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Race 250 metres by rhythm, not by mashing. Pull too soon and the blade slips; pace it wrong and you fade before the line.
Tap the big pad at the bottom to take a stroke, and cover 250 metres as fast as you can. Nothing else is under your control — only when you pull.
The bar across the top shows how long it has been since your last stroke, and the brighter green part marks where the blade bites hardest. A stroke taken inside that band drives the boat properly. A stroke taken too early slips through the water for a fraction of the drive while costing several times the energy. Wait too long and the boat simply coasts, bleeding speed to the water between strokes.
Energy is the second half of the puzzle. Every stroke spends some and it comes back very slowly — slowly enough that even a perfect rhythm cannot be sustained for the whole 250 metres. When the bar runs low your strokes stop biting, so a hard start that empties the tank at the halfway mark finishes behind a steady one.
The percentage that flashes after each stroke is how much of that stroke's power actually went into the boat. Watch it for a few strokes and you will find the rhythm without having to count anything.
Find the green band once and then stop looking at it. The timing bar is there to teach you an interval, and once your hand knows roughly three quarters of a second, watching the bar actively makes you worse — you start chasing the marker instead of holding a beat. Rhythm is by far the biggest single factor here: a sloppy stroke interval costs around fourteen seconds over the race, far more than any pacing decision.
Early strokes are the expensive mistake, not late ones. Pulling before the blade has set gives you a fraction of the drive and burns several times the energy, so a nervous, slightly rushed rhythm drains the tank while barely moving the boat. If you are unsure, err a touch late — the boat coasts, which is merely slow, rather than slipping, which is slow and costly.
Pick a cruising rate you can hold to the line rather than the one that feels fastest. Energy does not come back quickly enough to recover mid-race, so the whole race is really one decision made at the start: how much of the tank to spend per stroke. The rate that empties you exactly at 250 metres is the fastest one, and it is noticeably slower than the rate that feels most powerful in the first ten strokes.
Use the percentage readout as a tuning signal in your first few races. If it keeps reading in the seventies you are rushing; if it reads high but your speed is low you are waiting too long between strokes and giving the water time to stop you. Once you can hold the nineties without looking, start experimenting with a slightly quicker cruise — the gain from a better pace is worth a few seconds once the rhythm itself is solid.