Today’s rowing session was another online 30 minute piece and the second day of trying RowPro 5 for the Mac.
There was one other rower who joined the online session but I don’t know if he is in Europe or the US or elsewhere. He rowed at a constant pace of about 2:01/500 meters. I rowed at a very slow pace around 2:35 with a very low rating in the teens. After 10 minutes, I did 4×10 power strokes, R5 minutes with the last 5 minutes serving as a warm down.
About 2 hours later, there was 5 minutes of online fun. But first, the results for the 30 minute session:
As mentioned above, there was 5 minutes of fun about two hours later…
On this coming Saturday there will be some online races sponsored by “Fitness Matters” in England. There will also be venue races in England, but the good people at Fitness Matters and Digital Rowing (makers of RowPro software) got together and have made it possible for anyone anywhere in the world to join in the fun by racing either 500 meters or 5K (or both) online via the internet from wherever they are.
There is a small fee to join the race, which is the case with almost all official races. For the online races it is $7.84 per race. So I signed up for one of the online 5Ks. It will be a lot of fun, no matter how far back in the competition I place. And I’m sure that there will be many, if not all other competitors who are much younger and correspondingly faster than me.
There have been some 5 minute practice sessions every day this week, to explain to everyone protocol for checking in, starting and to answer any questions.
I’ve joined several of those 5 minute sessions. Today was my 3rd. I figure, the more people the better in a practice session, to best help any newcomer to online rowing get the feel of what it’s like to row & race online.
Yesterday and the day before, I was wearing street clothes during the 5 minute practices. Jeans and a shirt. I didn’t want to get sweaty – so yesterday and the day before I rowed exceedingly slow and even stopped a couple times during the 5 minutes.
But today I decided to dress appropriately and row the 5 minutes at least a little bit faster. So the garb was normal for rowing. Shorts and a heartstrap.
There were 4 total in the practice session. The other three were the race starter (Pam L. of RowPro Rowers & Digital Rowing), Jesper T. of Denmark with whom I’ve rowed many times before, Justine R. who was new and whose location I don’t know.
Justine was definitely new because she said she had “never done this before”. I asked her if she meant she’d never rowed online before and she confirmed that was what she meant. I replied that “I’ve never rowed on the water before,” which I guess was a non-sequitur of sorts but what I was wondering behind that question was whether she was totally new to rowing or simply had never rowed on an erg connected to the internet with RowPro.
Justine didn’t answer my unspoken question, which is a perfectly normal response to an unspoken question.
And then before we could chat any further the Race Starter, Pam, arrived. She welcomed everyone and gave the brief instructions on what to expect for the starting of a race and then started the 5 minute race practice session.
When the word “ROW” appeared on the PM, we all started rowing. Actually, I didn’t start immediately because I’m in the habit of hearing an authoritative announcer voice speak the word “ROW!” loudly at that same instant but the sound is still not working on this installation of RowPro 5 for the Mac.
The others probably heard a voice say ROW! but whether they did or not, they got off the starting line a bit quicker than I did.
I rowed slowly after starting and watched the pace of Jesper and Justine. They were rowing faster than me but were staying more or less together in pace. I continued to row slow (2:25/500m) with a low rating in the teens for the first 20 seconds, while I watched them. Then, I thought I’d pick up the pace a bit, catch up to them and stay even with them so we could all cross the finish line in a group.
So I picked up the pace to between 2:00 – 2:05/500 m for the next 90 to 100 seconds and was slowly catching up to them.
As the distance between my boat and the lead boat (Justine R.) became smaller, she rowed a bit faster. So I rowed a bit faster, to keep closing the distance. You can see in that session report that the 6th split was a pace of 2:00 and then from split to split my speed increased, as I had to keep increasing the effort in order to keep closing the distance.
I caught up with Justine’s boat somewhere in the last few splits and decided that it felt like a race and was having too much fun to slow down and just stay even to the finish line, so I passed her boat.
And she kept increasing her speed. I know there are a lot of strong, fast women rowers, from looking at the women rowers’ results in the Olympics… but I don’t think I’d ever before rowed with a woman rower who was this fast. I was impressed. And still having fun. And wondering how much more she could speed up.
Well, she did keep increasing her speed and by the last 20 second split, I had to row an average pace of 1:42/500m to keep her from gaining on me. I think that I got my instantaneous pace as high as 1:36 for at least one stroke, before reaching the finish line and I’m pretty sure Justine was still increasing her speed. Like I said, I was impressed. And it was a lot of fun.
Here are a few more review-type comments about RowPro 5 for the Mac. The problem with row session files not uploading to the concept2.com online logbook has been resolved by the RowPro programmers.
RowPro 5 for the Mac is different from RowPro 4 in many ways and beautiful and fun to use in the same ways.
One of the ways it is different is there are 2 logbooks in RowPro 5 for the Mac. An online logbook, which is supposed to show all sessions uploaded or waiting to be uploaded to Concept 2 and “Local logbook,” which I assumed means what it implies, that the files are stored locally on your computer’s hard drive. But I looked and there are no documents or files that are associated with RowPro.
There’s only the RowPro App, in the applications folder.
So… I don’t understand how the files are stored locally unless they are stored as “invisible” files to avoid inadvertent damage by user klutziness etc. I know that the Apple OS stores some critical files as invisible because they are essential to the operating system and there is no reason most users would ever need to do anything with them. So maybe that’s what Digital Rowing does with RowPro files on a Mac – gives them the “invisible” tag so we won’t accidentally mess with them.
If I want a printable session report for any rowing session, I must go into the “local logbook”, right click it and select details. Then if I want to print it, I choose one of the usual Mac ways such as command+P or the menu item File->Print…
But if I am in the ONLINE logbook in RowPro 5 for the Mac and want to see an abbreviated version of the session report, I can double-click the session and a window will open up. That window with an abbreviated session report has the nice feature which shows average pace and ending heart rate for each split as you hover the cursor over the graph. See screenshot below:
There is a little quirk with the display of time in GMT at the top of the online session chat which I noticed.
When RowPro 5 for Mac is opened, it always opens to maximum size and covers the entire desktop, though not in absolute full screen mode. When it is like that and covers the entire desktop, it blocks some items that I like to have access to on the right side of my desktop. If I click and grab the right side of RowPro then drag it a couple inches to the left, it leaves a couple inches of desktop that I want to see. The quirk with the display of time in GMT at the top of the online session chat happens only if you resize the window of RowPro 5 for the Mac AFTER checking in to an online session which will result in the time becoming partly hidden like in the following screenshot:
If you resize the Window of RowPro 5 for the Mac BEFORE checking in to an online session, the time in GMT is fully visible, like in the screenshot below:
Happy trails to you.