Free Spirits Rowing

November's Weight & Age Adjusted Rowing Challenge will be the same as November's CTC - 12 minutes.

The rules are simple:

• Row for 12 minutes on a C2 rowing machine during the month of November and submit your distance, current weight and current age either a) in public on this thread or b) in private to myself by private message. (No weights submitted privately will be made public by myself.)
• Current weight is a weight reading that is no more than one week old at time of the attempt.
• You can submit as many attempts as you like, as long as they are always accompanied by your current weight and age (which may be different from earlier attempts).
• The deadline for submissions is Saturday 1st December at 12pm GMT.
• Distances will be adjusted according to the details found here: http://concept2.co.uk/rns/adjustment
• Males and females will be scored seperately.
• Points will be awarded based on adjusted distances, actual distances, and number of entrants. Adjusted distances will be worth twice as many points as actual distances. As an example, if ten males submit a distance, the highest actual distance will score ten points, and the lowest one point. The highest adjusted distance will score twenty points, and the lowest two points.
• Points will be combined to determine the overall (male and female) winner.
• A leaderboard will be posted regularly during the month-long challenge to let you see how you are faring, with a final leaderboard posted shortly after the challenge ends.
• Each Weight & Age Adjusted Rowing Challenge will be a standalone challenge, i.e. there will be no running total of monthly points.

Any questions?

Just a steady, low-rate. recovery session:

Distance: 2755m
Weight: 73.7kg
Age: 38

3000m 80kg. (was part of longer piece )

AlanS wrote: Any questions?

Just one question? What is this going to prove in terms of rowing?

I can't enter something like this because i just get battered out of the challenge by the adjustments.I have tried racing on RowPro with 16 others and i win every race but end up coming about 6th because i weigh to much.
People like Hywel Davis(triathlete and rower) will win these challenges everytime.65-68kgs and can row 8600m+ for 30min.

3220m - 69.7kg (PM'd Alan already)

12:00.0 3208 27 0 01:52.2 Just managed to squeeze past Strider

66 Years old 104kg

Bill

hewitt wrote:Just one question? What is this going to prove in terms of rowing?

Only marginally more than Thomas' Blind Devil challenge.

It doesn't prove anything as the adjustment formulas that underpin this are based on assumptions that don't necessarily hold. For example, that heavier people will have more muscle than lighter people (might just be fat). As such, it is realy just meant as a bit of fun. I don't think anyone is seriously saying whoever finishes at the top of the leaderboard is our best rower. But feedback given to date does seem to indicate that members appreciate seeing different names towards the top of the leaderboard, making them realise that just because someone is older and/or lighter and therefore posting slower results doesn't mean they aren't posting fantastic results.

3289m - 87.8Kg - Age 37

3088m - 109.2kg - age 59

3192m - 92.0kg - age 61.25

The Other Alan

3208m 66.5 104kg

Bill

A lot of entries received yesterday, here's the latest:

3338m 79.5kg 41. Should see me close to Plummy

Might have a stab at (my personal opinions) answering Jason's question, above.

As Alan says, it 'proves' nothing, but does give a way of 'normalising' performance of different ages and weights so that they can compare and compete on more 'even' terms.

The weight adjustment is based on normalising performance against what to expect if you put rowers in genuine on-the-water conditions (and avoiding the issue of technique). As such it is arguably a more 'true' representation of real performance, against the parent sport of 'real' rowing. A boat doesn't care how old you are, but your weight does have an impact on drag.

The age adjustment is a bit more nebulous to define, being loosely based on benchmarks of actual performance across age groups. It seems, IMHO, to have the same bias towards older rower's as the nonathlon, caused by relatively small sample sets. But it is the best 'equaliser' we have at the moment, and Alan's scoring system arguably balances it back out anyway.

Alan's system allows us all to play together, which is nice for the inclusive nature of free spirits. If you don't want to play, you don't have to. Personally I love being able to compete on arguably fairer terms and not being 'penalised' for being just too heavy to be a lwt, but way too small to be a true hwt.

Mike Channin wrote:3338m 79.5kg 41. Should see me close to Plummy

I hope not too close - I don't much fancy having another go - that one hurt!

My provisional calculations say either dead on, or me 1m ahead. Of course, we'll have to await the official verdict from bird-man....

And you know I'll have to have another go to try to keep Wolfie and the drag queen honest...

Bird-man says... 4m ahead.
I'll have my first proper attempt later on today. So second-bottom better look out!

Could we close the competition for this month RIGHT NOW? Please, please, please?????

Also, how odd is it that the actual and adjusted are in almost exactly the same order right now??

Actually, there may be an error in the table. Last month Bill went solidly from behind me to ahead of me on adjusted versus actual (i.e. made a big gain on the adjustment). This month's chart shows him going backwards on the adjustment (so unless he's got a LOT younger (!) or heavier, there must be an error in his calculation). So my first place looks short lived!

Mike, I know what you mean, and it was Bill's adjusted distance this month versus last month's adjusted time that got me wondering. I've checked, double-checked and triple-checked my interpretation of the C2 formula, and I can't see where I've gone wrong. It looks to me as if C2's adjusted distance formula is 'wrong', or at least different to adjusted time. If anyone wants to take a look at my spreadsheet to see if I've done something wrong, PM me your email and I'll send it on.

Distance: 3079m
Weight: 73.3kg
Age: 38

2961mtrs ____ 89.1Kgs ___59

I was curious about this so had a look at the formulas:

Adjusted time = result time - (2k handicap*(race distance/2000))
Adjusted distance = result distance + (result distance *(2k handicap/2000)

And at age 63, the 2k handicap is 59.9 seconds.

The adjusted distance formula looks odd at first sight since it ends up adding a result distance to an adjustment in seconds

So imagine a 2km race with two participants who are able to maintain 2 minute pace per 500m, one who is 63 years old (handicap 60 seconds) and one who is under 30 (no handicap).

Both finish the race in 8 minutes. The adjusted times are:

Older: 7 minutes
Younger: 8 minutes

So how about an 8 minute race (where both can do 2000m, i.e. the same distance)?

Older: 2000m + 60 = 2060m
Younger: 2000m

So the adjustment is worth 12.5% for the time versus under 3% for the distance.

To make the formulas more equivalent, perhaps the distance one should be changed to something like:

Adjusted distance = result distance * ( 1 + ( 2k handicap / race time ) )

This would give the older participant an adjusted figure of 2250m, which is the same 12.5% adjustment.

Actually since I don't get an age adjustment at all then I might have a chance with the current formula, so please don't change it.

Disclaimer: My maths may be totally wrong.

3262m 52 83kg

Hello everyone. My effort is 111kg, 44yrs, 3,259m.

With regards to the age adjustment formula, I think everyone who has looked at this agrees the resulting adjustment is not a number of metres to be added, but a number of seconds. How to add that to an already weight-adjusted number of metres? Work out how many metres had beenrowed each second, and use that to work out how many metres would be rowed in the age adjustment time. I propose to use the following amended formula:

Adjusted distance = result distance + ((2k handicap/2000 * result distance) *(result distance/race time in seconds)

So for Bill, for example, his weight adjusted distance is 3003m. That gives us

3453m = 3003 + ((71.9/2000 * 3003) *(3003/720)