SUP My Race is the longest running distance challenge on Facebook and maybe in the world, this is the complete guide to the group and how to take part in the monthly challenges.
SUP My Race History
The group was started back in 2015 by Ruben with challenges running for 2 or 3 months in the summer. I joined the group in June 2017 and two years later in summer 2019, when Ruben no longer had time to run the group I volunteered to run the challenges. Back then the group had approximately 450 members with around 40 paddlers taking part each month. At the end of that summer I simply kept going posting new challenges and haven’t stopped. At the end of 2019 I took ownership of the group and the rest, as they say is history.
Since then the group had grown a little and at the end of May 2023 there are over 7100 members and 900 visitors with over 300 active participants each month.
The group has three fantastic sponsors:
EO SUP who make the best looking high-performance paddles and boards at their base in Latvia
Booth Training who better to help me go fast than multiple world champion Michael Booth
Airboard - making inflatable SUPS since 2010 and inflatable snow-bodyboards for much longer.
Originally there were very few guidelines for posting but as the group has increased in size I have had to create a set of rules for posting so that I can manage my time working on the group and get an accurate set of results published quickly at the start of each month.
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| SUP Board, Paddle, GPS. Lets go |
The SUP My Race Rules
No one likes rules but they are a necessary part of running a Facebook group, there are two sets of rules within SUP My Race, the rules for the group and the rules for the challenges.
SUP MY Race Group Rules
These are there to make the group a nice place to be in social media world and are available if you click on the Rules button every time a post is created, breaking one of these rules will get your post deleted. The SUP My Race Challenge Rules are a little later in this blog.
- Be Nice. The first group rule is the most important, there is no place in the group for any posts that are not nice, if you want to be an internet warrior trolling people all the time go somewhere else. If you break this rule expect your activity in the group to be limited or to be banned if I think that is necessary.
- Please read the monthly challenge rules is rule #2, many people do not!
- GPS Posts Only, SUP My Race is not a chat group where every other post contains a variation of 'which board can I buy as cheaply as possible', there are hundreds of other SUP groups where you can find out that information in your own country.
- Metric Only, using standard measurements means I do not have to work out what paddlers have done or check what they claim to have done. And before paddlers in the US cry out 'a mile is a standard unit', it isn't. In my part of the world a mile is, officially 10 km and you are not getting that conversion rate!
- No Advertising is next, the group is sponsored and in return those sponsors get you all to themselves. No exceptions, breaking this rule is the most common reason Facebook Accounts get banned from the group, all the faceless spam accounts trying to sell you a T-Shirt or super-cheap SUP.
- You must post your own activity, this might seem obvious but there have been a significant number of paddlers posting activity tracked by someone else.
- You have 7 days to post activities, less at the end of the month, I delete older posts to prevent me adding them by accident.
The SUP My Race Individual Challenge
The Individual challenge is the oldest challenge on SUP My Race, it is the virtual competition that started when the group was created. Each challenge lasts one calendar month and paddlers are challenged to paddle over 150km, to take part is simple, post your GPS data in the group following the rules and I will take care of the rest.
Why 150km? This is the figure that the challenge was set to when I joined the group, I have experimented with shorter distances but reverted to the ‘classic’ challenge. It is tough to paddle 150km in a month, which is the point but some paddlers manage to eclipse this every month, I am still amazed at the distances posted in the group and there are many paddlers who complete the 200km and 300km challenges (and more!) every single month.
However, massive distances are not the point of the group. The SUP My Race community that has grown on Facebook is, I hope an inspiration for all paddlers regardless of distances, speed or board type. It doesn’t matter how fast you go or how far you paddle, as long as you get past 2km it counts.
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| Airboard Discovery iSUP in Sweden |
The SUP My Race Country Challenge
This was the second challenge in the group, originally called the Battle Of The Countries and you will still see the abbreviation BOTC in the group. This started as a simple total of the distances posted by paddlers in the same country, as the competition got more popular I introduced another result based on the average distance paddled. This gives the nations with fewer paddles a chance to be competitive.
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| EO SUP Fortis 2023 paddle and Nebula FW 14 x 23 |
The SUP My Race Time Trials
The first virtual time trial was held in 2021 when I ran an occasional 5km test of speed, in 2022 the TT became a regular monthly challenge within the group which then expanded to include a 10km at the end of 2022.
The Time Trial is a speed challenge for all paddlers who can maintain an average above 5km. There are some very fast paddlers in the group with the top men above 10km/h and the top ladies are not too far behind but the point of a virtual time trial is that anyone can take part without having to get a race board and drive to a race. You can go as fast as possible anywhere on almost any board.
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| McConks Go Race inflatable race SUP |
The SUP My Race Challenge Rules
The most important challenge rule for me as the group Admin is the one where I ask you to post your GPS image first and to limit your posts to one GPS image. With over 2500 GPS activities posted in the group each month collating your data is a significant task and it is much quicker for me to scroll through the group getting your data. If I have to open your post it takes me longer and if I have to scroll through all your paddle images to get to the data then that takes longer still for me to do the same work. There is also a direct correlation between the few mistakes I make and multiple activities in the same Facebook post and if you think I have made an error debugging takes significantly longer when I need to open every post to find data.
If you post your GPS image first it really helps.
To participate in the monthly individual challenge paddlers must post the distance they tracked with their GPS, a map showing where they paddled and the date that they paddled Without these three data items I cannot verify the activity:
- The map is needed to confirm that the activity was on the water.
- The distance is used in the challenges
- The date is needed to ensure that the activity is less than 7 days old and to make sure that I add the data to the correct month.
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| Distance, map, date. |
Distances must be in metric, KM for everyone. I do not take other units because of the time needed to convert to metric or to check any conversions supplied. Paddlers do not need to post the time taken on their paddle if they do not want to, the elapsed time is needed for the time trials and if you want to hide the time on your posts then feel free.
Paddlers must post their own data. There have been some issues in the past with paddlers sharing their data, when this happens I cannot verify the distance or who actually paddled. Because of this, the data summary posted must contain the user name.
I spend approximately 50 hours a month working on SUP My Race and the deadlines for posting are there to help manage my time and run the group effectively. Originally there were fewer rules which worked when there were 40 active paddlers but as the group grew an increasing number of paddlers started to post their entire month's activity in one post at the start of the following month. This made my job significantly harder and meant that results were published more than a week after each challenge ended, running challenges for 2 months at the same time is a different sort of challenge! The 7 day deadline encourages paddlers to post frequently through the week and the 1 day deadline at the end of the month means I can publish results quickly, that keeps participants happy and reduces the time I need to look after 2 separate monthly challenges.
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| McConks Go Race carbon prototype and EO SUP Oti Paddle |
When collating your data I use my phone to scan the summary screen you post and a number of spreadsheets on a laptop to process the data. When scrolling through the group getting your data it is much quicker for me when paddlers post one or two GPS screes in each post. When I have to start to look for your data by scrolling through multiple images I am much more likely to make a mistake, when paddlers think they are helping with one big post and multiple data screens they are making my job much harder.
Finally, there is a minimum distance of 2km per activity. This became necessary when paddlers started to post individual intervals from training sessions, not only does this generate a huge number of screens to process it makes finding any error made much harder.
There is a post explaining how the group works here
Data sources
There are too many different GPS tracking apps to list here and a large number of dedicated GPS devices used by paddlers in the group. The most popular ones in the group are Garmin, Strava, Polar, Suunto, Corus and Paddle Logger.
For dedicated devices and data presentation in the group Garmin Connect (used for all Garmin devices) leads the way clearly showing the date, distance and map on one screen. Not far behind comes Corus with a summary screen containing all the data needed. The other watches have apps that do not always have the three key data items together and paddlers need to make sure they post everything I need to update their totals, Polar users for example need to post two screens to give me the map and distance data.
Paddlers do not have to use a watch, there are paddlers in the group using cycling computers with modified mounts on their boards, the Bryton range have a good summary screen in their app for using in the group.
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| Waterspeed App - date, distance and map. Image Jacob Bendix Agertoft |
For apps data presentation varies. The Waterspeed app has an excellent, clear summary screen while the most popular app used, Strava insists on using non-specific terms like ‘today’ and ‘yesterday’ instead of the date but has a great map with the distance. Paddler Logger has a nice clear view in the logbook but loose the date on the individual activity screen. Others like the Caynax Sports Tracker present the data and map on two screens, when both are posted that works well.
I try to work with all the data sources that paddlers use but one does give me significant problems, Relive is a good looking app that I have used for years as a cyclist, when it first came out I was an early adopter. For SUP My Race I simply do not have time to watch a Relive video to get your data and the data screens produced have very poor maps without any date. If you must share output from Relive I will need to see a different app with the data I need.
The SUP My Race Virtual Time Trials
The time trials run over two distances, 5km and 10km. This is a speed test so no stopping for a break halfway, start your GPS, paddle hard and see how fast you can go. Fast is fun!
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| Time Trial, start and end close together, distance and date |
To make the challenge as fair as possible for everyone paddlers must start and finish at approximately the same place, this cancels out any advantage from water flow or wind and make this a test of fitness, not conditions. The faster you are the closer your start and end must be, if you want to compete at the top you need to get your start and finish dialled in. But there is some leeway, if you are paddling laps around a small area then I will be kinder with your entry.
The usual SUP My Race rules apply, post your data with a map showing your course, the time taken and the date. You have 7 days to post, less at the end of the month etc etc. There are some specific rules, the is a time limit of 1 hour for the 5km and 2 hours for the 10km and there are maximum distances for TT entries, 5.1km for the shorter distance and 10.2 for the longer one, there are minimum distances too but I hope they are obvious!
The Time Trial rules can be found here
When things go wrong
I am not a robot and I do make mistakes occasionally, when this happens I will fix things if needed. If a paddler thinks I have made a mistake the first thing they need to do is make sure they have posted all their activities that month, this post explains how to search the group
If everything has been posted then the paddler should tag me in any post they think I have missed and only then contact me.
Without wishing to jinx things I have a very good accuracy rate in the group, it is well over 99.9% and I have found that most problems reported are because activities have not been posted in the group or activities less than 2km have been posted, these are ignored but often included in paddlers personal totals.
Start your GPS, enjoy your paddle, stay safe, post your data
SUP My Race exists to encourage paddlers to spend more time on the water, hopefully this guide will help you take part in the group challenges.
You can find SUP My Race on Facebook here and you can check out the group sponsors using these links, EO SUP, Booth Training, Airboard. You can keep up to date with my progress on the water through the Booth Training series of blog posts that can be found using this link.