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Apr 3 2018

Second OTW row of the season – rating up!

Sunday

No training. Too jetlagged and also having a cold. We did make a nice excursion to a nearby Chateau.

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Monday

Too strong wind for rowing. I did a one hour swim in the indoor 50m pool.

Tuesday

I created my new training plan for the coming period today, and I was able to weave in quite a lot of the sessions suggested by our club’s head coach. This is not always the case, but this time it worked out.

We’re going out in the eight tomorrow, and I am going to strongly suggest that that will be a steady state session. Some in this Masters rowers group have a tendency to want to do speed work on every outing, but I think that a nice technique row is more appropriate for our first row of the season. That was the reason for me to do the 4x5min/4min at 28/30spm today, so I could claim having it already done, and needing a steady state session.

The training was “4x5min/4min with 5min as 3min @ 28spm, 2min @ 30spm”. I decided to reduce the recommended stroke rates by 2, as I was rowing in a single (and because I haven’t rated up yet this year).

It was pretty windy and choppy when I launched, so I sought shelter in the gorge. There is a stretch that is a little longer than 1km and pretty straight, so there is where I would be doing my 5 minute intervals.

I still haven’t found my OTW rowing routine. Today, I forgot to pack the heart rate belt.


Workout Summary - media/20180403-1715420o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|07503|39:59.0|02:39.9|181.0|22.9|0.0|000.0|08.2
W-|04527|19:52.0|02:11.8|256.0|26.6|000.0|000.0|08.6
R-|02979|20:00.0|03:21.4|106.9|19.2|000.0|000.0|07.8
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01186|05:00.0|02:06.5|272.5|26.2|000.0|0.0|09.1
01|01106|05:00.0|02:15.6|251.5|26.8|000.0|0.0|08.3
02|01146|04:52.8|02:07.8|267.0|26.9|000.0|0.0|08.7
03|01089|05:00.0|02:17.7|233.1|26.5|000.0|0.0|08.2

I am pretty happy with the achieved boat speed. There was a big difference between tail wind (first and third intervals) and head wind (second and fourth intervals) and in the fourth interval I was both tired and steering, as I ended up doing the 28spm bit in the first part of the windy stretch.

In the Flex charts, you can see how I got tired, and especially the Wash number deterioriated (or was it the steering).

I also had a problem with the Empower Oarlock disconnecting and reconnecting several times during the row.I just upgraded the firmware  Perhaps it will help.

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Today was also the first row with the Quiske pod. I used the sensor pod under the seat. I was curious to see if there would be any differences between the head wind and tail wind intervals and between the first ones when I was fresh and the last ones. Let’s first look at boat acceleration for the 26spm and 28spm bits.

Boat Acceleration 26spm bits
Boat Acceleration 28spm bits

That looks pretty consistent. No big differences between the intervals. A bit more spread in the data in the recovery part of the 28spm acceleration curves, compared to 26spm. These bits, two minutes which I counted as 8×7 strokes to survive them, were pretty hard. I conclude that I was able to row 26spm consistently, but have to work on the recovery at higher stroke rates. The acceleration from the minimum speed (left part of the chart) looks OK to me, but I am curious to see what the Quiske crew thinks of it. In 26spm, you see a slight acceleration (or reduced deceleration) in the very final part of the recovery. I was paying attention to accelerating slightly up the slide in that final part, and taking light catches.

Now, let’s look at the Seat Speed:

Seat Speed 26spm bits
Seat Speed 28spm bits

Funny, I can not see that acceleration on the recovery which I could very distinctly feel as a slight leg pull. I guess one would have to compare with a baseline of people who don’t do this.

Another fun thing is that the Quiske file can be exported to a CSV which is compatible with Rowsandall.com. I imported that file and was able to do a couple of nice charts.

I am expecting that seat speed is more or less linear in boat speed and that the seat recovery speed is more independent. This chart is seat speed (drive & recovery) vs boat speed. Here, I am really just exploring the data, to see if I can make sense of it and possibly derive a useful technique metric.

It is difficult to make sense of these charts now, but perhaps after a couple of rows I will start to understand.

I have also created a data set with all the data from the two rows. If I find time tomorrow, I will do some correlation analysis. Big fun!

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Mar 31 2018

Two Trail Runs (and one Not So Trail run)

Tuesday

Hotel room in Phoenix. Up at 2:30. Spent some time reading emails, then decided it was time to hit the trails. On this trip, I was prepared. I had brought a head lamp and thus was able to fit in desert trail runs before dawn. It wasn’t particularly warm outside, about 9 degrees C, so I put a shirt with long sleeves over my T-shirt, got in the car and drove to the trailhead, arriving there at 5:45.

I saw a closed gate and was confused. Perhaps this part of the desert was closed for some reason? I drove back to the hotel, parked the car and started running, back to the trailhead.

When I arrived there, the gate was open, and I was able to see the sign saying that the trails opened only at 6AM.

Unfortunately, by that time it was time to run back to the hotel, take a shower, eat a breakfast and go to the office.

So no trail running on Tuesday. To-the-trail-running.

Wednesday

This time I was better prepared. I had discovered that the Apache Wash trailhead, a bit further away from the hotel, opened at 5AM.  Same routine. This time I woke up at 3am. I did some email reading, some real reading, and then I got in the car and drove to Apache Wash.

It was a great run. It was pretty dark during the first 25 minutes, but the head lamp helped a lot. Better than trying to use the torch function on the iPhone.

Then, there is this moment when birds start to sing, and then the sun rises above the mountains to the east.

I was running on the Apache Wash (“AW”) loop, but from a quick glance at the trailhead map I estimated that doing the entire loop would take too long. I hesitated at a sign that said “Connector to AW”, about 25 minutes in, but then I continued, and after exactly 30 minutes, I turned around and ran back to the car.

Another “there and back” run. I tend to have a strong preference for loops, but on a new trail, in the desert, I didn’t want to risk. It didn’t matter much, because the experience was great. It’s also pretty much the only time I am outside. My company’s offices are bunkers without direct daylight, and I don’t count a quick run across the street to get lunch.

Thursday

Up at 4:30 this time. Same routine. A bit of emailing with the team back in Europe. Then in the car for a 15 minute drive to the AW trail head, putting on the head lamp and run.

I took a second quick glance at the map and learned that that “connector” trail after 25 minutes would be ideal, and I would be able to run a loop!

Strava told me I was 10th overall on this loop. Yay! I didn’t run that fast. I was able to get into what I call my “fifth gear” and run effortlessly, but I stopped to take pictures.

Sunrises (and sunsets) are beautiful in Arizona.

Friday

This morning, I packed and checked out from the hotel. I had a 8AM meeting in Tempe, so there was no time to go running. (Also, I woke up at 5:30 today.)

My 8AM in Tempe was followed by a 9AM meeting at the Sky Harbor Circle office (my company has many offices in Phoenix) was lasted until lunch time. I had lunch with a colleague, and when he had to go to the airport, I drove over to the botanical gardens. That was my exercise for the day, a 2 mile strawl through the botanical gardens.

Now I am at the gate, an hour before boarding my flight to Heathrow. In Heathrow, I will connect to Prague, followed by a 2 hour drive to Brno, which brings me home late Saturday night. I predict that I will not be able to fit in a workout on Saturday.

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Mar 26 2018

Sunday – breaking ice with the ladies

The Veterans Ladies were missing a fourth person, so they offered me a stroke seat in a quad outing on Sunday afternoon. I was in for a nice, short row, so I gladly accepted.

Romana and I arrived early because there was some work to do. First, we put our single and double back on slings. Some experiments on Saturday had revealed that the new tight racks are a bit too tight. The guy who built them used two of the smallest boats as measures and some boats simply don’t fit. Everything has to be disassembled and rebuilt from scratch.

Then, I wanted to make sure the quad was in good order. There are a few crews in our club with a habit of cannibalizing club equipment, so in the popular boats you can never be sure you are using the original foot stretchers, sliding seats, and more.

The situation was not good. A lot of red C rings were missing under the oarlocks, and the club’s spare part are in Italy with the Juniors and Men on their rowing camp. So I had to take from my own spare parts collection. Also, the stroke seat foot stretcher was not the original one, but I had no way to fix that, and finally some parts of the rudder were missing. The boat was rowable, but it would take a bit more effort for me as a steering stroke to make sure we were going straight.

Finally, we launched, and in the mean time the wind had strengthened. It was a few degrees above the freezing point and the waves were pretty strong. After building up from arms only to a full length stroke, I settled on 16 SPM and we tried to steady the balance on waves, in a blazing tailwind, at this low stroke rate.

I love these kind of challenges, and I think it really helped us rowing technically well, when we went in to the narrow twisty bit of the gorge at the north end of our lake. The idea was to find quiet water, and we did.

It was nice to find out I could still toe steer a quad blindly through the narrow twisty bit. With a slow turning boat you have to make sure you are a little “higher” going into a turn, and I managed pretty well, relying on our bow seat to be on the lookout for any traffic or obstacles.

rowing data

Out of the twisty part, we were all glad and looking forward for the straight kilometer, and I guess our bow seat reduced the frequency of looking. In fact, it was me who spotted the ice first, and very late. We made an emergency stop, breaking ice with our blades and boat, turning the river into a huge black field looking like a gigantic glass of Coke with ice cubes.

We backed out of our Coke with ice, then turned the boat, and headed back for the lake.

The wind had gotten stronger, a head wind now, and we were slow in making progress. When we were half way the lake, our 2 seat asked that we Row back to the club. I didn’t blame her, because through the waves, she and bow seat were wet from head to toe from splashes of icy water.

We returned safe and put the boat in slings for s thorough inspection. Luckily, no scratches or anything from our ice breaking adventure. We did mention the ice in our incident report but the bit about missing boat parts was longer.

I am typing this from a British Airways flight from Vienna to Heathrow, where I will board a plane to Phoenix, Arizona.

How-to

With no holder for a SpeedCoach and classical riggers on this quad, I decided to use the BoatCoach Android app on my waterproof Samsung phone. This works perfectly with the RAM mount and BoatCoach has a splash guard mode preventing splashes to accidentally activate the touch screen.

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After working through a few data related bugs with the BoatCoach developer last fall, this app is pretty good for recording and showing stroke rate. I still think the user interface is overly complex, though. Using the app for the first time after a few months, I wasn’t sure if I was recording the outing at all, or if the app only recorded the data after starting a “piece”. As I hate having my crew waiting for me fiddling with menus and settings, I just kept the settings as is and hoped for the best. As a backup, I also recorded position and heart rate with the Garmin Forerunner watch. This connects to my Wahoo Tickr X heart rate belt through the ANT+ protocol. I was glad I did, because it turns out the BoatCoach app hadn’t connected with the BLE channel of the heart rate belt. So I ended up uploading two separate data sets to Rowsandall.com and then using Data Fusion to merge them.

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The power data were calculated using Rowsandall.com’s Physics Module. For this to work well, you need to input wind (strong today) and current (not applicable to this row), set the boat type correctly and estimate the average crew weight. If you get all this right, the Physics Module does a pretty good job at estimating power from boat speed and stroke rate. It is accurate enough to get a good value for the average and normalized Power, which is currently the most important metric for me on an outing like this. I just use it to get a value for the training load. As we rowed only 40 minutes and most of it was well below 20spm, the training load wasn’t very heavy.

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Mar 24 2018

Saturday – Back On The Water

Yes! Yes! Yes!

After four-and-a-half months of rowing on ergs, I had an opportunity to row on the water again! My last recorded workout with the NK SpeedCoach was early November.

I took the scooter to the rowing club, and took out the single for a thorough check before hitting the water. The lake water is of course still ice cold from melting snow, so I wanted to be 100% certain that my material was OK. Didn’t fancy a flip because of a material failure.

The Junior 15/16 boys were there unloading my trailer, which I had allowed them to use for their spring training camp in Racice. They had been able to do 30km per day on average only. On a few days, the Racice canal was covered by a thin layer of ice.

The older Juniors are on a training camp in Gavirate, Italy, rowing on sunny lake Varese.

We also have new boat racks in hangar 4. (Or hangar “IIII” as it is illogically marked. With the other hangars names “I”, “II”, and “III”, one would expect “IV”.) As the number of private and club boats is increasing, we needed to create new rack space, so a more dense arrangement was created. I was not so pleased to find out that our double “Orca” had been used by the builders to test the racks, and in fact had written an angry email when I found out about that.

The consequence though was that the front racks for doubles and pairs are too close to the hangar door for a Salani double which is slightly longer than our Wintechs. So before I could hit the water, I spent some time with Romana figuring out where to put “Orca” (our 2x) and “Dolfijn” (our single). In the end we found a good solution. As rack space is now very tight and the risks of scratching another boat is highly increased, we put both boats close together. Also, we should make some covers for the oarlock pins.

Another complication was that I found out I forgot to bring the SpeedCoach holder. As I am riding on the scooter and not traveling by car, I had to pack my rowing stuff in a slightly smaller bag, and I forgot to take the holder. I managed to improvise a way to fix the SpeedCoach to my wing rigger and off I went.

I consider this a baseline row. I didn’t take much notice of the values on the SpeedCoach or do any technique drills. Instead, I just enjoyed being out on the water again and rowed 18-20spm steady state.

The Brno lake was black and smooth like oil. No waves whatsoever. Only in the final 2k rowing home a cold headwind started to blow. At that moment, I was glad I had enough layers on.

After 15.5km in the single, I had a few blisters. Took a picture of the worst ones for my readers to admire. Tomorrow, we’re going out in a 4x.

On Monday, I am up at 3:30 to go to the airport and spend a week in Arizona. Lots of desert running planned for that week. No time to row in Tempe, unfortunately.


Workout Summary - media/20180324-1115300o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|15446|82:55.0|02:41.1|161.7|19.4|145.4|163.0|09.6
W-|15446|82:56.0|02:41.1|161.7|19.4|145.4|163.0|09.6
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|163.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|05:16.5|02:38.3|151.5|24.8|090.1|102.0|07.6
01|01000|06:34.0|03:17.0|134.0|19.6|122.9|151.0|07.8
02|01000|05:00.7|02:30.4|190.3|20.5|144.8|156.0|09.7
03|01000|04:57.0|02:28.5|181.8|19.1|154.4|159.0|10.6
04|01000|05:29.6|02:44.8|168.9|19.1|150.8|157.0|09.5
05|01000|04:54.2|02:27.1|177.4|18.9|151.4|158.0|10.8
06|01000|04:56.0|02:28.0|177.2|19.0|157.3|162.0|10.7
07|01000|05:35.9|02:47.9|161.6|19.5|154.2|163.0|09.2
08|01000|05:04.9|02:32.5|169.7|18.9|152.8|159.0|10.4
09|01000|05:01.7|02:30.9|170.0|18.7|155.7|161.0|10.6
10|01000|05:32.9|02:46.5|158.2|18.5|152.2|161.0|09.7
11|01000|05:09.3|02:34.6|167.9|18.5|151.9|157.0|10.5
12|01000|04:59.4|02:29.7|167.1|18.8|156.5|159.0|10.7
13|01000|05:53.3|02:56.6|133.0|19.9|146.0|158.0|08.6
14|01000|05:28.4|02:44.2|151.4|18.0|147.4|152.0|10.2
15|00446|03:02.7|03:24.7|131.5|18.9|145.7|149.0|07.8

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Mar 24 2018

Travel Week

Monday

This was supposed to be a steady state day, but I bailed out. It was a long working day, and then in the evening I got stuck working on integrating the rowsandall.com site with Amazon Web Services. We’re now using AWS Simple Email Services for sending out mail from the site. This helps to prevent notifications ending up in people’s Spam boxes. As often, I was a bit more ambitious than I should and tried to revamp the email messages in one go. I had everything working on my local notebook, but when I tried it out on the development test server, the damn thing didn’t load well. I managed to fix it but that took the entire evening.

Tuesday

Travel to Brussels. This was a planned rest/travel day and I respected it. There is some summit going on in Brussels, so all the hotels have crazy room prices. I ended up in a hotel near the Jubelpark where I had never stayed. Turns out the hotel doesn’t have a gym.

Wednesday

Hotel room workout. I lacked the motivation but still got out of bed. However, in this old building the wooden floors were quite loud, and I didn’t want to wake the guest in the room beneath me, so I just did one series of what was supposed to be a much longer session.

After a long meeting I headed to the airport and flew back to Vienna, then took a company car to Brno. Arrived at 22:30.

Thursday

First day of a two day visit of our China and India labs, so spent the entire day in meetings and doing a lab tour. I had already anticipated and planned for something a bit stingy but not too long. I also allowed myself to be slow on this 4x1km session:

Heart rate belt behaving strange in first interval

My heart rate belt behaved strange in the first interval. I think it is a bit sensitive when you’re not fully sweating yet, and I hadn’t noticed during the warming up. Only during the first 1k, I noticed that my heart rate stayed at 110 bpm. Between strokes, I moved the sensor by 1mm, and that did the trick.

Not very impressive intensities. On the water, I was pushing towards 300W last season. On the erg, I did a 4x1km on January 6 but that was a full out 1k, followed by 3 sub par 1k intervals.


Workout Summary - media/20180322-1931080o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06769|34:30.0|02:33.0|152.9|20.8|146.0|179.0|09.4
W-|04000|14:29.0|01:48.7|273.4|28.1|149.0|178.0|09.8
R-|02771|20:02.0|03:36.9|065.7|15.6|143.9|178.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|01000|03:36.6|01:48.3|272.2|27.8|110.3|129.0|10.0
01|01000|03:39.2|01:49.6|271.3|27.8|160.4|176.0|09.8
02|01000|03:37.2|01:48.6|271.7|28.4|160.9|177.0|09.7
03|01000|03:36.3|01:48.1|278.5|28.4|164.3|178.0|09.8

End of the (travel) week effect.

Friday

Second day of visitors, but they were heading towards the airport around 2pm, and I planned to leave for the rowing club around 3pm. This would be the first OTW row of the year!

Things worked out differently. We had a situation to attend to at home, so at 3pm I went home to take care of it, allowing Romana to go rowing. By 11pm everything was relatively under control again, but I skipped training of course.

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Mar 18 2018

Sunday – All worked out well

All worked out well.

I planned a “hard 6k” for Saturday, anticipating that I would be able to do it on the water, in the single. So, although it was supposed to be a hard 6k, I never intended it to be a full out one, this being my first or second OTW row of 2018.

It all worked out differently. It snowed on Saturday, and I decided to do the Steady State workout on my erg in my basement, and move the 6k to Sunday, when a small group of our Masters rowers meet at the rowing club and erg together.

I put the erg on slides, to get a bit closer to the OTW feeling, and, admittedly, also because erging a 6k is so much easier on slides. Did I mention that I am considering buying slides for use at home? I found a local guy who can make them really cost effective.

So here is the entire workout

I did a nice long warming up with some speed bumps. It’s easier to rate up on slides, so I found myself doing 40spm for a few strokes. Then, while the rest of the Masters started their 4x8min/2min workout (at 22/24/26/22spm), I started my 6k. The plan was to stick to 1:54 pace for the first 2400m and be careful, but I did see a lot of 1:52 pace, and when I got enthusiastic, even some 1:52 and 1:51.

With the other rowers next to me, I didn’t have difficult rating up in the second half of the row. It’s amazing how much peer pressure helps, although I also think that for a lightweight as me, rowing on slides is a definite advantage.


Workout Summary - media/20180318-1530530o.csv
--|Total|-Total-|--Avg--|-Avg-|Avg-|-Avg-|-Max-|-Avg
--|Dist-|-Time--|-Pace--|-Pwr-|SPM-|-HR--|-HR--|-DPS
--|06000|22:16.0|01:51.4|253.1|28.7|0.0|000.0|09.4
W-|06000|22:17.0|01:51.5|253.1|28.7|000.0|000.0|09.4
R-|00000|00:00.0|00:00.0|000.0|00.0|000.0|000.0|00.0
Workout Details
#-|SDist|-Split-|-SPace-|-Pwr-|SPM-|AvgHR|MaxHR|DPS-
00|00500|01:53.1|01:53.1|237.5|27.1|000.0|0.0|09.8
01|00500|01:53.6|01:53.6|239.5|26.6|000.0|0.0|09.9
02|00500|01:52.9|01:52.9|241.7|27.3|000.0|0.0|09.7
03|00500|01:53.5|01:53.5|240.9|27.0|000.0|0.0|09.8
04|00500|01:52.7|01:52.7|243.0|27.4|000.0|0.0|09.7
05|00500|01:52.2|01:52.2|247.1|27.9|000.0|0.0|09.6
06|00500|01:52.5|01:52.5|245.5|27.7|000.0|0.0|09.6
07|00500|01:52.5|01:52.5|247.4|28.3|000.0|0.0|09.4
08|00500|01:51.4|01:51.4|252.6|29.0|000.0|0.0|09.3
09|00500|01:49.5|01:49.5|265.1|29.8|000.0|0.0|09.2
10|00500|01:48.4|01:48.4|274.2|31.1|000.0|0.0|08.9
11|00500|01:45.5|01:45.5|307.8|35.2|000.0|0.0|08.1

Not a bad workout. Actually a Season’s Best, and pretty close to my PB (of 2 years ago) of 22:13.1.

Here are a few of the flex charts that I found interesting:

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How-To

Rowing in our rowing club’s erg room is always a challenge, data wise. The ergs have PM3 monitors, and no heart rate adapter. To get Painsled to register anything, I need to use the iPhone connection kit plus a lightning to 30 pin adapter to get my iPhone to work with the monitor.

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I do record heart rate separately, using the Polar OH1 optical heart rate belt worn on my upper arm. This heart rate band has a standalong mode, which syncs to Polar Flow, and then to Strava. Then, I can import the heart rate data using the Strava connection to rowsandall.com.

Before I merge the heart rate data with the rowing data, I first glue warming up, 6k and cooling down together on rowsandall.com, as described here.

Then, I go to the Advanced Edit page for the workout and select “Sensor Fusion”:Clicking the highlighted link brings me to a page where I select the heart rate data imported from Strava, and then I get to this page:

I select heart rate, and as I started the heart rate band at the same time as I started rowing, I don’t need to edit the time offset.

If I wanted, I could now split the resulting workout again to get a nice record for my 6k with heart rate, but I didn’t have a need for that.

The sensor fusion, joining and splitting are experimental functions on rowsandall.com, and you have to try which approach gives you the best result. I find that when the workout durations are very different, like today where the OH1 recorded one hour long record, but the painsled workouts where divided in three parts, it is more efficient to first glue together the rows, and do the data fusion with workouts of approximately the same length. That creates a nice workout record for the entire session, which can then be split up again if you want.

For the stroke metrics plots, I used the original Painsled 6k workout, without heart rate data, and just browsed through my defined set of favorite flex charts, zooming in on stroke length and work per stroke using the flex tools. Pretty happy with what I saw.

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Mar 18 2018

Saturday – Steady State

The Workout

Just an hour of steady state.

In my optimism, I had planned for a “technique row” OTW for Friday. It was below zero, and I skipped training altogether.

During this erg row in my basement, it was snowing outside. Everything is white, as if we have been set back three months in time.

I used Zwift again (more about that in the how to section below). Here I am riding into the mountains.

How-To

Today, I am riding on Zwift. Don’t panic. Everything is still captured in Painsled. How does this work. You need:

  • An iPhone running Painsled
  • An iPad running Zwift

Here is an example of how that looks:

On the iPad, you will see the iPhone running Painsled as a power meter. Connect to that, and your little cyclist avatar will get the power values from the Concept2. Actually, the power values are upgraded a bit, so while I was doing 200W on the erg, it showed as 235W on Zwift. I guess Rick from Painsled did that to make sure that an average rower keeps up with an average Zwift cyclist.

The fun thing about Zwift is that your ride/row with other people. I used to do that with RowPro, but that was very static. You had to make sure there was a scheduled row, and you had to adhere to the agreed start time. If you were late, you rowed alone. Also, because everybody started at the same time, and people have different rowing speeds, most of the time I ended up rowing my steady state alone, with some crazy fast people in front, and some slower people behind.

Not on Zwift. You basically join when you are ready, and you just see other folks riding along in the streets of the artificial world. You see a guy riding in front of you, close the gap and pass him. Or, you are passed by someone fast, and you pick up the pace a bit to try and stay with him.

As the row is captured using Painsled, at the end of the row, I just mail the workouts to workouts@rowsandall.com.

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