Using Strava Segments for Club Mini Heads.

With all this automatic timing it means coaches no longer have to stand frozen on the river bank.

Strava not is designed for rowing but does support it as well. It is a multi sport platform so can also support most of your cross training activities. It has is great to use as a training diary and its social functions can help motivate rowing club members.

How did Evesham Rowing Club come across Strava and start using it?

It had almost been two years since our last ‘Club Head’ race, a fun race just to bring different squads together to race within the club for a friendly bit of competition. Evesham Rowing club’s actual head race had also been cancelled for a number of years due to weather and bridge repairs. So in the 4 years I had been rowing I had only done a timed attempt at the head course one time. It always seemed that if we organised a specific day that certain squads could not take part or that the weather would intervene with a rise in the river level. It had become very difficult to make a club head happen.

We wanted a way to record times over our 4 kilometre head course on the River Avon that did not require timers and significant organising. Also it would be great if we could fit these race pace pieces into everyone’s timetable. The only way this could really be done within the club would be to record pieces on different days throughout a month and accumulate the information.

It was in discussion about having a regular monthly club head race to an avid cyclist at my club that ‘Strava Segments’ were mentioned. RowApp and CrewNerd offer GPS recording of rowing courses and were looked at. Strava having user numbers in the millions has developed into a very easy to use system. Strava offered an easy function for recording the timed pieces and with the basic free app having all the functions to do this it made it the most affordable way to automatically record timed pieces.

With the phone app installed all one has to do is start a workout when on dry land and place your phone safely into a dry bag (rock the boat sell these) and then secure the bag within your boat. When you finish your row and are back on dry land you can remove your phone and stop the workout. If you have rowed over the GPS start and finish line of the segment your time for the club head piece is then recorded. You can then name your workout and put details of the type of boat you are in 1x,2x,4x etc. and who was in the crew in the description.

Strava records all the times for each segment in leader boards. (See the one for our head course – https://www.strava.com/segments/10350937) These can be sorted by certain dates so it is very fast to see who has set the fastest time within a set period. I really do like the fact that starting in September 2015 that the club will now have a historical record of how fast crews have gone week in week out along certain parts of the river. Something that perhaps generations can look back at. Currently I am not happy that a crew from Bewdley took the current Strava course record when visiting for our head in November 2016, we will have to make sure that changes soon. Workouts can be made private but can also be shared with friends within the Strava social network. It is great to see, comment and give kudos to other rowers at your club, kudos being a reward for their effort.

A limitation of Strava over the rowing apps is that it is not designed for rowing. It can not record stroke rate simply by using sensors in your phone. There are functions it offers for cycling, running and swimming that it does not for rowing. It is focused on the triathlon community its functions work best for those sports. However workouts from rowing apps and the NK GPS 2.0 can be imported into Strava, then metrics such as stroke rate do show in the analysis information.

The ability to import into Strava is another function that allows for more people within the club to take part in the club head and Strava segments. You do not need to use your phone. A GPS watch or other GPS device such as the NK Speedcoach GPS 2.0 can also produce files which when uploaded to Strava again create the timed segments. Once the upload is complete Strava works out the segment times such as a head race course from the information recorded.

So we had a way of recording times over are head race distance. How accurate was it? With many measurements using different phones we have found that when two are in the same boat times only vary by 1 or 2 seconds. We have not seen any measurements that seem to suggest an injustice may take place for what are ‘fun’ head races to get a bit of inter club competition.

With fairly accurate timing we looked at ways to handicap boats so that a junior single could be compared to a men’s eight. This was found on another club’s website (Tyne Rowing Club’s club head excel document). Based on the results of many years of their own heads an adjustment table was created. It means that as well as having absolute times, we can also adjust times so boats of different sizes and abilities can race in a more competitive way. This is great again for fitting in this racing around training programs.

So how can Strava timing possibly work in other areas of rowing. It was a late in the day idea but we thought we would give it a go at our recent regatta. Timing systems are expensive and rarely used at provincial regattas where the start and finish are not permanent. We set up a segment that matched the regatta course for the 1k on the Saturday and the 500m on the Sunday. Unfortunately only crews from Evesham appear to have used Strava. But it was great being able to see how different boats compared and how times varied between rounds of the events.

It would be great to see Strava used as unofficial timing at Regattas as it does give good feedback to how fast your row actually was. River flows and conditions change but to have a comparison to other crews is always good. I have found what feels like a bad row might not actually have been that slow. I have set up Strava segments at a number of regattas such as Hereford, Ross on Wye, and also used it at head races at Gloucester. The use of Strava is growing, rowers that are also keen runners and cyclists or use these sports for cross training are posting a lot of their workouts to Strava.

The social functions of Strava mean you come across other rowers once you have rowed on the same waterways. You can then follow them and their training.

Looking to the future and how Strava can help rowers. Lower cost power meters such as the new Empower oarlock from NK and soon to be released OarZpot from SweetSpot will mean that platforms such as Strava can display this data in a way that it can be analysed and useful for your training. Being able to see how much power you were rowing with and how this affected your heart rate and where you were on the river all at the same time.

Strava also has developer add-ons, one such one that is great for organising club data is the Run Sync Swim, add more sport specific functions to Strava dashboard for further more in depth anaylsis – https://runsyncswim.com/

For in depth data analysis another developer add-on is “StravistiX for Strava“. Again this Google chrome add on can make Strava less running and cycling specific.

A recent safety feature that Strava has included is the ability to send a link via text/imessage to anyone so that they can track you during your on the water row. This has many practical applications for rowing, a coach being able to see where crews are when they are out of sight. Parents supporting at a head race can keep track of where they need to be to see the crews coming past that they wish to watch. Free for the viewer but Strava premium is needed to activate the service.

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Concept2 Model E Indoor Rower with PM5 – Grey – £1060.00