Looking for a Team to Compete Against

[MNW]

Hi all,

I run Mercian Fitness and we take part in the excellent CTC every month.

My client base is mainly 60 plus female lightweight rowers (I am the only male generally and I am 58).

I am trying to organise a bit of competition with a group with a similar demographic to ours as our boats are always a long way down the list until we start hitting boats mainly crewed by female rowers and/or over 60s.

Are there any teams out there who would like to do a CTC type competition which will be based on numbers of meters rowed in a piece and I will keep the scores on an excel spreadsheet with the average score being the boat score and then propogate it into a league table that I can share with all teams.

I envisage a "boat" being made up of:

4 x Over 60s Females - Any Weight Category
2 x Female - LWT - Over 50
2 x Female Rowers - Over 50 - Any weight Category

If this is any interest to anyone then please reply on here and I will set something up.

I am not trying to exclude anyone at all it is simply so my female rowers can have an occasional race against a similar boat demographic.

We will, of course, continue with the CTC as usual.

Ian

[jackarabit]

Your effort could produce an interesting test bed for developing an alternative to the excellent CTC. The intra-team seat racing model of CTC is a piece of hierarchic social engineering which imo dampens enthusiastic reception by female indoor rowers. The few active women members on my team appear to accept the time-enshrined role of completing or endorsing a fundamentally male effort out of obligation rather than enthusiasm.

Currently, the “new” Diamonds team with age-based eligibility (60+) is approaching much closer to numerical parity of female and male members than previously seen in CTC. Let's hear what the girls think about your ‘eights’ seating model, female only eligibility, and modest age-based handicapping.

[MNW]

Thank you for the reply. Yes I think there needs to be a comparable demographic so if I get any takers Ill set something simople uop but my web design skills mean I cannot set up a CTC style website.

[Elizabeth]

Finding a comparable demographic may be a challenge. You may have an easier time if you target smaller boat sizes.

I also wonder about the best way of finding women to participate. I feel like my mom (late 60s hwt) would be more likely to participate in this than in the Cross-Team Challenge, but I don't know if she'd stumble across it on her own. If you get something established, I'd be happy to pass it along to her.

[MNW]

Hi there, Yes indeed perhaps I was a bit ambitious with the boat sizes but I am trying to find something for all.

I am open to suggestions but it would need to be for women over 50 for a couple of seats, women over 60 for a couple more and then an any women seat.

Don;'t get me wrong my team love the CTC it is just we try to compare ourselves to TRhe Diamonds when they get down to one man (which in our team is me) and ladies over 60 generally (although I have 2 people who are mid fifties too.

For me it about keeping things motivational.

We run a league table for the darts game as well and that is popular as it isn't about fitness per se but about a consistent stroke and we employ a handicap system where the previous league gives your average score and you get any points above 10000 as your handicap. So I score on average 14700 each game so my handicap is 4700. It is a real level playing field approach and keeps people really engaged.

Always looking for inspiring stuff to do with the team.

Ian

[MudSweatAndYears]

Currently, the “new” Diamonds team with age-based eligibility (60+) is approaching much closer to numerical parity of female and male members than previously seen in CTC. Let's hear what the girls think about your ‘eights’ seating model, female only eligibility, and modest age-based handicapping.

Since a few months, within 'The Diamonds' we run a Diamonds-internal monthly competition based solely on CTC results as they come in. This competition utilizes a very simple and transparent age/sex/weight-handicapping system that produces a single ranking for all ages, males and females, lightweights and heavyweights. And yes, females do appear at the very top of this list, which works as a great motivator and contributes to record-breaking participation in te CTC.

happy to share the algorithm here, if there is interest in setting up similar intra-team challenges for other teams.

[jackarabit]

The Dutch power:age reserve formula (P/AR) appears to offer a rational handicapping system across gender and age and the weight proportionality factors an improvement on Chandisingh’s weight breakouts.

The prospect of 6000+ monthly entries in a CTC-based ‘data dump’ could provide a quite useful bookkeeping workaround for organizations and clubs offering their members intramural comps.