Not at school.

Patricia Carswell: 9:19

Oh, really?

Zoe de Toledo: 9:20

No, not at all. And, gosh, that's a good question. I would say probably... I don't know. Maybe I still haven't! I think... because I think at school, in all honesty, I think at school... I didn't start until my GCSE year so I only rowed for three years at school, which obviously is solid amount of time but compared to a lot of people who start much younger it isn't much. And my school was okay - they weren't great. I used to go down... my coaches were all Molesey members so I used to go down there and I learned a lot down there because that pushed me. In my last year my coach was new from Molesey - Pete Shepherd who was the head junior coach at the time - and they hadn't sent an eight to the Junior Worlds for a long time - a girls' eight - and they asked around who had any decent coxes? And my coach was like, Oh, well, I'll take Zoe to the trials and the camps and things. But I wasn't very good and I think I really did get that boat out of luck more than anything that year because there just weren't many other coxes who appeared. And I don't know whether it was because... I mean there were a couple who didn't fit the age range properly. They were one year juniors. And then I think maybe others just didn't think an eight was going to happen and so didn't really put much time into it. And it was definitely a case of, I think, I just stuck around the most and that was why I got the boat. And several years later, I then worked with Eve Singfield at Teddy's who had been one of the coaches. And she constantly made fun of the fact that even when I was at the Junior Worlds I still couldn't land a boat on a landing stage properly! My excuse was always, well I learned to row on the Tideway - ee didn't have a landing stage. We had a slipway, and you know, she was like, Yeah, but you're at the Junior Worlds, you should still be able to land a boat on that landing stage!

Patricia Carswell: 11:13

So are you good at a parking, or are you like most people and have good days and bad days?

Zoe de Toledo: 11:17

No, I'm very good at parking. And I think that's because I grew up in London. I learned to drive in London. My dad lived fairly centrally. So you always have no space to park and the car I had, which was given to me by my grandmother, had no power steering. Yeah, a teeny tiny little car but it had no power steering. So I think now my parking is excellent. Thank you. Yes.

Patricia Carswell: 11:41

And you've improved on getting onto the landing stage?

Zoe de Toledo: 11:43

I can do that. Now. I can do that.

Patricia Carswell: 11:46

So you went to Oxford Brookes originally after school? Did you have a career as a cox in mind at that point?

Zoe de Toledo: 11:57

Yes. And that was why I went to Brookes and I did have offers from some other further away universities in the UK. I mean, I hadn't done as well at A level as I'd hoped. And I actually took a year... I took a year out after my A levels to try and retake some of them. So I'd got three B's and so I retook some of my modules to try and boost my marks up and I got three B's again. So I made a decision at that point to go for Brookes because it was near Caversham. Well, Caversham was just starting up at the time. The whole team was down here, it was it was a more central place to be. And it was difficult. I think it was hard because there were some really great things about Brookes at the time. And bear in mind, this was 15 years ago, nearly...

Patricia Carswell: 12:47

So this was before the glory days.

Zoe de Toledo: 12:49

Slightly. I mean, they were still really good. But they weren't at the level they're at now. And they... I think I just struggled there because there was some really great stuff about it. And the fact that they had a huge amount of competitive people and some really high quality athletes was fantastic, both men and women. But I just felt like I wasn't improving the way I wanted to. So actually I only in the end rowed there for a year. And then I started looking around. And I spoke to Leander. And I said, look, I kind of turned it around. I think at Brookes I'd spent a lot of time thinking about the team and what would I do for the team? And actually, I turned around to Leander and said, Well, what are you going to do for me? How are you going to make me improve? And they said, you know, our two aims here at the club are to win Henley, but more importantly, to get people into the national team. And that's why we'll be working on you as well as you know, our bigger team.

Patricia Carswell: 13:43

So what are they looking for in a cox? Because obviously with a rower, there are certain metrics that you can apply - you can have a minimum 2K score, and you can have won this, that and the other. What about a potential elite cox?

Zoe de Toledo: 13:58

I mean, I I'd have to guess here - things have changed at Leander since I started there. I think when I started, they were looking for people who were serious about being there. I already had at that point, I already had the Junior Worlds and I'd already... I think I'd then also been selected for the Youth Olympics. So I think I think in terms of that age range I was probably already fairly senior within that sort of under 23 age range so I think, I imagine they didn't think too hard about about asking me to go because there wasn't really anyone there day to day, you know, they had they had the senior people like Phelan who were already more advanced, but they didn't have a day to day club person yet of similar standards to me, but it I think that was probably fairly solid. But the other cox they had there at the time was a really good friend of mine, Chrissy, who had done loads of really good club stuff - she'd been at UL. She'd done some of their top boats there. And again, she was just really committed to being there. And, you know, it was really obvious that we were very different. We come from very different backgrounds. But it was very clear that she wanted, you know, boats to go as fast as possible. Now, she wasn't looking for GB selection at the time - she didn't even have GB citizenship, she was looking to win Henley, which she did - we both did, actually, the following year, or my first year there... my first year there, is that right? Yeah, I think so. I think that's right. Yes, that is right. And so I think that's what they were looking for at the time. I couldn't tell you what they're looking for now. But I suspect it's probably similar. I imagine what they're looking for is people who are going to put in the time, and you know, who want to be there every day with the athletes, who want to commit to it. And I think they want people who are going to get involved with the coaching, and who are going to be a part of the club as well as, as just turning up, you know, when the eights go out.

Patricia Carswell: 16:01

And your first degree was in psychology, wasn't it?

Zoe de Toledo: 16:04

Yes.

Patricia Carswell: 16:04

So presumably, that has been interesting and useful as a cox, having that to draw on in terms of understanding people?

Zoe de Toledo: 16:14

Yeah, I think so. It's hard to know, because sometimes I don't know what I learned from my degrees and what I learned from just life and being around people. And I guess just having it... I don't think it's necessarily what I learned from the degree, it's just that that was my interest. So I had an interest in what made people tick a little bit. You know, why they were the kind of person they were, what was it that had led them to make the decisions they made in their lives, or, you know, what had got them to where they are now, essentially. So I think it was probably more the interest really, rather than what I learned. Maybe I'm also saying that because I have a terrible memory, and I can't really remember much of my first degree at all, except the fact that I was always running off to go rowing, basically.

Patricia Carswell: 16:56

But I suppose that's kind of key in a cox. I think people have this cliched idea of what a cox is, which is small and brash and shouty. But actually, you've got to have an understanding, you've got to be much more thoughtful than I think people perhaps give you credit for and that you have to be able to get inside people's heads and figure out what's going to motivate them.

Zoe de Toledo: 17:18

Yeah, and I one of the things I always say is I think the best coxes are the ones that can be flexible. And by that I mean, they're the ones that can offer different things to different crews or individuals depending on what they need. And that's, I mean, that's why I always think that on the whole, this is a sweeping generalisation and I'm probably going to get in trouble for saying it, but on the whole I feel that female coxes have a better range in that department. Because they can usually do the shouty brash, cocky thing, maybe not quite as well as some of the boys. But you know, they can do it. But they can also do that the softer, you know, the more gentle the hand holding. I've had some crews who needed holding back, you know, they didn't need revving up and pushing on - they needed to be held together. And I think that's something that, you know, if all you can do is shouty and loud, you're going to struggle with a crew like that, because, I mean, you'll get along, you know, you'll manage fine, but you you won't necessarily compliment them in the way that they actually need.

Patricia Carswell: 18:20

I think that's quite a sort of common rookie error as well, isn't it, at the beginning - you're like, right, I'm in a race and you've seen people you know, on TV and and other races, events you've been to, you've seen them just kind of leaning forward and yelling and yelling and getting red in the face. And I know when I coxed my first race, that's what I thought you had to do, which was exhausting because it was an hour long race! I had no voice at the end of it. But it took me a little while to realise that a that's not helpful and the poor crew was sick of the sound of me by the end of it, but also, you have to have, like you say, that range.

Zoe de Toledo: 18:58

You should be able to have that range within one race, one 2K race can still have that level of range in it. You know, I always play... when I'm doing coxing coaching, I often play a recording from Katelin Snyder, who was or is the US coxswain currently, and when I was in Rio, and there's a recording- and I think it's one of her older ones and I don't know if this is still her style because it was this was very, you know, stylized, so to speak. But she starts this recording, almost talking like we are no, you know - she's like breathe, you know, breathe, like you're gonna breathe at the end of the race, you know, good. And then she slowly ramps up until she's like fully going for it at the end. And it fit their style from the outside. Obviously I don't know the story of it from the inside but from the outside you can see that was how they raced. They would go off the start, not in an especially furious way. But then they would just keep that same speed - they would never drop it. Whereas other people would go off fast, lose a bit of speed, maybe lose a bit more and then or get a little bit back at the end. They didn't do that - they just, they just went out, they got on to a pace that other people couldn't really match, and then would sort of just carry on with it and just keep going. And that kind of style would never have worked... I don't think I had ever had a crew that would have worked for, but you can see how it worked for them. And she did you know, she had such a huge range just in that one race. And I think that's one thing I always try and get across to coxes, is not to be afraid of that, you know, and I do try. And when I'm coxing when I'm racing, you know, when we're training, just to talk some of the time - literally talk like we are now, and then obviously there's gonna be some screaming and shouting and excitement somewhere in it. But it doesn't have to be that all the time.

Patricia Carswell: 20:47

So how important do you think it is to kind of develop your own style as a cox?

Zoe de Toledo: 20:52

I think it's really important. And it's, I think, in an age now where people have more access to things like recordings, and, you know, and videos where they also have the cox's audio attached, it becomes in a way harder, it's a really useful learning tool, but it's a dangerous thing to do as well. You know, I often listen to recordings, and still now, you know, I listen to recordings that I get sent from coxes, to help them with their learning. And there's often things I hear that I think, Oh, yeah, I really like that. If I was still racing, maybe one day I'll race again, I would use that. I listened to one not that long ago, from Shauna, who's a an Irish cox who I've got to know a bit and I was listening to her. I was just like, I love this, some of this stuff is great. And some of it's definitely stuff that I could pull off. And some of it's stuff that I couldn't pull off. But there's definitely bits of this I'd use. And I really liked that. But then the problem is you can go the other way. And you can sometimes- and I'm certainly guilty of this when I was when I was first starting out and probably even still, halfway through my career was just listening something thinking, Oh, that sounds cool and parroting it back. But it just being inappropriate for the situation. And I think one of the things that you learn, the more you cox, is it's not really about what you say it's about when you say it, and how it fits in with the story of your race. I think, you know, if you listen to my Rio race, it would probably be incredibly boring. You know, there's a lot of keep pushing the legs and keep doing what you're doing. And we're rowing at a good speed. We're rowing a good pattern, keep doing what you're doing. I mean, you'd have to ask one of the others because as I said my memory is really bad. But I don't think there are any big rousing speeches in there anywhere. I don't think there was anything that sounded like a particularly interesting soundbite, but it was the right thing to say.

Patricia Carswell: 22:40

I think those ones don't get the hits on YouTube. That's the thing, isn't it?

Zoe de Toledo: 22:43

Yeah.

Patricia Carswell: 22:43

So the ones that are really, really popular and that will come up when you start searching on it - you know, the big, exciting, shouty sweary ones. Which are very exciting. I actually made the mistake, when I was having chemo, I made the mistake of listening to some recordings when I was in the waiting room before I went in. And normally my blood pressure is really low, and they have to do things to bring it up. But I went to them, they're like, are you all right? Your blood pressure is really high! And I couldn't say to them, Well, actually, I've been listening to these coxing recordings because they would just be like, What is she talking about?

Zoe de Toledo: 23:19

But it's really I think it's... yeah, it's definitely true. I mean, cos, you know, one of the ones that was always doing the rounds was or several was tapes of Rory Copus, who's an incredible cox. He's a really good cox. He's also he's a real technician. He really understands rowing. He's really good coach, great guy. And his recordings, you know, you listen to them, and you feel it, you really feel it and you see how powerful it is with his crew. But then sometimes I'd have you know, young coxes then send me recordings with literally, you know, big chunks of his recording just parroted back. And some of the time I just thought, I don't understand why you're saying this, you know, you, you haven't yet got to the level of someone like Rory who, who knows why they're doing this. And you know what they're saying this for, and this isn't gonna work for your crew unless you really understand that. So it's hard because, you know, there is stuff to learn there, of course, and Katie Apfelbaum and I, when we were rowing in Oxford together, we used to talk a lot about different calls that worked, things that didn't work, exercises that worked. And I definitely learned a lot from her and picked stuff up. But you know, there was definitely...she had that American cool thing that Brits can't do, you know. So there was some stuff that I've heard, I just couldn't pull off. And one of the things that I always use it as example of this is that I remember before my first Boat Race with the reserves in 2011, we were looking at old race plans from previous Boat Race crews to kind of get an idea of how we would structure our own. And one crew at some point had had their like, big call was basically something about being badass m***ers and I was like, well, I can't say that, can I? Because if I said that in the middle of a race, you're just dying, laughing - there's no way I can pull that off, and not sound stupid. So you know, things like that. And, and that's why, like I say, you know, it's about finding your own... it is about finding your own personality and what works for you. And I think that's something that takes a really long time. And, you know, it took me a long time, I'm sure other people managed to do it more successfully. But it was it was a long while before I felt like I really had my own voice and my own style.

Patricia Carswell: 25:24

Well we ought- talking of Oxford, we ought to talk about that race. So for those who don't know about this, this was 2012, the Boat Race. And you were the cox for the Oxford first boat. And I have to say, I remember watching it at the time, I was live blogging it and I still feel slightly traumatised by it - it was incredibly traumatic to watch. And I cannot imagine what it was like to be in that boat. But just kind of briefly relive it for us - what happened?

Zoe de Toledo: 25:56

I will do my best, I think I blanked A lot of it out. So we, we went into the race, I guess, relatively confident, but knowing that we were underdogs. We were much, much lighter than our opposition. And I think I think our coach had said, if we had won the race before, he said, if we won the race, we would overturn if not the biggest weight deficit than one of the biggest weight deficits in Boat Race history, but we knew that we were solid, and we kind of had some confidence despite that. And the first half of the... well, the start wasn't great, we weren't really pointing straight, I'm pretty sure I still had my hand up, actually, when they said go, which is allowed, you know, there's no rule that says they can't start you when your hand's up, so... but it wasn't a huge problem, we got off the start, it was fine. You know, going along, it was okay, we got through, we kind of held off any real big advance advances from Cambridge round the majority of their bend, and really their bend had more or less come to an end, they probably had about a quarter of the length, maybe slightly less advantage left in the race before we then had a good, you know, two thirds, three quarter length advantage for the end of the race, just over halfway, basically. And we were pretty much dead level. And the last thing I remember saying before the confusion started with the race stopping was, I remember just looking over and I remember saying, okay, we're dead level, they've used up their advantage, we're going to win this race. Because at that point, I was pretty confident that with the advantage and the way we were rowing, that we could do that. And then just, I guess we were quite prepped for stuff in the water, because there been a lot of debris, I'd managed to hit a fridge a couple days before that was sort of half submerged in the river. You know, there's all sorts of stuff floating around. So we were quite on our guard, to look for what was around us, and what was up ahead. So I saw something... I thought, just whatever, it doesn't matter. And then the thing that tipped me off that it wasn't normal was that it wasn't running with the stream, it was moving across the stream, which is obviously not how anything was going to move.

Patricia Carswell: 28:08

And I think I need to sort of clarify for anyone who has never coxed a boat, when you're a small woman, coxing a men's eight you can see very, very little around them, and you can't lean right out either, because that will upset the balance of the boat. So you're kind of having to do these little kind of glances, aren't you?

Zoe de Toledo: 28:28

I used to sit on quite a big seat pad. And so that I had a little bit more vantage point. And also to protect my back because I used to have all sorts of bad back problems. And I found that if my bum was higher than my feet, it kind of protected it to some extent. But you know, it's very difficult. And the only reason I saw it was because it wasn't directly in front of us. It was off to the side, like you say, you can't really see what's directly in front of you. I have many other stories about that kind of problem. Yeah. And then, when I saw the way it was moving, I thought this is some... this is a person, there's someone in the river, and at first I kind of assumed it was kind of some maybe drunk idiot who'd fallen in or, you know, something like that and I assumed for quite a while that they'd get out the way. And then when I realised that they were trying to get in the way, then I started thinking, Okay, something's really not right here.

Patricia Carswell: 29:18

And so that was a protester who wanted to make a point about elitism in well, elitism in general, I think he wasn't he wasn't involved in in the sport of rowing. But I suppose he felt that the Boat Race was sort of symbolic of inequalities in society. So then they restarted the race and then...

Zoe de Toledo: 29:41

They restarted the race quite a long time... so there was quite a long break while they ... because this was an unprecedented situation. They didn't know what to do. They fished the guy out, then they had to turn us around. Then we had all the wash from the... you know, there's a massive flotilla behind the race. So that was churning up the water.

Patricia Carswell: 29:57

And no stake boats to get you nice and

Zoe de Toledo: 30:00

No, they're at the start of the race. And steady... that's it. You know, we were we were over halfway by that point. And I was really struggling to control the boat, and there was So they tried to put us back to roughly where we had been be ore, which is I mean, you kno, some people were like, Oh, wel, you are up, you should have st rted up. I said, I don't think w were to be honest, I think w were probably pretty much le el. That's my recolle tion anyway, so they started us level. a lot of wash in the water, we were coming into a bend for Cambridge, you know, so I was trying to steer competitively. And I think the combination of those things led us to overlapping blades, and then a clash, which, in Boat Races is not ideal, but it's not unheard of by any stretch of the imagination. But what is unheard of is what happened, which was that my six man's blade just broke clean in two. So then we were left with seven men rowing against eight, which is, you know, especially over that kind of distance, something that's never gonna work out favourably for you. But I think the credit to the crew is that they never gave up. It's a Boat Race tradition, to have a painted oar if you win the race, and it has all your crew names and the amount that you won by and those sorts of things. And we didn't do that for a while. And then we thought about it and we said, actually, we did want to commemorate the race. So the guys all have blades, I actually have a little bit of boat, a little bit of wooden boas. And that year, they say "race disrupted, blade broken after restart, Cambridge won the race by xxx, and then Oxford never gave up". And that was the thing, I think for us- that was important, I suppose.

Patricia Carswell: 31:41

And there was a moment of real trauma right at the end of the race. So tell me what happened there or from your point of view, what you were aware was going on?

Zoe de Toledo: 31:52

Yes, at the end of the race, I appealed fruitlessly to the umpire - I knew it was kind of fruitless, but you feel like you have to. At that point, I was having a discussion with him. And then we heard some commotion, and obviously bear in mind that an eight is about 60 feet long. So the furthest person from you is quite a long way away from you. And there's, you know, seven other guys in between. and we heard some commotion and weren't really sure what was going on and, and we heard our two man, Will, shouting. And he was saying that there's something wrong with Alex, who sat at bow, and he said he was unresponsive. He was sort of saying... he was really panicked, he sounded quite panicked. And our stroke man was already a qualified doctor. He was in Oxford doing a master's degree and some further studies. He was trying to clamber over them to get back there to see what was going on. But you know, like I say, there's plenty of people in between. But nobody seemed to really do anything about it. For ages, it seemed to really drag on and eventually we got, we got over one of the boats, one of the launches, and they kind of pulled him out. And it was just really scary for us because we didn't know if he was okay. We didn't know if he was breathing. You know, we really had no idea what was going on. And I found it quite scary because a few years before, someone I'd rowed with - Scott Rennie from Molesey - had been warming up on the ergo for a weights session, you know, he was he was an elite... nearly in the senior squad type rower. And he died suddenly from an undiagnosed cardiac condition. And so these things are what is you know, running through your head. But they got Alex out of the boat, we eventually got to land, the guys kind of helped manoeuvre him out. And we could see at that point, he was, you know, he was alive, he was okay. But he basically just pushed himself so hard that, that he just completely collapsed here. His lactate was through the roof. And he had to be brought back with a few sort of sharp slaps around the face, essentially, and spent the night in hospital. So yeah, it was it was just a horrible end. And I think, especially because of that, Cambridge chose not to take their moment in the limelight, they didn't have a presentation. They didn't get up on stage and wave the trophy around, which is.. they still won the race, ultimately. And that's... I always think that that's a real shame that they never got that, but I think we were all very grateful that we didn't have to face that because it was... yeah, it was quite a difficult situation.

Patricia Carswell: 34:27

Did it take a long time to get over that race because it was such a public forum - you know, it was beamed across the world and and at a time when people were really getting into social media, and everyone was commenting and having their say about it. So what was the aftermath?

Zoe de Toledo: 34:47

Yeah, I nearly didn't get back from it in terms of the sport. I thought for a while that that was going to be it. I also had my one of my major exams, my master's degree, about 10 days later. So I think I basically cried for five days, and then spent five days cramming for this exam that I have done no preparation for up to that point. Like you say, you know, reading all this stuff about me. And I think the thing I found really difficult to deal with was, you know, people can say, you made a mistake, you made a bad decision. Absolutely fine. I agree. But it was people who were saying, Oh, well, she was just cocky. She was arrogant. She wanted to be the person who won the race, you know, she had something to prove, and that was why she did what she did. I was like, hang on a minute, you have no idea why I made the decisions I made, you have no idea what it was like rowing in those kinds of conditions, you can say that you've got something wrong, but you can't talk about someone's motive in that way. And I found that really hard. And we were asked initially, in particular, not to talk about it publicly, you know, from the race media side of things. So I felt like I couldn't even come back at people and say, hang on a minute, you know, I'm happy to own up to making a mistake. But you can't say that I did this because I wanted to be the hero and I am so cocky that... And I also felt like those were things to some extent, that wouldn't have been levelled at a man. And I know that that may be just reading into things too much. But you know, I do feel sometimes there's this divide, in the same way that there is in the boardroom and big businesses, there's a divide between a man who is, you know, he's sure of himself, and he's a leader, and a woman with exactly the same attitude is bitchy and arrogant or small negative connotations. And I did always wonder, to some extent, how much that played played a part in it. So it was really hard. And I think there were a few things that got me back into a boat. One actually happened that very night after the Boat Race, but it was something that I didn't really, I didn't really draw on until a few months later. So I got to the Boat Race Ball, which is a big thing, like after all the Oxford and guys and alumni, etc, etc. And one of the first people that I saw there was Acer Nethercott, who had coxed in the early noughties, he'd coxed OUBC. And then, and he had similarly had one of one of his races, he'd done a few, but one of his races had gone quite badly. If I remember correctly, I think there'd been a clash, and his crew had come off worse, and they'd ended up losing. And I think he took a lot of that blame on himself. And he then went on a few years later to cox the GB men's 8+ in Beijing, which won a silver medal. And I saw him and that had already happened by this point, I saw him that night, he came over, he gave me a massive hug. And he said to me, you know, he'd been contacted by I think it had been his girlfriend at the time. You know, when he had raced, he wasn't anymore. He'd been contacted by her that day. And she'd apparently said, you need to go talk to her, you need to tell her that it's going to be okay, and you've been there and you got over it. So when I did decide to get back in the boat, I drew on that a lot. I drew on the fact that he made those mistakes and had gone on to, you know, to great success. And maybe I could too, and he was already ill at the time, and he unfortunately passed away not that long after that. And I never felt like I really got the chance to tell him what that meant. And I wish I had,

Patricia Carswell: 38:21

And he didn't get a chance to see you go on and win a silver medal at the Olympics in an eight, it would have been so nice for him to know that, wouldn't it? Let's fast forward to that bit. Because I know there were important sort of milestones in between, but 2016, you went to Rio, and you were coxing, the women's eight. And I've read Frances Houghton's book, which is just excellent, about this. And the thing that really came across was how key the cohesion of that crew was, um, because it was... you had a lot of seat racing beforehand. And it was all quite stressful by the sounds of things. So tell me a little bit about that. Because I know you had your own hashta, and there was definitely... following you on social media, there was a real sense of togetherness in that crew.

Zoe de Toledo: 39:15

Yeah, I think we, we got into that crew and we... it was part luck and part hard work. We had a good range of people in terms of personalities, in terms of experience in terms of, you know, people who've done a few Olympics and knew, and people who were fresh and had new ideas to bring to the table. But we also worked really, really hard on the communication stuff. And, you know, I think there's a lot of things that happened in that year, which would have happened with or without me, you know, those were fantastic. And all women, they technically were great. You know, they were strong. They were tough women, and there's a lot of things which they did not need me for at all. But I think one of the things that I did do well was bring some of that communication and help to tie some of that together. And we did work really hard at it, we talked a lot about, you know, having open and honest conversations. And we talked about how we could always have lines of communication open between us, you know, how we brought the best out of each other, how we supported each other, in the changes that we needed to make. And all those things just led to this real sense that we just really believed and trusted in each other in the process, and what we've done to get there, you know, in in what we got from our coaches and the support staff, and it did allow us to form this, like you say, sort of cohesive unit. And I think the other thing was, I can't remember who said it to us, but at one point, it was pointed out to us that actually, especially in the women's team, where at the time there wasn't a coxless four, the eight is a massive proportion of the athletes in the team. And we felt like we wanted to behave like that, you know, we wanted to stomp our mark on things and have a personality within our crew and have an attitude. And actually, we wanted people to know what we were about. And we kind of, you know, really played up to it. And some of it was way over the top. And you know, this whole hashtag sassy thing. Some of the crew hated it. But we we went for it. Because you know, we wanted to have that, that identity and something that we could really sort of bond over and buy into together. And I think that was, you know, something that really worked well for us.

Patricia Carswell: 41:24

Do you think there's something that kind of goes beyond the purely physical and goes beyond the resilience under pressure? Because it seems to me that there's almost a kind of magic, there's something almost mystical about that cohesion when you've got the right crew? Because often it's not the crew that on paper you would put together and there's just something that happens. Is that... do you think that's a real thing?

Zoe de Toledo: 41:50

I definitely think so, you know, it's one of those things that said, an eight is greater than the sum of its parts. And I think that crew, we had the parts, but we definitely put them together to something that really, really worked for us. And I think I think the the other crew that I had that really stood out to me in a similar way to that is actually the crew that I coxed from Leander, my first year at the club, which was a Ladies' Plate eight, and we won the Ladies' Plate that year at Henley in 2008. And that crew again was a bit of a bunch of misfits, you know, guys, you had kind of some of them had done under 23s, and had kind of, you know, nearly got there but not quite, and some guys who were a bit older and you know, weren't really aiming at sort of GB team and it was kind of past that point for them. Some guys who were still trying to work their way up and me - I was very young at the time. And you know, I was trying to deal with these guys. Some of them ... I mean, Danny Maris. I think it was like his.. I can't even remember how many how many Henley medals he'd won at that point - 6, 7, 8 - I mean, it was a huge number. Hugely experienced guys. And that definitely had that similar feel. And I think we always had the same, we had a bit of a sort of f*** you attitude. That was our attitude. And that worked for us again in that situation. And similarly, I think there was, there was some stuff there that we did that was just really effortless, which did feel like you say, so quite magical. And that Henley race, that was my first Henley final and it was unreal. Like we got we got to the final. We were sitting behind the stake boat. I think it was raining, you know, one of those cold Julys and then suddenly there was a downpour and thunder and lightning. And straightaway they were like, all the officials like, get out of the boat, you've got to get out the boat, you know, you can't be in the boat in lightning. So we all got out and there's not much space down at the start to actually get out of an eight. So we'll try to get out rand we're all freezing and soaked and they kind of got us into one of the tents up there. And we're waiting for ages and eventually we got to get back in the boat and they said okay, you've got 20 minutes and then you're going to race and I remember I was just wearing an all in one and one of these like binbag-thin splash tops. Because obviously i thought you know, it's Jul,y we're going to go on the water - it would have been fine if this hadn't happened. I remember as we walked up, I just got colder and colder and colder. And the guy stroking, Rich, said he could see my lips turning blue and the guys further back in the boat said afterwards, they're like, we could hear your teeth chattering in the cox box, because I was just so cold. And we went off the start and we'd always had really fast starts. It was a quick starting crew, something we never really had to work on. It's just something that happened. We got out and I think we never dropped I think the lowest rate we ever saw was 39 and a half.

Patricia Carswell: 44:29

Oh, good grief!

Zoe de Toledo: 44:30

It wasn't in our race plan, our race plan was maybe like 37 or something like that, but and I remember the guy at seven Danny he was a super experienced guy. He'd won a million Henley medals. He just kept saying, you know, I took a lot of my cues from him all year long, but he just kept saying 10 legs, and so I'd be like, Okay, guys, 10 legs, and it'd be like, okay, we just went down the course like that and just somehow sustained this like ridiculous sort of intensity. Yeah, and then got across the finish line. And I think I basically started cryingbecause I was so cold. But yeah, that Rio crew, it had something similar. And I think we did work on it, we worked on it really hard. But we did have definitely some luck of the right kind of personalities fitting together. And part of that was very different personalities. But also things like Fran, for example, when she came in, because she had been sculling, she came in relatively late in the day, it was still sort of early in 2016. And, you know, given her experience and her pedigree, I think it would have been easy for her to come in and really kind of take over the crew, and really force her opinions in a sort of aggressive way, I suppose. But she came in. And I think remember, one of the first things she said was like, You guys will know how to row eights much better than I do. I've got a lot to learn here. And she was very, very gracious with that. But obviously, she still gave her opinion. And she still, you know, she still does know a lot about rowing and a lot about teams. So it wasn't that she didn't have that. But it was that she was gracious enough to, you know, put herself out there and say, Actually, I have a lot to learn as well. We're all learning this stuff together. And I think you know, things like that will probably some of those little things were kind of probably would snowball into the big make or break things for a crew and all those bits kind of slotted into place, really with that crew.

Patricia Carswell: 46:28

So thinking about coxing more generally, when I started rowing, I considered because I didn't know anything about it, I came to it pretty fresh. And I sort of I know that my very first ever blog post was entitled, I am not a cox. And it was you know, all the reasons why I wasn't going to be forced into this kind of second class position. But just because I was small and yeah, obviously I have learnt the error of my ways since then. But I would love to hear you make the case for coxing. Because one of the things that really annoys me is when people say oh, well, a cox can lose a race, but they can't win a race. Make case for coxing - why is it important? And why would a junior who can see that they're not going to be tall and big and heavy, why should they get into coxing?

Zoe de Toledo: 47:22

This is a hard one because it's hard. And it is often a sort of just a horrible little job, especially in the depths of winter, when it's freezing cold and you're not moving, you're not kind of getting any exercise out of this. And you're you're wet and you know you're cramped, and you've been sitting there for an hour and a half and everything's horrible, and it can be really challenging, mentally challenging. I think the thing that I always remember about coxing is that eights in particular need a cox - there's a reason why you're there. And in the same way that crews don't have to have a coach, but they'll probably do better if they have a good coach. I think a good cox ties everything together and can make the boat go faster. And that's ... when I started coxing my best was when I didn't I suppose it tends to be in those races where something think about being selected for a crew. I didn't think about who liked me, you didn't like me, I thought about how do I make the boat go faster? Because I'm here for exactly the same reason as everyone else's. And the thing about you know, a cox can lose a race but can't win a race. It's almost true. I think it's very easy for a cox to lose a race and it's very hard for a cox to win a race. And I would say in my entire coxing career, there probably aren't that many races that I have been in where I genuinely think that if someone else had been coxing, my crew wouldn't have done as well as they, as they did. I mean, I think there's a lot of crews that I coxed over long periods o time where obviously, what added wasn't just on race day, added things the whole wa through. But you know if on rac day I had been taken ill an someone else had jumped in, i the vast majority of my races, imagine my crew would hav performed pretty similarly catastrophic happens. There's a big kind of intervening event - somebody comes into your lane right in front of you or whatever it is - something big happens and you have to make a split second decision, which is win or lose. And I suppose that's when Yeah, it's definitely those races. For example, there was one race that I did where I called a move to the finish. You'd probably say it was embarrassingly, dangerously early. I called this move to the finish recklessly early, but it worked. And I think if someone else if someone else had been in the boat hadn't made that call, that crew wouldn't have medalled. But those... like I say those races are few and far between. I think what I did in Rio, which probably was different to what other coxes might have done was that I didn't do that. I didn't panic and try and do something different. I didn't think oh my god, we lost at halfway, I need to do something unusual or that we haven't trained for that we haven't practised, because I knew that we were rowing well, and I had enough capability to take in what was going on around me and say, actually, those two crews out in first and second, they look like they're really struggling, they're not going to finish this race in first and second, they didn't - they finished the race in fifth and sixth. I could see that from them, how their faces looked and how they were talking to each other and, you know, how they were rowing. And I knew that whatever was going on the Americans were still the crew to beat and I knew if we were still with them, then we will probably be okay. So in that situation, it was probably the opposite it was probably the fact that I got them onto the start line in one piece. And then I just told them to keep doing what they knew we could do well, and I made clear, concise calls at the right time, so that they did everything together. So I think in that race, it was probably about as the opposite almost. It was not doing something that was the right thing to do, and worked out well, was the reason why we ended up where we were - obviously not the reason - they were the reason why we ended up where we were, but I think panicking and throwing something different at it, which have been our downfall rather than making us more successful.

Patricia Carswell: 51:20

And is there anywhere that you would still really like to cox that you haven't - any kind of events or races that are on your bucket list?

Zoe de Toledo: 51:30

So one that I've done, but never won, which really frustrates me to this day is the Fours Head, I've raced the Fours Head so many times, I've never managed to win it. And I think I've come second, I want to say like four times. And I think a couple of those times I've come second by less than one or two seconds. So really, really close. And I've done it in, you know, Women's Novice fours. I've done it in men's elite fours, and I cannot win that bloody race and I hate it. I hate being in coxed fours. I hate being in a bow loader. I hate it. But I still really want to win it and it really annoys me that I never did. I suppose there's still time, I have time to win it, I suppose - I can make a comeback to win the Fours Head. So that's one that really always annoys me. Rraces that I haven't done that I would like to... hmm. That's a good question. There's places that I'd like to row like I never got to row in Bled. Yeah, which always looked really beautiful. Yeah. So I've always wanted to go there. There's definitely stuff I'd like to try- some non rowing-related - like I've always wanted to try dragon boating. I always think that I'd be quite good at that.

Patricia Carswell: 52:34

Oh, I've got one for you. Yeah, we went to Finland a few years ago as a club and raced in a coxed 14.

Zoe de Toledo: 52:42

Oh, yeah. That'd be fun. Yeah, church boats.

Patricia Carswell: 52:45

Yeah, that's really fun. Actually, the boats more responsive than you'd expect. You've got a sort of old fashioned tiller. Yeah. But it's, it's really fun. And you don't know where you're going, you know, you're having to sort of make it up as you go along. But that's really fun having 14 people because they're in sevens like side by side. Oh, it's fantastic.

Zoe de Toledo: 53:03

Yeah, no, I think, you know, it is about trying new things out. I think there's definitely stuff that I still kind of would like to do you know, there's, I would still like to go back and do another really solid campaign at Henley. I'd love to do that. I have no idea who would take me or how I would fit that in. But you know, if someone presented, you know, wouldn't have to be in an elite event. If someone presented to me a local club that they thought had a really good shot at Henley, I'd love to go and do something, something like that. I think yeah, I think the Fours Head's a big one. I mean, the Boat Race, not winning the Boat Race, I think we'll always - I won a reserve race, but, you know, not winning that race will always stay with me. The other one that always gets me actually is Nat Schools, the National Schools Regatta, because I raced it for my first two years. And then my last year, our eight was actually all right - our girls' eight. And I think it would have been, you know, it definitely would have made the final and you know, maybe if things have gone badly for other people and go well for us, maybe we'd even have snuck a medal. But the racing got cancelled because of the weather. And I remember that. They put the boys' eights on they let them race on the Sunday. But they were like, well, we don't have time to race the girls' eights. So we never got the chance to race it. And that's one of those again, which I think well, you know, that is obviously something I'll never get to do. And I think my thing that vindicated me from that was then a few years later, I coached a crew from St. Edward's School here in Oxford, a girls' four, which won a medal in girls fours, and they were tiny. So two of them were tiny. One of them was shorter than me and one of them was lighter than me and the other two were J15s. And we were racing in a senior event and we still they still managed to get a medal. So I think that was my sort of - that I felt like that was my Nat Schools redemption, but yeah, so that's always one that I always felt like I was never gonna get back. There's definitely some places though, and things like the sort of Red Bull X Ray or some of those more adventure type races that I'd love to try out. And a few of the bigger regattas, like things like the Heineken Cup, that kind of thing, which I'd be really keen to do at some point. I mean, the Head of the Charles, I've done a couple times, which I love. So I'm hoping to get to do that at some point again, the other thing I would really like to do is row with my Rio crew, again, as a as a whole boat. You know, we've talked about maybe doing the Vets Head one year or trying to go into something like the Head of the Charles and I think it'll take a lot of good planning to get us all in the right place. But I would absolutely love to race with those guys. Again, even if it's just for, you know, for something fairly insignificant. I think that would be that would be great.

Patricia Carswell: 55:35

I would love to watch that. So tell me before we finish up about Chattercox.

Zoe de Toledo: 55:41

So Chattercox is a little enterprise that I started with Katie Apfelbaum, who I coxed with at Oxford, so in 2012, when I coxed the Blue Boat, she was coxing the ISIS crew. And we basically set it up because we felt like, we'd had some really good coaches, coxing coaches, but we'd also had a lot of years of our coxing careers where our coaching had been someone yelling at us that we'd done something wrong in the middle of an outing, and that was it. And we just wanted to find a way to perform ... to sort of provide coxes with really honest, actionable feedback, which they could really work on and ways for them to set goals and ways for them to get feedback in a better way from their crews and coaches. And that was something you know, that my Rio crew really did well, you know, they would talk to me the same way that I would talk to them. So if I made a call that they liked, someone would shout to say, Oh, yeah, cool. I liked that. And they's say it then and there, so I knew then, and then, you know, immediate feedback is how you teach someone something, or if something didn't work, they'd say it straight, you know, straight away, so I didn't really get that, you know, can we think about how we phrase that differently, or something. And so we've kind of started this, this little enterprise and Katie's over in the US, she actually does loads of clinics and things over there. And she's based in Boston. And, you know, I do what I can here and obviously, we're both fitting it around our day jobs. And but I, you know, I just want to provide somewhere that coxes can go for some coaching that they may not have had before and, and also for coaches as well. I did my first coaches-only session recently, that was hosted by Scottish Rowing, and actually was fantastic. And it was a session I'd wanted to do for ages, but hadn't been brave enough to kind of put on on my own, because I just thought no coach is going to want to come to this. But actually, they got a really good group of coaches. And, you know, they had some really interesting questions about, you know, how they can support their coxes better, and, you know, we discussed some ideas about what they can do to help their coxes and how they can really get the best out of them. And, and I love that that was, you know, that was great. I really enjoyed that. So, yeah, it's something we're still working on. And we try and keep ticking along, whilst we've got all our various other things going on in life. But yeah, it's, it's the kind of thing that you know, if anyone ever wants any help, they should just get in touch with us. If anyone has any ideas about things that we can offer them, we are more than happy to, you know, to try things out and to give things ago and yeah, it's it's kind of our way of trying to change the rhetoric around coxing a little bit like you said earlier, you know, how, how to make it clear that the cox is really part of the crew and someone that is there to make the boat go faster, not to someone who's there to sort of sit and shout at people.

Patricia Carswell: 58:23

And how do people get in touch with you if they want to take advantage of that?

Zoe de Toledo: 58:27

So our website is chattercox.com. You can email us- all our details are on there. The email is chatterbox@gmail.com, or on social medias I think are all@chattercox1. Because someone already had @chattercox, which was, you know, very distressing. And but yeah, if you or if you find me, I'm either@zoedetoledo, one word, or@zoe.detoledo, and it's linked on most of my profiles as well.

Patricia Carswell: 58:55

Fantastic. Well, I think that's a wonderful resource that people will really find useful. One final question about mince pies. I know you've been doing some in depth research on the best mince pies and I know this is an ongoing investigation, but I just wondered if you had any preliminary findings?

Zoe de Toledo: 59:14

Yep. Yep. So we've been working hard on this. My husband Alex and I are very keen mince pie-ers. And for the last three years, we have compiled an important and scientific spreadsheet of all the mince pies out there and there are various different categories and overall scores. This year we have recruited two new young up and coming mince pie reviewers to help us with the task, partly because we were worried about getting diabetes so now we can at least split the box with two other people, so we have a - these are two other medical students, Sophie and Cam- friends of mine from medical school, and they... so I drop mince pies basically off at their house. And I think the best one we've had, well, we had one really amazing one which was a very sort of posh expensive one that my mum sent. But I think the best easy to buy one so far I think have been the Sainsbury's Taste the Difference sort of fairly standard ones. The absolute worst have been the Marks and Spencers Percy Mince pies, because that's

Patricia Carswell: 1:00:19

Oh, that s just

Zoe de Toledo: 1:00:20

Why buy some so t of horrible pink cake that ta tes of Calpol? Alex and I ctually tried to get it d squalified. But the other two w re like, No, we should keep it b t it has not scored well. So w have also started a very i portant social media channel o Instagram, @themincepierep rt, you can go on there to rea all our reviews of our mince ies.

Patricia Carswell: 1:00:42

Well, forewarned is forearmed on on the Marks and Spencers ones. Well, there's so many questions that I could carry on and ask you - I could have talked al evening, I have a list th length of my arm of things tha I would love to discuss with yo another time. But thank you s much. It's been absolutel wonderful talking to you gettin an insight into your career an your thoughts on coxing an flying the flag for the nint seat. So a million thanks to yo, Zoe, it's been absolut ly brillia

Zoe de Toledo: 1:01:13

Absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great.

Patricia Carswell: 1:01:21

Thank you so much for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, please spread the word to your friends and on social media. And if you fancy subscribing as well, that would be amazing. You'll find links to everything we talked about in the show notes. That's the blurb that you'll find below the episode wherever you listen to it, and you'll find my blog at girlontheriver.com. Looking ah ad, my fourth episode is go ng to be an Ask me Anything, wh ch is your chance to ask me ab ut anything you like, from wh t I have for breakfast to my fa ourite song to erg toSo ple se send me your questions on soc al media at girl on the riv r or by email girlontheriverp dcast@gmail.com or if you'd l ke to have your question played n the show, then record yoursel asking the question on your ph ne and send it to girlontherive podcast@gmail.com and I will pi k the best questions and eithe play them or read them out. My guest next week is an Atlant c rower and Guinness World Rec rd holder who talks all about the incredible ups and downs qui e literally of rowing the Atlan ic. So make sure you tune in n xt week. And until then, next stroke, easy oar.