How do I get faster is the most commonly asked question I get on SUP My Race. Before we go down that rabbit hole let's look back at January.
It was an exceptionally mild month here in Sweden and unlike the last few years there has been open, paddle-able water for most of the month. Unusually for January there were no days when coach Michael scheduled a paddle when ice stopped paddling, although ice has been an issue at the lake the sea has been available with only a few days when sea ice caused some logistics problems. And some days on the water were spectacular!
|
|
Jan 2023 |
Feb 2023 |
|
KM Paddled |
208.69 km |
|
|
Weight |
98.0 kg |
96.1 kg |
|
VO2 Max |
46 |
47 |
|
Resting HR |
54 BPM |
50 BPM |
|
HRV |
N/A |
48 |
|
Training Load |
N/A |
851 |
|
5km PB |
38m 18s |
|
|
10km PB |
1h 9m 47s |
|
A pretty good month with progression across the board. Weight is much easier to manage without Christmas treats and that then feeds into improvements in HR and sleep, I seem to be sleeping better than I have in a while.
The two Time Trial entries were set on my 27 inch wide Blackfish and cropped from training activities which includes the rests between intervals that Michael puts in them. I am not naive enough to think I could simply take 4.5 minutes from my 10km time because there is a benefit in stopping but it is a good indication that things, in mid winter on a wide board, are pretty good. The 5km also included getting under 2 low bridges each way, good training if I was ever tempted to take on the 11 cities!
Here are some Garmin stats for January, showing consistent improvement through the month and an idea of the training load I get from Michael. The quieter load days at the end of the month were because I did not track some activity, user error that happens sometimes.
 |
| HR Data for January |
 |
| Training load for January |
Now the second part of this post - How do I go faster?
I think this is the most commonly asked question I get from SUP My Race, this is partly because there are no posts about which board is fastest and mostly because of my link to Michael. It is a complicated question to answer that breaks I think down into several sections:
Motivation
Why do you want to go faster? I want to go fast because I like it, I have no race orientated goals but I am very keen to do well in the virtual time trials that I run in SUP My Race. Some paddlers do not understand my lack of ambition in races, which is fine by me. In the UK I enjoyed races even though I would get incredibly nervous before the start but once paddling those nerves went and I could get on with it.
Here in Sweden I have gone to 3 races in 5 years, I enjoyed them but it is different here. There are reasons for that, there is a much smaller group of paddlers that race here and for an outsider, especially one with social confidence issues like me, that presents a problem along with my painfully slow Swedish and it might be because I am a lot faster than I ever was in the UK. Instead of ‘going to a race’ I would be ‘going racing’, there is a huge difference between the two and that is something Michael is helping me with. Yes, this year I will be at a race, maybe two!
Equipment
I want to start this by saying going faster is NOT about buying the latest super narrow carbon hard board and lightweight paddle and a bunch of tech to monitor your progress.
Really? Why?
I am very lucky, I have sponsorship from running SUP My Race and some very, very nice kit that helps me go fast. But my winter training is on a board I bought and it is not a narrow speed machine, it is a race board but the widest one available from that company, a 27” wide, flat deck all-water design and I’m still hitting speeds in the mid to high 9s (km/h!) on it, my TT efforts are cropped from training sessions including rest intervals on that board. You can get one from Infinity SUP Nordic if you want one 😉 So let's move on from that, until summer!
If you are thinking about how you can improve your speed then the best equipment for that task is the the stuff you are paddling on today. The equipment you have can, almost certainly, go faster.
If you want to go faster then the fist step is to give the board you have a good clean, if it is an inflatable inflate it to the maximum pressure the manufacturer says it can go to and go paddle. Find a course which you can repeat on a regular basis and where you can measure your time.
Set a benchmark and then challenge yourself to improve on that time but do not try to beat it every time you paddle, rest is important. Set landmarks to tick off, hold 5 km/h then 6 and 7. Build up to do the 5km SUP My Race Time Trial on that board before you change anything.
When you feel that you are at the limit for the equipment you have then think about changes.
 |
| EO SUP Fortis 95 and McConks Go Race 14c Prototype |
Upgrade - Paddle
The paddle is, I think is the best upgrade you can make at first. A properly designed blade not a plastic slab that might be better at moving pizza from an oven will make a huge difference to your paddling as will a lighter shaft that is designed to work with you and a better handle.
My paddles are like works of art but do not go buy one immediately, not yet. Befriend other paddlers, try their paddles and find the blade size that works for you and the length of shaft that works best for your body mechanics. Experiment and then check out EO SUP’s website 😀 Other excellent paddles are available too but when you are spending a significant amount of money why not get one that looks fantastic while giving you the best performance possible.
Upgrade - Board
The fastest boards are without doubt carbon hardboards designed for racing. But they have drawbacks; you need a place to keep it, they are far less robust than inflatables and they cost a lot of money. And there will always be a paddler who goes faster than you on an inflatable, check Michael’s win at the ICF World Championships in the iSUP race where averaged 10.3 km/h on his inflatable for the course. And lets face it, there are few paddlers in the world that can maintain that speed on a carbon race board on an open water course that started and ended on the beach with several turns. There are fewer who can do that on an inflatable board which is why he is the inflatable SUP world champ.
 |
| McConks Go Race 14i |
Carbon boards are not for everyone but modern inflatable race boards are really very good, they have progressed in leaps and bounds in the last few years. Looking at my McConks Go Race 14i for example, twin carbon stringers top and bottom (not carbon print like many others) which make it really stiff for an inflatable but also make it harder to roll, a recessed fin box to reduce drag, hard edges at the side of the tail and reduced rocker at the nose and tail make this a decently fast board. There is no hard edge at the back, if you want to know why then Andy will, at length explain why but the short version is in that when fed through a fluid dynamic modelling programme the speeds needed to give benefit from that hard edge were Booth-like and most of us cannot maintain that speed so it was of no benefit.
 |
| McConks Race board and light tourer |
The best board upgrade is to get the board that suits the paddling you do. If you want a skinny carbon race board go ahead, fast is fun! Faster is funner!!
Upgrade - The paddler
Investing in yourself is the BEST upgrade you can make, with no exceptions. And that is what this series of blog posts is all about, investing in this paddler with the help of World Champion Michael Booth. More on that next month as I continue to invest in me.
You can find out more about Michael's training from his website Booth Training, from his Booth Training Instagram account and on his YouTube channel BoothTV.
See you on the water!
You can read the previous training logs here Training Logs and you can get to individual blog posts using the labels in the sidebar.