Will is something very formidible and hard to set a boundary. For developing athletes with sudden spikes in development and competitiveness it must be hard for any coach to put a cap on pacing or to say where the athlete "should be". It's so open-ended and exciting and maybe even inextricable to discovering the fire within etc. The movie about Steve Prefontaine ,"Without Limits", is excellent since it explores what Bowerman tried to do to teach Pre how to pace (scenes with him showing Pre how much time he leaves on the track because he can't stand not leading a race). Then you look back and think, yeah, but maybe that's what made him tick. Pre clearly had a distaste for comeback wins because of clever pacing. "It's not racing!" as I recall the movie's way of characterizing his view on that. Heavy theme, heart vs head.
--Jim
Specific 2k Pacing (Per 500m)
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Mike Caviston
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No, no – emphasizing that rule of thumb is taking it a little out of context. Ideally, you would know based on pre-race workouts exactly what you are capable of on the big day. Then, begin the race just a few tenths of a second per 500m behind your expected finish pace, row the second half a little stronger than the first half, and hopefully run out of gas just as you complete the final stroke. The general shifts in intensity might occur at 800m down, 1400m down, and 1800m down, but dropping the pace by one whole second at each shift is the most extreme or conservative way to do it. Ideally the pace for each segment of the race will be vary close to the overall average – a slight negative split but almost an even split. Here are the pacing breakdowns for my most recent CRASH-B performances:
In ’02 and ’03, I knew right where I was fitness-wise and exactly what pace I could hold. In ’04, I made some errors in pre-race preparation which I won’t go into but as you can see I blew up at the end. In ’05, that slow start was an accident – I fell off my seat on the initial stroke, and had to climb back on before I could resume (and I knew I had a chance to come back if I didn’t panic, so I didn’t force the pace in an attempt to make up for lost time). This year, I had a number of problems with training in the weeks leading up to the race. I won’t go into details, but long story short I had no idea what I could pull in that race, so I used a very conservative start. As it turned out, I had a lot left at the end and the slow start cost me a world title. My basic message is that one shouldn’t start out too fast OR too slow – but if you’re going to err, err on the side of starting too slow.
Mike Caviston
In ’02 and ’03, I knew right where I was fitness-wise and exactly what pace I could hold. In ’04, I made some errors in pre-race preparation which I won’t go into but as you can see I blew up at the end. In ’05, that slow start was an accident – I fell off my seat on the initial stroke, and had to climb back on before I could resume (and I knew I had a chance to come back if I didn’t panic, so I didn’t force the pace in an attempt to make up for lost time). This year, I had a number of problems with training in the weeks leading up to the race. I won’t go into details, but long story short I had no idea what I could pull in that race, so I used a very conservative start. As it turned out, I had a lot left at the end and the slow start cost me a world title. My basic message is that one shouldn’t start out too fast OR too slow – but if you’re going to err, err on the side of starting too slow.
Mike Caviston
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Mike Caviston
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The traditionally accepted pacing strategy for rowing OTW involves pushing hard off the line to get an early lead, and then working as hard as it takes to keep any other crew from overtaking you. Previous analyses, such as the study by Garland (“An Analysis Of the Pacing Strategy Adopted By Elite Competitors In 2000m Rowing”, British Journal of Sports Medicine, vol. 39, pp. 39-42, 2005) have shown that for elite rowers, the first 500m is the fastest portion of the race – despite the tremendous physiological cost. There is a perception among rowers that an early lead is a psychological and tactical advantage. I suppose young, inexperienced crews might have a need to see their opponents behind them as they go down the course. But I would think elite crews might be a little more knowledgeable based on the amount of evidence I’ve found supporting slower starts.
Incidentally, on that topic here is an article that may be of interest:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.j ... boa230.xml
I am confident that when I present all the data I’ve gathered on indoor rowing, any reasonable person will admit that starting relatively slowly (relative to overall pace) is the most effective strategy. OTW rowing places the same physiological demands on the athlete as indoor rowing, so it follows that the same pacing strategy should be adopted. In both indoor and outdoor rowing, while your competitors are in close proximity, you have no direct effect on their performance and they have no direct effect on yours. Nobody gets to play defense. Your best strategy is to do whatever will result in your own personal best performance, without reacting to the performance of others. Now, certainly in the last 500m the knowledge that you are battling stroke for stroke with your opponent can give you the adrenaline rush it takes before you can dig down for your best effort. My major point is you shouldn’t let that same adrenaline rush pull you away from your ideal pace in the first 500m.
Below is a summary of A-Final races in all categories from the Olympics or World Championships from 1996-2005. A small number of races were omitted because data for each crew was incomplete, or if the race featured fewer than six crews. There are 191 races altogether, with 1147 crews (one race featured seven boats).
So once again, while all crews tend to go out fast, the medal winners hold back a little more than the non-medalists. Another difference, noted in the column titled “DEV”, is that more successful crews show a significantly smaller deviation in speed (m/s) from the mean across all four 500m segments. As I compiled the data, I looked first at the years ’01-’05 because the rest of the data from the original source was formatted differently and it took some time to make it compatible. In the end I analyzed ’96-’00 and ’01-’05 both separately and combined. The pattern was virtually identical in each case, indicating the overall pacing format (all crews) and the distinction between top three and bottom three is a consistent phenomenon. I was struck by how similar the rowing profile is to the swimming profile (see my previous post on swimming & skating). Speed is well above the mean in the first quarter, drops below the mean for the 2nd & 3rd quarters, and picks back up to the mean in the final quarter. But in swimming, which begins with a dive, the faster start does not require a greater metabolic expenditure. In rowing, the energy cost of accelerating from zero to top speed is huge.
I am currently looking at data from individual events to see if there is any noticeable difference of pacing based on boat class, weight, or gender. That should take a day or two; if I find anything interesting I’ll pass it on. Then I’ll move on to the indoor racing data. But one final point about the OTW data and negative pacing. For the indoor events, I can show pretty clearly that on average, negative-splitters are significantly faster than even- or positive-splitters. But overall, fewer than 20% of indoor rowers use negative splits. OTW, the fraction was even smaller – only 34 out of 1147, or 3%. Furthermore, because of the inability to directly compare OTW times, the only measure of relative performance was place (1 through 6). However, I decided to do a statistical comparison and see what happened. The average place for crews starting at or faster than average pace was 3.51 – which is exactly what you’d expect if the distribution was even across all outcomes, since (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6)/6 = 3.5. The average place for crews starting slower than average pace was 3.32 – a little better, but not statistically significant. Still, I find that pretty noteworthy. It certainly weakens the notion that you can’t afford to get down early in international competition.
Mike Caviston
Incidentally, on that topic here is an article that may be of interest:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.j ... boa230.xml
I am confident that when I present all the data I’ve gathered on indoor rowing, any reasonable person will admit that starting relatively slowly (relative to overall pace) is the most effective strategy. OTW rowing places the same physiological demands on the athlete as indoor rowing, so it follows that the same pacing strategy should be adopted. In both indoor and outdoor rowing, while your competitors are in close proximity, you have no direct effect on their performance and they have no direct effect on yours. Nobody gets to play defense. Your best strategy is to do whatever will result in your own personal best performance, without reacting to the performance of others. Now, certainly in the last 500m the knowledge that you are battling stroke for stroke with your opponent can give you the adrenaline rush it takes before you can dig down for your best effort. My major point is you shouldn’t let that same adrenaline rush pull you away from your ideal pace in the first 500m.
Below is a summary of A-Final races in all categories from the Olympics or World Championships from 1996-2005. A small number of races were omitted because data for each crew was incomplete, or if the race featured fewer than six crews. There are 191 races altogether, with 1147 crews (one race featured seven boats).
So once again, while all crews tend to go out fast, the medal winners hold back a little more than the non-medalists. Another difference, noted in the column titled “DEV”, is that more successful crews show a significantly smaller deviation in speed (m/s) from the mean across all four 500m segments. As I compiled the data, I looked first at the years ’01-’05 because the rest of the data from the original source was formatted differently and it took some time to make it compatible. In the end I analyzed ’96-’00 and ’01-’05 both separately and combined. The pattern was virtually identical in each case, indicating the overall pacing format (all crews) and the distinction between top three and bottom three is a consistent phenomenon. I was struck by how similar the rowing profile is to the swimming profile (see my previous post on swimming & skating). Speed is well above the mean in the first quarter, drops below the mean for the 2nd & 3rd quarters, and picks back up to the mean in the final quarter. But in swimming, which begins with a dive, the faster start does not require a greater metabolic expenditure. In rowing, the energy cost of accelerating from zero to top speed is huge.
I am currently looking at data from individual events to see if there is any noticeable difference of pacing based on boat class, weight, or gender. That should take a day or two; if I find anything interesting I’ll pass it on. Then I’ll move on to the indoor racing data. But one final point about the OTW data and negative pacing. For the indoor events, I can show pretty clearly that on average, negative-splitters are significantly faster than even- or positive-splitters. But overall, fewer than 20% of indoor rowers use negative splits. OTW, the fraction was even smaller – only 34 out of 1147, or 3%. Furthermore, because of the inability to directly compare OTW times, the only measure of relative performance was place (1 through 6). However, I decided to do a statistical comparison and see what happened. The average place for crews starting at or faster than average pace was 3.51 – which is exactly what you’d expect if the distribution was even across all outcomes, since (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6)/6 = 3.5. The average place for crews starting slower than average pace was 3.32 – a little better, but not statistically significant. Still, I find that pretty noteworthy. It certainly weakens the notion that you can’t afford to get down early in international competition.
Mike Caviston
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Yankeerunner
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Great stuff Mike. Through many years of observation and practice, both running & erging, I had arrived at and continued to accept that what you have written is true. I've found though that ancedotal evidence such as mine doesn't hold as much sway as research such as yours. Yet I've been too lazy to to do the work that you have done.
The only successful athlete that I can recall who had world class results with a fly & die approach was the Kenyan miler/1500m runner Filbert Bayi, who broke Jim Ryun's 3:51.1 mile record with a 3:51.0 around 1974. Like you though, my feeling is that he might have been even faster yet with a more even pacing. One single success story out of thousands isn't mch to reccommend the fast start strategy.
One of the reasons that I settled on the relatively slow or even pace start was the psychological aspect. As a youngster I always had adrenaline to spare (or at least it seemed so) at the start of races. I'd get out with the leaders and feel absolutely great.......for about a half a mile or so. Then miserable for the rest of the race. As I gradually reined in my enthusiam at the start I still found myself getting passed in the latter stages of races and the mental downer of that would sometimes cause a temporary effect of just going through the motions to get to the finish. When I experimented with starting out significantly slower than I knew my capabilites to be, the opposite occurred. As I got up to speed and began passing others I'd get a psychological boost that would feed on itself and would sometimes have me gradually accelerating thoughout some very long races. Despite physical tiredness, the mental high of late race success (by passing others) was like getting a shot of performance-enhancing drugs at just the right moment. Bad choice of words perhaps, but anyone who has experienced what they think of as a "second wind" or a sudden surge of energy in a finishing kick that sweeps one past a competitor will know what I mean.
Rick
The only successful athlete that I can recall who had world class results with a fly & die approach was the Kenyan miler/1500m runner Filbert Bayi, who broke Jim Ryun's 3:51.1 mile record with a 3:51.0 around 1974. Like you though, my feeling is that he might have been even faster yet with a more even pacing. One single success story out of thousands isn't mch to reccommend the fast start strategy.
One of the reasons that I settled on the relatively slow or even pace start was the psychological aspect. As a youngster I always had adrenaline to spare (or at least it seemed so) at the start of races. I'd get out with the leaders and feel absolutely great.......for about a half a mile or so. Then miserable for the rest of the race. As I gradually reined in my enthusiam at the start I still found myself getting passed in the latter stages of races and the mental downer of that would sometimes cause a temporary effect of just going through the motions to get to the finish. When I experimented with starting out significantly slower than I knew my capabilites to be, the opposite occurred. As I got up to speed and began passing others I'd get a psychological boost that would feed on itself and would sometimes have me gradually accelerating thoughout some very long races. Despite physical tiredness, the mental high of late race success (by passing others) was like getting a shot of performance-enhancing drugs at just the right moment. Bad choice of words perhaps, but anyone who has experienced what they think of as a "second wind" or a sudden surge of energy in a finishing kick that sweeps one past a competitor will know what I mean.
Rick
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Mike Caviston
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Thanks, Rick. I’ve always tried to make the point that no individual can provide conclusive proof that a particular strategy or training plan is effective. Sometimes gifted people win in spite of themselves, and to prove that a particular strategy or program is more effective than the alternatives requires comparisons among many athletes over a long period of time with consistent results.
The psychology of the “fast start” vs. “slow start” is fascinating. I feel more relaxed when I start behind, knowing I will be physically more rested near the end and as you describe, getting a psychological boost from passing others along the way. (I wouldn’t purposely slow down to force others to stay in front of me; if my natural start were fast enough to get me an early lead, I’d take it.) When I was working with the Michigan women’s team, all out best races and biggest successes occurred by being patient in the first half and making a strong move in the second half. Sometimes we passed five crews in the last 1200m. The strategy worked in our favor in another way, too – other crews began to expect us to overtake them towards the end, and pressed even harder to take a bigger early lead, which only caused them to fade more. But we eventually raced crews we couldn’t beat, that were going to be faster than us no matter what strategy we used. Unfortunately, at that point the team gradually shifted back towards pressing harder at the start themselves.
Some people do seem to have a psychological need to try to get an early lead. Although some have managed to be successful this way, the vast majority have not. Since I can conceive of no physiological reasons why someone might indeed perform better with a faster start, the results can only be due to psychological factors. An athlete’s mental state and perceptions will have an impact on performance. But so too will the laws of physics and biochemistry. For anyone who has favored a fast start but wants to take their performance to another level, they can either try to change their attitude and shift to a slower start, or keep the fast start and try to change the laws of nature. I wonder which strategy will be more successful.
Mike Caviston
The psychology of the “fast start” vs. “slow start” is fascinating. I feel more relaxed when I start behind, knowing I will be physically more rested near the end and as you describe, getting a psychological boost from passing others along the way. (I wouldn’t purposely slow down to force others to stay in front of me; if my natural start were fast enough to get me an early lead, I’d take it.) When I was working with the Michigan women’s team, all out best races and biggest successes occurred by being patient in the first half and making a strong move in the second half. Sometimes we passed five crews in the last 1200m. The strategy worked in our favor in another way, too – other crews began to expect us to overtake them towards the end, and pressed even harder to take a bigger early lead, which only caused them to fade more. But we eventually raced crews we couldn’t beat, that were going to be faster than us no matter what strategy we used. Unfortunately, at that point the team gradually shifted back towards pressing harder at the start themselves.
Some people do seem to have a psychological need to try to get an early lead. Although some have managed to be successful this way, the vast majority have not. Since I can conceive of no physiological reasons why someone might indeed perform better with a faster start, the results can only be due to psychological factors. An athlete’s mental state and perceptions will have an impact on performance. But so too will the laws of physics and biochemistry. For anyone who has favored a fast start but wants to take their performance to another level, they can either try to change their attitude and shift to a slower start, or keep the fast start and try to change the laws of nature. I wonder which strategy will be more successful.
Mike Caviston
My comment may be not as scientific, but based on tough experience:
Actually my "main crew" is the coxless pairs with Polaco.
We are somehow following WP, and I'd dare say we are in fairly good shape.
We don't use to start too fast, but towards the end of the race, I use to remind my teammate: "C'mon, the others are much more tired than we are!"
(Although I really think: If they were more tired, they would have stopped!)
Fact is that we use to overtake our rivals towards the last quarter of the race, without rasing the pace too much.
Once again I think that good pacing comes very much with experience, and the excellent control that Concept's PM gives you about your exact output is essential help for planning the races.
Just my two Pesetas
Actually my "main crew" is the coxless pairs with Polaco.
We are somehow following WP, and I'd dare say we are in fairly good shape.
We don't use to start too fast, but towards the end of the race, I use to remind my teammate: "C'mon, the others are much more tired than we are!"
(Although I really think: If they were more tired, they would have stopped!)
Fact is that we use to overtake our rivals towards the last quarter of the race, without rasing the pace too much.
Once again I think that good pacing comes very much with experience, and the excellent control that Concept's PM gives you about your exact output is essential help for planning the races.
Just my two Pesetas
yr 1966, 1,87 m, 8? kg
[img]http://www.c2ctc.com/sigs/img1201739576.png[/img]
Be Water, My Friend!
[img]http://www.c2ctc.com/sigs/img1201739576.png[/img]
Be Water, My Friend!
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Mike Caviston
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I think this is a critical point that many OTW rowers neglect.ancho wrote: Once again I think that good pacing comes very much with experience, and the excellent control that Concept's PM gives you about your exact output is essential help for planning the races.
Here are some more breakdowns of the OTW rowing data. I looked at each event separately, which I won’t bother to summarize here. The same general pattern was found throughout: “winners” paced more conservatively than “losers”. In some cases the discrepancy was larger and in some cases smaller, and in a couple of isolated cases the medalists actually were a little more aggressive than the non-medalists (though the difference was never statistically significant). I also made comparisons by weight (light men vs. open men), gender (open women vs. open men) and boat class (which included light & open men & women, except the eight, for which there is no Light Women event). The number in the tables next to “class” [in brackets] refers to the number of races analyzed. So, for LM1x, 7 races @ 6 crews per race means 42 crews in all. I certainly won’t claim that these results should be taken as gospel, because each comparison isn’t necessarily made with equal numbers of competitors or an equal distribution of competitors from different categories (men, women, light, open), and who knows how much bad conditions on one day of racing could skew some of these times. (All of this probably had some effect on the men’s eights comparison, which shows the lightweights to be slightly faster than the openweights.) But it’s still kind of fun to look and get a sense of what categories seem to be faster (and by what percent, as the tables show), and to see how various categories seem to pace themselves. For example, openweight men tend to push the first 500m a little harder than lightweight men and show more variation in speed across the entire race. Women seem to be a little more aggressive at the start than men (except in the eight), but show less variation in speed. These results aren’t very strong statistically and I don’t know if any of this has any practical significance. I present them mostly for amusement. I’ll just keep harping on my main point that “winners” start more conservatively than “losers”.
Mike,
all very interesting stuff. Tom Rawls suggested I have a read.
How woudl you adapt this to longer distances e.g. 5k, 10k. I have a tendency to start off too fast (i'm trying to rein it in and getting better), which tends to leave me with a big slump in my 10K at 6-8k, then another push for home from 8k on.
Please feel free to PM or reply here or on the UK forum as well.
Thanks
Dave
all very interesting stuff. Tom Rawls suggested I have a read.
How woudl you adapt this to longer distances e.g. 5k, 10k. I have a tendency to start off too fast (i'm trying to rein it in and getting better), which tends to leave me with a big slump in my 10K at 6-8k, then another push for home from 8k on.
Please feel free to PM or reply here or on the UK forum as well.
Thanks
Dave
Last edited by The Ref on April 27th, 2006, 11:37 am, edited 1 time in total.
Dave
32, 73kg
Low Pull [b]1:27[/b] / 250m [b]50.9[/b] / 500m [b]1:46.7[/b] / 1k [b]3:39.4[/b] / 2k [b]7:35[/b] / 5k [b]19:48.0[/b] / 10K [b]40:14.4[/b]
[img]http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e8/hallcross/flyerslogo.gif[/img]
32, 73kg
Low Pull [b]1:27[/b] / 250m [b]50.9[/b] / 500m [b]1:46.7[/b] / 1k [b]3:39.4[/b] / 2k [b]7:35[/b] / 5k [b]19:48.0[/b] / 10K [b]40:14.4[/b]
[img]http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e8/hallcross/flyerslogo.gif[/img]
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Mike Caviston
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Short answer: much the same as for 2K. Published research suggests that for anything that lasts over roughly 100 seconds (up to marathon length and beyond), even pacing is the best strategy. (For 100s or less, the research is not consistent. Some investigations indicate even pacing is still the best strategy, while some suggest an all-out strategy is best. I favor balanced pacing rather than an all-out attack even for 500m tests. But I digress.) I have some data for 5K and 10K running and 1500m swimming that I might get around to analyzing, just for the heck of it. But my recommendation is to estimate as accurately as possible from previous racing/training what your potential is for 5K/10K or whatever, and begin at a pace slightly slower than that pace (but no more than 1%). If you’re feeling strong in the second half, let the pace gradually pick up. While training, practice the discipline to keep your pace in check early. Does that help?The Ref wrote: How woudl you adapt this to longer distances e.g. 5k, 10k.
Mike Caviston
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Mike Caviston
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So far I think I’ve established pretty clearly that at the highest level of sport, a slightly more conservative approach to the start is more effective than being too aggressive early. As I present data from indoor rowing championships, I want to stress that the best strategy – at least for indoor rowing – is to negative split. The tables include not only correlation coefficients for initial pace vs. final time, but a breakdown of athletes whose first 500m was at a pace slower than the final average, compared to those whose first 500m pace was equal to or faster than the final average. As you can see, negative-splitting is relatively rare in indoor rowing. I’ve included the % difference in Watts for negative- vs. even/positive-splitters, as well as the P-values showing the statistical strength of the difference. If you examine these tables & graphs, you’ll see it’s obvious that people who start too fast pay the price (hence the phrase “Fly-and-Die”). What I am trying to show is that starting a little faster than average pace, while not resulting in the total crash and burn of a really reckless start, is still worse than a slower start.
The times analyzed in each category include exactly what was available in the C2-UK archives. Results for some individuals were missing, for what I have assumed are purely random reasons that wouldn’t bias the outcome of this comparison. More of the missing results occurred towards the bottom of each category, which would only bias the data against my hypothesis. For example, the 50s heavy men’s category was missing a large amount of data for the slowest finishers, and while there is a clear numerical difference between the pacing of “winners” vs. “losers”, there aren’t enough subjects to give the difference statistical significance. I chose the various categories to get some representation for different age and weight categories in each gender. To get enough subjects for an analysis of one of the older veteran categories, I’ll need to combine results from several championships.
The times analyzed in each category include exactly what was available in the C2-UK archives. Results for some individuals were missing, for what I have assumed are purely random reasons that wouldn’t bias the outcome of this comparison. More of the missing results occurred towards the bottom of each category, which would only bias the data against my hypothesis. For example, the 50s heavy men’s category was missing a large amount of data for the slowest finishers, and while there is a clear numerical difference between the pacing of “winners” vs. “losers”, there aren’t enough subjects to give the difference statistical significance. I chose the various categories to get some representation for different age and weight categories in each gender. To get enough subjects for an analysis of one of the older veteran categories, I’ll need to combine results from several championships.
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Mike Caviston
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Here are multiple graphs illustrating the results above. The pacing graphs of categories with large numbers of participants are broken down into sub-groups to show the progressive nature of the penalty for starting fast. The faster you start (as a percentage of overall pace), the slower you finish. The scatterplots show the same relationship. Again, I’m trying to show that while starting out way too fast is definitely bad, starting out a little too fast robs you of speed also.
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Mike Caviston
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The belief persists that some people perform best as a result of starting very aggressively. My assertion is, those who use fast starts and win have an awful lot of ability, and are successful despite following a less than optimal strategy. They would be even faster if they slowed down a little at the start. While I am claiming the best strategy is a slight negative split, the data I’ve presented so far doesn’t really pinpoint the optimal start with a lot of statistical weight. Some people start out too slow and can’t make up lost time, others start out too fast and finish poorly. So far, by combining data from all the men’s open races I’ve analyzed, I can show pretty clearly the best strategy must involve an opening 500m that is within 3% (+/-) of the final average pace in Watts. Eventually, when I’ve had enough time to break down data from other men’s open races to add to the pool (and as more races take place in the future), I’ll have enough subjects to get that figure within 1%. I may eventually be surprised to find out that the optimal strategy DOES involve going slightly faster than average pace at the start – but if so, it will be by a very small amount.
Take as an example men’s World Champion Graham Benton, who has started 5 championship races at a power output that averages 6% above final pace. In other words, a honkin’ fast start. I respect Graham tremendously and wouldn’t presume to criticize. But calculating conservatively, I estimate a less aggressive start could knock three seconds or more off his 2K time, all other things being equal. Below are summaries of Graham’s past performances. Note that plotting Graham’s own results (starts against final times) suggests he performs better with a slower start.
Take as an example men’s World Champion Graham Benton, who has started 5 championship races at a power output that averages 6% above final pace. In other words, a honkin’ fast start. I respect Graham tremendously and wouldn’t presume to criticize. But calculating conservatively, I estimate a less aggressive start could knock three seconds or more off his 2K time, all other things being equal. Below are summaries of Graham’s past performances. Note that plotting Graham’s own results (starts against final times) suggests he performs better with a slower start.