POLL - Should Challenge/Honor Board leaders verify mileage?

[phlukke]

c2poll.jpg (93.06 KiB) Viewed 7169 times

[Carl Watts]

"Challenges that are meant to be fun"

This is the problem you get with people that don't understand a "Challenge". A Challenge is not fun it's about PAIN, PAIN and more PAIN from pushing yourself to the limit and gaining a sense of achievement on finding that limit.

Generally it's people that push themselves to the limit that get a bit pissed from the lack of a verified Challenge so just don't bother to enter.

Perhaps Concept 2 need to set-up a once a year Challenge for those people that don't want to (or have the time to) row all day at a snails pace or that can just cheat and not row at all.

[hjs]

"Challenges that are meant to be fun"

This is the problem you get with people that don't understand a "Challenge". A Challenge is not fun it's about PAIN, PAIN and more PAIN from pushing yourself to the limit and gaining a sense of achievement on finding that limit.

Generally it's people that push themselves to the limit that get a bit pissed from the lack of a verified Challenge so just don't bother to enter.

Perhaps Concept 2 need to set-up a once a year Challenge for those people that don't want to (or have the time to) row all day at a snails pace or that can just cheat and not row at all.

Not in this day and age. Its more about competing and even a bit about trolling online, the fact you are so boddered is reason to mess the board up. Plus don,t forget the wrong entries, even in the challenge series people put in typo s and don,r have see what they are doing.
Either way I don,t care, I do care about records though, those should 100% correct. If some one rows a million meters a week orso, so what. Your personal challenge does not change. I do believevsome people sit the whole day on the rower, mad yes, but he, that will clock serious meters.

[Carl Watts]

Fair enough so lets have one or two verified "Challanges" each year and rename the rest "Fun and Trolling"

Pretty sure Digital Rowing will get things sorted before Concept 2 and they will just run an "Online annual metres board" and my problem is solved.

[hjs]

Fair enough so lets have one or two verified "Challanges" each year and rename the rest "Fun and Trolling"

Pretty sure Digital Rowing will get things sorted before Concept 2 and they will just run an "Online annual metres board" and my problem is solved.

You don,t have a problem Carl, you make it one. It does not alter your training/erging.

[joe80]

I am unable to submit a vote as my response would be a simple 'No'. 'Not bothered' doesn't adequately represent my attitude.

There's a reason for calling it an 'honor board' and that has nothing to do with a rower's position in the list. It's simply that you're 'on your honor' to record your performances accurately. Trust and respect are important in life and, on occasion, there'll be those who are dishonest. Well, shame on them.

Insisting on verified metres during challenges would work well for home users but would make life very difficult for gym participants, particularly in schools or work-places. It would require a computer link to the PM; you don't see that very often in gyms.

Regards,

Joe

[gregsmith01748]

The more I think about this, the more I think it is entirely backwards. What EVIDENCE do you have that people are cheating? I believe that the burden of proof should be on the person making an accusation, not on the poster to an honor board. Just because I can't conceive of rowing that far doesn't make impossible or even improbable. If I were one of the incredible athletes at the top of the honor board, I would be very insulted at the implication that I cheated to get there.

If you have any evidence of cheating, call someone out on it. The vague generality that everyone at the top of the boards must be a cheat is pretty vicious.

[Carl Watts]

Easy there are cheats at the top, plain and simple, read the earlier posts. The EVIDENCE is that they don't have a rock solid ALIBI in the form of a verified row. Quite simply they could have been anywhere but on the rower.

Concept 2 came up with the IND_V system in 2003. It's a solution to the problem that they recognised and then failed to implement. Very forward thinking but the problem with it is that you really don't want to have to manually enter this for every row in a Challenge. RowPro on the other hand it just a simple right click of the mouse from your Log entry and an "Upload to C2" and a rowfile is a verified row with the actual result including the PACE onto a public website.

With the proliferation of smart phones and tablets over here (even the kids have them now and "Devices" like tablets at school went compulsory this year) its just a matter of time before Apps on them take over the functionality of the PM monitor with the added bonus of a larger colour screen and Wi-Fi with the possibility of running the likes of a RowPro "Lite version" at the gym its a dream come true. The uptake over here would be huge, Crossfit has taken off and the rower is part of it.

I have total confidence in Concept 2 in that when they finally release the next version of monitor it will address some of the issues here, its a no brainer to have a verified system put in place, the current system is like an Olympics without drug testing.

[gregsmith01748]

Wait, what?!?

The evidence that they cheat is that there isn't evidence that they didn't?
I thought that kind of thinking went out with McCarthy?

I don't know all the folks at the top of the board, but I know some of them. I'm teammates with some of them.

Let's get down to it. Here are the top ten rowers on this year's honor board. Which of them do you believe is cheating and WHY?



I'd like to give them the chance to respond.

[Carl Watts]

Really your that naive ?

Since when does anyone confess they are cheating if you ask them ? it's like lining up the worlds top 10 body builders and asking them if they have ever taken steroids.

At the end of the day I don't care about the honors board, but next season I'm going to get serious and post a FM every day and then you can try and figure out if I'm cheating or not. Just doing the training for it this season so it should be a cinch.

The problem is the Challenges where you triple or quadruple your metres while maintaining the likes of a 2:06 pace, are exhausted and you KNOW your getting ripped off placings.

Of course the end of the day and what you say is true and there are no cheats then there should be no one out there that objects to introducing a verification system for all the metres on the honor board and challenges, right ?

Even if the verification is optional at this stage and just a column on the right hand side the same as the rankings it would be a start in the right direction.

[gregsmith01748]

Really your that naive ?

yep.

[Carl Watts]

Concept 2 will eventually evolve the system and there will be no reason to argue the results.

That has to be better for everyone and perhaps more people will enter the Challenges and upload their results because of it.

Just seems the logical step to me to make it a level playing field for everyone that wants to participate.

At the very least, give those people who want to enter all their results as verified meters the chance to do so and have it recognised as such, really its not that much to ask for is it?

[jackarabit]

Accumulated meters is the only metric stipulated and recorded for the annual meter boards. I trust no one is lifting workouts from a gym machine or spinning the squirrel cage endlessly with a connecting rod and a gearhead motor let alone entering manually the yardage they think they should be rowing per day or week. I am not so trusting as to imagine that I am alone in including a great number of junk meters (interval rest periods, DF checks) in the total. I don't see that quality of effort measured as watts output, elapsed time, or especially PAIN has much to do with C2's use of this metre board to encourage participation.

I did feel compelled to do the recent solstice challenge in reasonable middle distance chunks like 30' or 5K meters. I verified my four pieces because I sensed that an honest effort was demanded to give personal meaning to more than quantifying the long road to a sore bum. At that time, my longest prior effort was 10K. I had just enuf confidence and no more to resort to gaming the system by rowing the first 30' piece just after midnite on 21 June and the other three in daylight. I would have preferred to row a marathon/2 in in one piece certainly but I'm not having trouble with my self respect. Why should I question the performance of my athletic betters when I never question the status of those slow and tasty morsels of sharkbait below me in the event rankings. Some of these folks will trade places relative to me this week or next. Don't get et! Swim in a school.

Jack

[phlukke]

thanks for all the responses.
personally I will be lobbying Concept for a separate verified board for the Fall Team Challenge.
I don't understand why if you claim 2MM in a month or 1MM in a week that u wouldn't want to proof it.
Interesting that in the CTC everyone seems to go out of their way to honor every row of significance

[jackarabit]

Looks to me that the top guy on day 68 of the current honorable honor system honors board is putting up a bit over .25MMm per week. The offender(s) with 1MMm weekly or 2MMm monthly are found where exactly? They're not in Smith's screen grab. Are we all on the same C2 challenge leave alone page?

Jack