6000 rowers rowing in beautiful Bled on the 6th-10th of September. I've never seen so many Olympic boats at the same time before. Said the same thing at the Masters Regatta in Copenhagen last year, but the 2017 Regatta this year in Bled attracted a new record of rowers and boats.
This year Quiske was happy to share a sales tent together with Citius Remex from Denmark. We love their ProW seats which for many rowers can remove the pain from rowing. It is convenient that the ProW seat happens to beautifully fit our RowP pods for measuring leg work when rowing.
We had two Concept2 machines at our tent so people could try out the ProW seat and get their technique measured with our RowP App and pod.
Our RowP App comes with a Virtual Coach for indoor rowing. When rowers don't meet the targets set by the Virtual Coach the corresponding tiles in the App go red. We had many good discussions on what is good and bad technique and why a rower should keep the drag factor down to achieve a sharper and faster push with their legs.
We sold our RowP pods to rowers from around the world but we also had an augmented reality demo which interested lots of people. In our demo the rower is able to get real time feedback on their rowing technique without having to look down, the seat and handle rhythm data is right in front of their eyes.
Rowing with AR glasses actually makes sense because you don't need your eyes so much to see where you're going, this is true on water too.
We also measured a number of rowers during their races. Our pods install in about a minute so there's no hassle with measuring rowing technique even during a hectic race.
We were also letting people try out the Tool Free Adjustable Dreher oars by Durham Boat Company and we especially like that their length can be adjusted on the fly (even on water). They also come with a very practical custom 3D printed collar for our RowP pods.
Since WRMR attracts such a large number of master rowers it is also a great place for meeting online acquaintances for real for the first time. We've been collaborating with Coxmate from Australia but due to the long distance from Finland we had only ever met on Skype before. It was a pleasure to also sell some of their gear at WRMR too, e.g. their 10 Hz GPS unit which is able to display highly accurate speed information without missing many strokes at the start.
Another rower we met in person for the first time was Sander Roosendaal from rowsandall.com. We also attended his "Make Every Stroke Count" event which was a well structured presentation on analyzing "Per Session", "Per Stroke" and "In Stroke" rowing data. Good discussions on the importance of measuring power vs e.g. technique during recovery too.
RP3 Rowing team was demoing their dynamic ergs close to our sales tent. The dynamic RP3 erg provides a lot of feedback on rowing technique via their real time power curve. The machine also simulates real rowing by allowing the rower to move less than on a stationary erg. We were convinced by the benefits of the RP3 and after a quick discussion with Jan Lammers from RP3 Quiske decided to start distributing them in Finland.
Our Quiske team also made it out on water. We have had time to train since our rather difficult race last year in Copenhagen and although it was raining hard during our 1km race this year we were able to shave off 68 seconds from our previous time!
Bled is beautiful and WRMR was well organized. It was lovely to get to talk with so many rowers and to shake hands with a number of new business partners and friends. Rowing is a hobby which unites people and I believe that our meetings in Bled will spark many coming adventures.
We'd love to row in Bled again (in fact we did sneak back to the Bled boathouse on the Monday after the event, trying to convince some of the local coaches to rent us a boat...but it was a no go because of thunder and lightning...well at least we tried).
Kristina
