Rowing ‘The Boat Race’ on a Concept2 Indoor Rower and Strava

@BNYMellon and @NewtonIM have donated their sponsorship of The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Races @theboatraces to Cancer Research UK @CR_UK.

This year they have organised ‘The Great Row’ a fund raising challenge taking place #pulltogether @pulltogether to encourage everyone to have a go at indoor rowing and to row any distance between 25th March – 1st April 2017 (Challenge Week).

There are further details of the challenge on the Cancer Research UK website.

The event is also running a Celebrity-Olympian boat race. This will be shown on the same day as the Oxford and Cambridge Boats races. You can watch what appears to be the first training session on the Tideway yesterday.

This brings me on to how anyone taking part in the challenge or just rowing indoors can ‘row on the tideway virtually’. Any Concept2 indoor rower with a PM5 monitor can connect to the Android or iOS ErgData app.
ErgData Concept2 app on iOS
ErgData Concept2 app on Android
The ErgData app lets you record your row stroke for stroke the information is broadcast to the app via a Bluetooth connection to your mobile phone. Once the row is finished it can be uploaded to the Concept2 logbook via the app.

Now using a clever and innovative system from @c2_2_Strava at their website p729.com you can connect your Concept2 logbook account to your Strava.com account. The link between the 3 websites is done using ‘tokens’ so that your account password and user name details are not shared.

Once the two accounts are linked you can set it up so that any rows you record with ErgData on the Concept2 indoor rower can be overlaid on to The Boat Races Strava segment. Andrew who is behind @c2_2_Strava has made the segment virtual and any upload from p729.com is classed as virtual on Strava so the leader board will be people who have also rowed the course on a Concept2 rower. Andrew is currently working on letting people virtually row any of the real world Strava segment Regatta and Head race courses that have been created. For now each course is selected by the distance rowed but going forward you should be able to select the course you wish your workout to be overlaid on to. This will make storing the training log of your indoor rows a whole lot more interesting.

If you are wanting to row the boat race course strava segment set a row on your Concept2 for between 6800m and  7240m, maybe best to enter a 7000m row. Complete this and when the row is synced via ErgData and @c2_2Strava to your Strava account the Strava segment  for the Boat Race course will be automatically calculated. Make sure you add the obligatory C2 Monitor pic and a sweaty selfie close up. Once all done share your row from Strava to twitter @pulltogether, @theboatraces and #pulltogether

The Great Row has set up a club Strava page – https://www.strava.com/clubs/TheGreatRow

If you have a Concept2 with an earlier PM3 or PM4 monitor you will require a cable to connect your phone to use the ErgData app, connection kits can be found here.

Concept2 Model D Indoor Rower with PM5 – Black – £860.00
Concept2 Model E Indoor Rower with PM5 – Grey – £1060.00