Speed Coach GPS vs. iPhone with the app?

[1xsculler]

How do these two compare especially in smooth blending of pace?

[rtanton]

Rowing daily with a Whitehall Tango, I have used both. I found iPhone app only marginally usable. The Speed Coach is well worth your investment and it accompanies every row on the water.

[lt.wolf]

Simply put, Speed coach gps us built for rowing, flows well. Your phone is not built for the boat without doing some work. Keep them separate.

[SwissSculler]

NK GPS has 5hz frequency which means 5 readings per second and fitted to rowing. Plus you can use impeller. The iPhone is a piece of $h!t in comparison. Personally I understand the desire that a "smart phone" could do it all, but it doesn't. I am laughing at anyone who seriously "trains with an iPhone". Sorry.

[1xsculler]

I'm glad you're confirming what I also found when trying to row with my iPhone. I thought I might not have downloaded the best rowing app or not used the one I had correctly.
My preference is my Speed Coach XL2 (I really like the HR easily viewable and right in front of me) with the impeller mounted in the skeg and careful calibration with my Garmin GPS unit.

[Steven M-M]

Please excuse the meander. I've never bothered with calibration, as my concern is mostly about comparing one workout to the next and I row on a river with no clear distance markers. For the last year I've used a Garmin HRM & can get a good comparison distance. I notice when I do, for example, 10k SS my Speed coach will read ~ 500m more than my Garmin. But if I do 10k of longer, head race speed intervals, the Garmin reads slight more distance, by say ~200m. Assuming the GPS is constant, is there some nonlinearity in the Speed coach measurement? I asked NK and they didn't think so. Has anyone else observed this?

[mightyquinn]

Please excuse the meander. I've never bothered with calibration, as my concern is mostly about comparing one workout to the next and I row on a river with no clear distance markers. For the last year I've used a Garmin HRM & can get a good comparison distance. I notice when I do, for example, 10k SS my Speed coach will read ~ 500m more than my Garmin. But if I do 10k of longer, head race speed intervals, the Garmin reads slight more distance, by say ~200m. Assuming the GPS is constant, is there some nonlinearity in the Speed coach measurement? I asked NK and they didn't think so. Has anyone else observed this?

In the case of the intervals, are you stopping between pieces or just going on the paddle? If you stop paddling, particularly if your speed coach gets stroke rate from a seat-magnet, the speed coach might be pausing while the boat is still gliding. The GPS would keep measuring distance even though you'd stopped paddling. Just a theory.

[Steven M-M]

MQ -- Helpful thought. For longer intervals, I tend to paddle, but even if I stop between shorter intervals I don't float far downstream. 10m of floating between intervals with the SC sleeping could account for some of the difference, however. On SS pieces I also pause briefly to drink and stretch/twist every 20-30', so I'm not sure if this is any different from my interval work. BTW, I'm more curious than concerned. Some performance measurement surly helps training, but I'm not focused on precise measurement, just reasonable & reliable benchmarks. With regard to speed, I find my impeller based measures more reliable than GPS. I download my GPS measured workouts which show periods of going 0"/km, a superhero fantasy that blows the averages.

[mightyquinn]

MQ -- Helpful thought. For longer intervals, I tend to paddle, but even if I stop between shorter intervals I don't float far downstream. 10m of floating between intervals with the SC sleeping could account for some of the difference, however. On SS pieces I also pause briefly to drink and stretch/twist every 20-30', so I'm not sure if this is any different from my interval work. BTW, I'm more curious than concerned. Some performance measurement surly helps training, but I'm not focused on precise measurement, just reasonable & reliable benchmarks. With regard to speed, I find my impeller based measures more reliable than GPS. I download my GPS measured workouts which show periods of going 0"/km, a superhero fantasy that blows the averages.

I agree that consistency is more important for training than accuracy or calibration. Having said that, I am glad to finally have an accurate calibration factor for my impeller, particularly for racing. I assume you could use your GPS in conjunction with the calibration routine in your speed coach to get a pretty good read on your impeller's calibration.

[Steven M-M]

MQ -- I don't use the SC for racing (except when I used to row the marathon). I find it distracting, but that's just me. I take the little propeller off; the fin has been on my hull for so many years I worry about damaging my hull by removing it. I use the Stroke Coach for racing, paying attention to stroke rate and, for 1ks, count. For me, focusing on splits was either disheartening--am I really going that slow--or made me slow down for fear of dying before the finish. I'm better focusing on the race, not my splits. I know many faster rowers who gain from monitoring their splits during races, however.

[mightyquinn]

MQ -- I don't use the SC for racing (except when I used to row the marathon). I find it distracting, but that's just me. I take the little propeller off; the fin has been on my hull for so many years I worry about damaging my hull by removing it. I use the Stroke Coach for racing, paying attention to stroke rate and, for 1ks, count. For me, focusing on splits was either disheartening--am I really going that slow--or made me slow down for fear of dying before the finish. I'm better focusing on the race, not my splits. I know many faster rowers who gain from monitoring their splits during races, however.

Interesting. I didn't know you could remove the prop from the impeller assembly.

In 1Ks, for the most part I look at meters and stroke count. I generally let my stroke rate be dictated by conditions and what feels right at the time, so while I am aware of my rating, I don't worry about it too much during a race. It's useful for me to have the splits so that I don't let myself get carried away in the early part of the race. For head races, meters down, elapsed time and splits are all helpful. Once again, splits are important in the first 3rd of the race in order to prevent myself from going too fast early. Once I am into the body of the race, my splits settle into a groove and I'm better able to gauge how to budget my effort until the sprint.

[1xsculler]

The propeller has a small, black, plastic piece that screws into the propeller mount.

[bloomp]

So if you don't have an impeller wired into the boat, is the phone app an okay substitute? Any reason to drop $50 on the app instead of just using the free version?

[mightyquinn]

Earlier comments in the thread above seem pretty negative on using the iphone as a SpeedCoach substitute. I guess it depends what you want it for. It probably works fine as a stroke meter, but in terms of real time stroke for stroke pace and distance data, I don't think anything rivals the Speed Coach. Wiring a boat for a speed coach is pretty simple. The impeller is stuck on the hull with adhesive -- it is not wired into the boat. The receiver is stickered to the other side of the hull, usually just to the stern of the foot stretcher on a 1x, with a wire running to the SpeedCoach bracket. Or, if you don't want an impeller, get a Speed Coach GPS.

[1xsculler]

Or mount the impeller in the trailing edge of your skeg, just the tiny shaft with the propeller on it like Ted Van Dusen does and then you get virtually no drag and drying off your boat and putting a cover on it is easier. I always calibrate that set-up because it will be different than with the entire impeller stuck to the bottom of your boat.