Geeking out about rowing

My cox from San Diego has an extra-cool speed/ stroke coach for the boat. It's a little piece of electronic equipment that judges speed from a tiny magnetic impeller under the hull that deduces the speed of the hull by revolutions of the impeller per second. It also records strokes and stroke rate via the magnet under the stroke's seat passing over a magnet on the deck between the tracks.

So for a race, it can show by minute, or in this case, by approximate distance through the race, our speed and our stroke rate.

He sent out the data, and I immediately had some fun with it. Thought this was very cool.


You can see our start (high strokes per minute, with speed climbing from 0 up to top speed). You can see our move around the 500m mark (rate bumps up, speed bumps). Then you can see our big move at the 1000m mark, our next surge when our cox called on folks individually, and our finishing sprint.

I'm pleased that rate and speed were so tightly linked. Shows we're efficient with our rate changes. We'll work on higher speed off the line for 1000's.