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 Oscar, as we all know, won last weekend's ARB Surf Ski World
Cup. Dawid, who until then had headed the Surfski.info World Rankings, came sixth - further back
than he's been for a long time.
Both men have posted the data from their Garmin Forerunner
HR monitor/GPS units. How do they
compare?
Start
When comparing the two tracks, the first obvious difference
is that Oscar's track goes in a straight line diagonally out to sea, while
Dawid's goes out to where the buoys where, and immediately starts snaking back
& forth as he catches the runs.
 Dawid's is the inside line; Oscar took the seaward line
The
answer to that mystery is that Oscar's unit wasn't recording HR or GPS until he
was about 8km into the race.
 The first buoy - Oscar on the outside (Photo: Gameplan Media)
Catching Runs
There were two sets of waves on the day: the wind swell was coming
(roughly) from the WSW while the deep sea swells where coming from the SSW i.e.
the wind swell was going left to right; the sea swell from right to left. You'd catch a wind swell to get up to speed
then turn onto the bigger faster sea swells...
Awesome!
The point is that you can actually see this on the GPS
tracks - the curves in the tracks show where they were going from wind wave to
sea swell and back again.
 Dawid's start: around the buoys and into the runs
 Dawid & Hank McGregor just after the start.
Lines
The current always plays a part off the Durban coast and it's
always a question whether to go close behind the backline or to go out to
sea. Dawid chose to stay close in (as
did I). As you can see from the GPS
trace, Oscar went far further out to sea - 1.3km further in fact.
 Midway - Oscar is about 1.3km further out to sea
Was it a mistake for Dawid to stay so close in?
The Final Sprint
The final 1.5km sprint was extremely hard as the paddlers
tackled a head-on 30-35kt wind.
 The final sprint to the beach
The wily
Oscar had prepared for this section of the race carefully and you can see how
he headed straight for the harbor wall capitalizing on the shelter it gave
before he headed across to the finish, ending up about 200m in front of Hank
McGregor who took a line similar to Dawid's into the teeth of the wind.
Oscar's Speed &
HR Trace
 Oscar's Speed & HR Trace
Oscar's trace is somewhat marred by the fact that his unit
was recording properly for the first 8km.
He then forgot to press the stop button!
But there are still some interesting details to be observed including
several speed spikes to over 35kph (including one to 45kph). And look at his HR over the final stretch -
hammering away at over 170bpm.
Dawid's Speed
 Dawid's Speed
Dawid wasn't wearing a HR monitor so we'll never what his heart was doing on the final stretch... His speed trace though shows a maximum of
around 32kph.
MotionBased
Oscar's data is available at:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/episode/view.do?episodePk.pkValue=3185989
Dawid's data is at:
http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/invitation/dashboard.mb?episodePk.pkValue=3173348
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