Sorry, no idea, I do not do any rowing. But if it is the rowing machine that delivers the distance data field to the watch, then the best would be asking at the manufacturer of the rowing machine.
Your watch will calculate pace as soon as you hit start and stop on your indoor rowing activity. Ergdata will start calculating when you start moving and stop when you reach your set time or distance or calories. It also becomes more complicated when you are doing intervals, Ergdata will calculate pace per interval and your watch will continue logging even during light rowing or rests. This will also skew pace.
I suggest you keep using Ergdata and online logbook for your precise data and use your watch to see generally what you did since you hit start and stop on your indoor rowing activity.
I know this might not sound ideal, but I made peace with it. It will still use your heart rate to calculate training effect.
PS. Don't look at the threshold power stats, I think they are based off cycling, I wish we could set custom ranges for that...
I haven't read about the Ant FE-C standard in detail, but I suspect, that it transmits speed/pace not distance. If I start rowing, and start the activity on my watch later, it will lag behind if I recall correctly. So pace should be the same, maybe there is a bit of a lag.
I was really happy when I got a watch supporting Ant FE-C, so I could ditch ErgData, and make my life simpler. But I'm mostly a runner, and only do rowing occasionally and not much. If you are more focused on rowing, then maybe logbook and Ergdata is more important to you. I don't want to spam here with that, but if you are interested in my reasoning and preferences, I wrote two blogposts a while back: 1, 2.
Thought I would add to this. I have this weird glitch now where the watts and stroke rate would get stuck at the values they were at when the rest interval starts, and then once the next work interval starts it would drop back down.
I'll try and re-pair the watch on the next row to see what's going on...
