Working with GMT

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Working with GMT

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Using GMT

Online Rowing is a truly international activity, with participants from different time zones all around the world.

Scheduled Online Rowing sessions need to have a start time that everyone can relate to, wherever in the world they are. So GMT (Greenwich Mean Time, the time at Greenwich, England) is used as the international time standard for Online Rowing.

This means when you create a Scheduled Row, you specify its start time in GMT.

GMT vs local time

GMT is always an exact number of hours ahead of or behind your local time, and that also means you need to check that you have the right day, because your race might be tomorrow or yesterday depending on how your local time relates to GMT.

To help you work out the right start date and time, RowPro has a GMT clock built into Session Setup.  It won't take you long to get used to the time difference between your local time and GMT.  Here are some examples:

 

Zone

City or Area

GMT-8

PST - Pacific US

GMT-7

MST - Mountain US

GMT-6

CST - Central US

GMT-5

EST - Eastern US

GMT

Greenwich - UK

GMT+1

Berlin, Rome, Most of Europe

GMT+8

Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia

GMT+10

Sydney - Australia

GMT+12

Auckland - New Zealand

 

So for example 09:00 (9am) in New York is 14:00 GMT. One thing to watch is that Daylight Saving Time (or Summertime) shifts you one hour relative to GMT.

GMT and your PC clock

Your PC clock is often not exactly correct, so for example when your PC clock says 12:30 it may actually be 12:28.

The GMT clock built into RowPro shows GMT compared to your PC clock. So if you are 5 hours behind GMT and your PC clock says 12:30, then the RowPro GMT clock will say 17:30, even though the correct local time may be 12:28.

You can see from this that it's a good idea to keep your PC clock correct. There are many utilities around for doing this. A very handy one is the Set Time utility which you can download and use in your PC.