Put in the metres and the minutes. Out comes the split per 500 m, the power behind it, and what that same split gives you over 2 km and 5 km.
Estimates are for general guidance only and are not medical advice. For a personalised plan, book a free guided tour at RPM Gym.
The headline is your split: the time it would take to cover 500 m at the average speed of the piece you just rowed. Lower is faster, which catches people out on their first erg, because every other number in a gym goes up when things are going well. A 1:50 beats a 2:05. The direction you want is down. Rowing has measured speed in 500 m units on the water and on the machine long enough that nothing else gets quoted, and 500 m is a quarter of the 2,000 m race distance.
The word does two jobs. On the monitor mid-piece it is a projection — hold this speed and 500 m would take this long — and in a set of race results it is a measurement, the actual time taken for that segment. This page produces the first kind, averaged across the whole distance you entered.
Under the split sits the power. Concept2 publishes the relationship as watts = 2.80 ÷ pace³, where pace is seconds per metre, and that unit is where it goes wrong for most people. A 2:00 split is 120 seconds spent on 500 m, so the pace is 120 ÷ 500 = 0.24 s/m, and 2.80 ÷ 0.24³ gives 202.5 W, which the tool rounds to 203. Feed 120 straight into the formula instead of 0.24 and your answer is out by a factor of 500³.
Power runs the opposite way to the split: as the split falls, the watts climb, and they climb steeply, because the relationship is cubic. Take the same 2,000 m from 8:00 down to 7:00. The split goes from 2:00 to 1:45 and the power goes from 203 W to 302 W. Fifteen seconds on the clock, ninety-nine watts at the handle.
What the page will not do is turn any of this into a boat. No published relationship converts an erg split into on-water speed or an equivalent race time, and the reason is not modesty: a boat adds crew, rigging, hull, wind, stream and steering, and the flywheel sees none of them. The number here describes a machine. That is its whole claim, and it is still worth having, because the machine is the same one for everybody.
Number of 500s = metres ÷ 500 Split (seconds per 500 m) = total seconds ÷ number of 500s Pace (seconds per METRE) = split ÷ 500 Power (watts) = 2.80 ÷ (seconds per metre)³ [Concept2] 2,000 m projection = split × 4 5,000 m projection = split × 10 Worked: 2,000 m in 8:00 → 480 ÷ 4 = 120 s split → 120 ÷ 500 = 0.24 s/m → 2.80 ÷ 0.24³ = 202.5 W
A 2,000 m test rowed in 8:00 flat, and the same test a year later in 7:00.
Fifteen seconds off the split is 12.5% off the clock and 14.3% more speed, and 1.143 cubed is 1.49 — which is exactly the gap between 203 W and 302 W. That is the shape of erg improvement. The split moves in seconds while the power moves in tens of watts, and every second gets dearer the faster you already were.
It is the time to cover 500 m at your current speed. Rowing measures speed as time over a fixed distance rather than distance over time, so the unit is a duration and a lower one is faster. Mid-piece the monitor is projecting from how fast you are going right now; in race results the same word means the time actually taken for that 500 m segment. This page gives the projection, averaged over the whole distance.
Yes, and it is the one thing worth getting straight before you read anything else. The split is a time, so smaller means faster. Power moves the other way, so the same improvement looks like a falling split and a rising watt figure, and they are two views of one thing rather than two results to weigh against each other.
Turn the split into seconds, divide by 500 to get seconds per metre, cube that, and divide 2.80 by it. For a 2:05 split: 125 seconds, 125 ÷ 500 = 0.25 s/m, 0.25³ = 0.015625, and 2.80 ÷ 0.015625 = 179.2 W. The division by 500 is the step people skip, and skipping it produces a number 125 million times too small.
Not in this formula. Concept2's published relationship takes pace as its only input, so a given split returns a given wattage regardless of where the lever sits. What the damper changes is how the work feels stroke to stroke — heavier and slower against the flywheel, or lighter and quicker — rather than the arithmetic linking your finishing speed to a power figure.
No, and this page deliberately does not try. There is no published relationship that turns a split on a machine into a boat's speed, because the boat brings crew weight, rigging, hull, wind, stream and how straight you steer, none of which the erg can see. An erg score is an erg score. It is a fair comparison against other erg scores and against your own last piece, and that is where its usefulness ends.
Because the calorie readout on the monitor is built from watts against a fixed reference person, not from you. Concept2 publishes it as calories per hour = watts × 4 × 0.8604 + 300, based on a 175 lb (79.5 kg) reference person, with no bodyweight input at all — and they publish a correction for everyone else, true calories per hour = the monitor's figure − 300 + 1.714 × bodyweight in pounds. Run that correction at any weight under the reference and the number comes down. Watts is the figure underneath, so this page shows that and leaves the energy question alone.
Not something this page will hand you as a number. There is no published standard it could point at, and inventing bands would be worse than saying nothing, since a split is only meaningful next to the distance it came from and the person who rowed it. The comparison that does work is your own: the same distance, rowed again, with the split written down both times.
Where a hard piece belongs in the week, how often it repeats and how much of the session it should be are training decisions rather than arithmetic. Book a free guided tour at RPM Gym in Al Manhal.