We are interested in collecting your personal best erg scores in previous six (6) months for the purpose of deriving race handicap times for both sprint and head race conditions.
The US Rowing handicap is something that has been used for years and is accepted as defacto, . . . despite the fact most masters seem to question it's validity. In this day an age, there really isn't a reason not to just collect the data to see what we get. There doesn't seem to be a "right" way of generating the statistic, and given the opportunity, there are probably multiple variations and possible approaches to generating a handicap. How a handicap rating is created is probably highly dependent on how much data is available. If there is enough data, there are a lot of different handicap systems/approaches that are possible. Assuming there is sufficient data, some that come to mind are:
We have our own regatta program, the intent is to modify it to accept any number of handicap algorithms and run comparison results for each handicapped event at the next several Greenlake regattas.
Results and comparisons will be posted here for discussion.
We are interested in the erg times for the last 6 months because, we think that it will vary with age. Also, it enables YOU to revisit the site in the future (at a different age) to enter a different time. We aren't interested in tracking who you are, we only hope that you are truthful, . . . We don't see why anyone would not be truthful about it.
We are interested in personal best times because we feel that under race conditions, your effort would approach your personal best, . . . all other factors being equal.
The only other criteria is that we would like for you to have rowed for at least two competitive years, or if you have rowed at the junior or college level and have decided to return to the sport. While neither is an indication of skill level, it does place a minumum bar on experience, . . .which we think is somewhat important.