Welcome to The Grid 2023

The Grid is a Virtual Indoor Rowing competition designed for anyone, as long as your rowing machine lets you set a precise time or distance. There are three main divisions:

Concept2 Users
Water Rowers with A1/S4 monitor or Smart Row
Other Rowing Machines

These divisions do not compete against each other.

Within these divisions, similar machines DO compete against each other. It's important therefore that you pick the correct division, and the correct machine.

• Concept2's Row/Ski/Bike Ergs only go up against the same kind of machine (for RowErg, all models are treated as the same)

• Water Rowers with SmartRow are separate from those with the A1 and S4 monitors.

• If you pick the "Other Rowing Machines" division and don't see your machine listed under Machine - please get in touch so I can add it.

If you have a community that uses the same machine as you - I suggest trying to spread the word of this competition in order to have others to compete against accurately

Any questions on this, please feel to get in touch at info@rowalong.com

REGISTRATION

The cost to enter The Grid is £10 (+ processing fee)

There is no prize money - as all profits will be donated to Cancer Research.
(I posted on Insta etc. before launching this that there would be a 'Lottery' to hand out half of the profits to competitors. It seems that's a tad illegal...)

Winners will receive a digital certificate and a discount for one of "The Grid" technical T shirts or vests.

Multiple machines

Once you register the machine you'll be using, "Concept2 RowErg" for example, you can only use THAT kind of machine for your scores. If you want to use another machine, you must re-register for that one. If the machine is in another division (adding a Water Rower to your Concept2 entry) you can do this with the same account. If you want to add the Concept2 SkiErg or BikeErg to your RowErg, I'm afraid you need a totally new account for another machine in the same division.

If you ARE going to register a second machine, get in touch and I'll give you £5 for the second, and £7.50 off for any further machines (only to be used by the person registering more than one machine).

THE FORMAT:

There are FOUR SECTIONS on The Grid:

A. Sprints

100m

1 minute

500m

B. Short

1000m

4 minutes

2000m

C. Middle

5000m

6000m

30 minutes

D. Long

10000m

60 minutes

Half Marathon (21097m)

COMPETITORS PICK ONLY ONE ROW FROM EACH CATEGORY

For example, GRID A - 100m, GRID B - 4mins, GRID C - 6000m and GRID D - 60mins.

Then enter the scores FOR ONLY YOUR FOUR CHOSEN ROWS. (Time for distance rows, and distance for timed rows)

To be clear, you don't just pick your four favourite rows out of the 12 - you chose ONE ROW from EACH GRID

SCORING

You will be ranked in each of your rows against other competitors in your group who did that row. Groups are created by combining machine used, sex, age and weight (see below).

Fastest for a row gets 1 point. Next gets 2 points etc.

Your points across the 4 GRID SECTIONS add up to give you your total score. The lowest score in your group wins.

So in the example above, if you came 2nd / 5th / 3rd and 1st - your total will be 11 points.

But if someone else in your division picked 500m / 2000m / 30mins and HM and came 1st / 3rd / 2nd and 1st - their total will be 7 - and they beat you.

This is what makes these Championships slightly different. You’re not necessarily rowing the same events as people you’re competing against.

ALL ROWS ARE EQUAL ON THE SAME GRID

Say there are 10 people in your 40-49 lightweight male Concept2 division.

GRID A is split as:

3 for 100m

3 for 1 minute

4 for 500m

The end results for GRID A will be that there will be 3 winners with 1 point each. 3 second places with 2, 3 third places with 3 and 1 fourth place with 4 points.

Those 10 rowers go on to get points from the other three GRIDS, awarded by how many people row and event, and who performed the best.

So although they may not be rowing the same events, it’s the points they gain that matters.

AN ELEMENT OF TACTICS

This means that the trick to this competition is to try to pick rows that you think you will do best in, or that fewer people would do. Will more people pick a 10km rather than a HM for example?

So even if you aren’t the fastest, you may get more points just by virtue that less people will enter…

TIES

What happens if there’s a tie? Firstly, the MOST HIGHEST PLACEMENTS will be used to decide. Then any HEAD TO HEAD events will be used to decide.

If this is still a tie, then either a Tie result will be given, or a new, 10 minute row can be agreed on, with the longest distance achieved winning.

CHANGES TO SCORES + score visibility

You can update any row with a new time simply by updating the score and uploading a new proof image. If you wish to change to a different row on one of the Grids, it's important you remove the score for the original row, and email me at info@rowalong.com to make sure you haven't gained points for two events in the same grid, giving you a worse score!

The leaderboard will only update ONCE A WEEK - so it's up to you to put in your best efforts, don't just try to beat the time in front of you.

Rowers will STRICTLY have until 23:45 GMT on 30th September to register and enter a result. I know technology can trip this kind of deadline up sometimes, but this is final.

HOW GROUPS ARE MADE

Groups will be split by:

Machine / Sex / Age / Weight / Adaptive

The registration fields also contain Country, Team and Height (Women under 5′ 6″ (168cm) and Men under 5′ 11″ (180cm) Select REGULAR Women 5′ 6″ and above and Men 5′ 11″ and above Select TALL) - but these are more for filtering than group formation.

Machine choice starts with your Division choice, then in registration, pick your actual machine. If it's not listed, please get in touch.

Sex options are Male / Female. I understand that there are a lot of people who no longer indentify with their assigned sex from birth - but I'm following World Rowing guidelines to keep this fair to all from a competitive point of view.

Weight options are Lightweight or Heavyweight - Males 75Kg and over should enter HEAVYWEIGHT Females over 61.5Kg should enter HEAVYWEIGHT Otherwise, choose Lightweight.

Age groups are the age you will be before October 1st:

• Under 12

• 12-15

• 16-19

• 20-29

• 30-39

• 40-49

• 50-59

• 60-69

• 70+

Adaptive groups will be split only by gender at first. But if there are lots of entries (or requests) an age filter will be added too.

Depending on entries, if some of the groups are quiet small, you'll be contacted about the option to combine groups in order to make the event more competitive.

PROOF OF RESULT

When entering your score, you'll be asked to provide photo evidence. This means either a quick photo of your machine's monitor, a screenshot of your phone app, or a screengrab of your computer if using software.

There is no requirement to prove your weight or height. This is done purely on the "honor system". With no prize money, I'm hoping there's no desire for a tall, 25 year old heavyweight to enter the standard 70+ lightweight group!

SKI / BIKEERG

By now, you'll probably have become really frustrated by me calling all of the events "Rows" - even though you can compete on the Ski and BikeErg's from Concept2.

The distances and time are the same for both - but please keep to the correct machine division. SkiErg's vs SkiErg's and BikeErg's vs BikeErg's - don't enter a BikeErg score into the RowErg group!!

MERCH

"The Grid" Technical T-shirts and vests will be available to purchase for £17 +postage.
Winners of groups will receive a discount code for a T shirt.
A raffle for anyone who has entered will be drawn for further discount codes (the amount of codes will depend on the total number of entries).

Any questions on any of the above, please feel FREE to get in touch at

info@rowalong.com