Weather:  Cold and misty.  Around 37F.  Wind 3-5 mph from the North.  This was a head wind heading down river and a bit of a tail wind going up river.

Plan for the workout was the same as Monday.  Focus on technique and learn how to incorporate feedback from the EmPower oarlock into really focused practice.

I also  wanted to experiment with the idea of using my phone with RIM to complement the speedcoach display.  So, I hooked up my HR monitor to my phone instead of the speedcoach.

I spent the whole workout looking at the work per stroke screen and trying to keep my drive length greater than 100 degrees.

It was another really joyful row.  Up and down the river a couple of times focusing on form versus pace.  By having my HR on the RIM display, I was able to watch and try to keep the intensity in the aerobic zone.  I let it go a bit higher if I was comfortable and working on technique.

So, now I had one set of data on the phone and one set of data on the speedcoach.  How do I put them together.  Well, it turns out that rowsandall.com has a feature called “Sensor Fusion”.  This feature let’s you take specific fields from two different data sources, align the start points manually, and create a workout entry that combines the two.  In the plot below, the SPM comes from RIM, and so it goes to the very beginning.  The pace and power comes from the speedcoach, and I started that about 6 minutes into the row.

There are some interesting features in the power part of the summary plot.  The blue bars showing the higher power levels are when I needed to apply a lot of port pressure to go around a turn in the river.

The pace shows the effect of the current.  Today is was a good 10 seconds difference on pace.  Notice how consistent the power is, even though the pace is very different.

It’s going to take a while to really know how to use all the data I’m getting.  Here’s a sampler.  A few thoughts..

• Power is lower than I was expecting at 154W avg.
• Finish angle was consistent, but Wash got progressively worse
• Catch and slip were remarkably consistent
• Effectively drive length is a short 80 degrees.  This is probably driven mostly by critical body dimensions (like my stubby legs), but it will pay dividends if I can figure out how to get a longer drive angle and less wash at the end.

I finished up and put away my boat.  When I looked in the car window at my reflection, I could see that a nice layer of dew had formed on my hat because it was so misty.

Today (Thursday), I didn’t have a chance to workout.  I caught the morning flight from Boston to San Diego, had a few customer meetings, and now I’m on  the red eye heading home.  I’m going to pick up my boat on my way home from the airport and I might be able to go for a row in the afternoon.  Otherwise, it’ll be another easy hour on the erg.