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Rowperfect is supporting the City of Bristol Rowing Club womens 8 as they prepare for Henley Womens Regatta. They are using a Coxmate SCT with a GPS speed sensor and will be writing regular updates about how it is helping their training.

10 weeks to go until Womens Henley

With Womens Head of the River Race having taken place only a few weeks ago, it doesnt look like a lot of time is left before possibly the main race of the season.
The only race for many that really counts.

I joined City of Bristol Rowing Club four years ago after moving to the UK from Italy; at that time if somebody told me: Diego, one day you will cox a Womens crew at Henley, I would have laughed. Fast forward four years on and m in full preparation for my fourth Henley campaign.
That is the beauty of British rowing: everybody can compete at major events alongside Olympians past and future. Cheesy, I know, but true.

In these last four years, I have seen the organisation of Womens Henley improve significantly, and I hope, one day, to see those river banks filled with as many people as you normally encounter during the week of Henley Royal Regatta. Undoubtedly it remains one of the most prestigious races in the Womens racing calendar, if not the most prestigious one – and Bristol has always taken it very seriously.

In our last three attempts we didnt get the results that we wanted, well, that we hoped. So this year we are trying everything in order to go as far as possible in the competition.
This is the reason why I contacted Rowperfect.

I am myself a bit of a gadget geek. In my spare time I like to run and I bought one of those accelerometer foot pods so I can be in constant control of my run, including my speed, distance (km or miles), time, lap time… I like to know everything because that is the only way I can compare my session with past sessions thus being able to monitor my progress.

One day I thought:I want to be able to do the same when Im in the boat, I want to have all those objective performance measures at my disposal.
As a cox Ive always used NK cox boxes which are great but limited in the feedback they provide. But then I remembered testing a couple of years ago a new type of cox box: a Coxmate, and I recalled that there was a version that could measure speed and distance with a GPS.

I contacted Rowperfect and I was pleasantly surprised with their friendliness and availability: in next to no time I received a Coxmate SCT with GPS.
It was very straightforward to mount it on the boat and its very easy to use it. I had it now for a week and Im just starting to realise how valuable it will be in these last 10 weeks.

So Ive decided to write a short series of posts on our experience with the Coxmate SCT and on the City of Bristol Rowing Club Womens Squad campaign to Henley.
Hopefully to a very successful Henley!

Diego Colantoni
City of Bristol Womens Squad – Cox