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| EO SUP Nebula FW |
July here in Sweden was windy, wet and not at all like summer so it’s no surprise that I didn’t post any fast paddles, the month was a balance month with a week off with a minor illness which, luckily(!) coincided with the worst week of windy weather. It was just too windy to paddle!
With that in mind here are the stats
Jan 23 | Feb 23 | March 2023 | April 2023 | May 2023 | June 2023 | July 2023 | August 2023 | |
KM paddled | 208.69 | 122.34 | 152.94 | 273.27 | 260.77 | 248.81 | 200.40 | |
Weight | 98 kg | 96.1kg | 96.3 | 98.7 | 98 | 94.9 | 97.1 | 95.1 |
VO2 Max | 46 | 47 | 47 | 46 | 46 | 47 | 47 | 47* |
Resting HR (bpm) | 54 | 50 | 50 | 55 | 52 | 50 | 49 | 49 |
HRV | N/A | 48 | 48 | 45 | 50 | 54 | 54 | 56 |
Training load | N/A | 851 | 161 | 723 | 963 | 928 | 913 | 1001 |
5km | 38m 18s | N/A | 33m 21s | 33m 7s | 32m 45s | 30m 33s | N/A | |
10km | 1h 9m 47s | 1h 8m 44s | 1h 15m 55s | 1h 10m 13s | 1h 11m 7s | 1h 3m 10s | N/A |
The highlight, my weight is back where it should be. And my VO2 Max briefly hit 48 when I was doing a little more cycling. Did I mention July wasn’t great for fast paddling?
Along with some trips on the mountain bike, there was an opportunity early in the month for a longer trip, around Kungsbacka Fjord on my Blackfish, a whole morning when everything was just right, including the tailwind on the way home.
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| Kungsbackafjord by Blackfish |
And earlier in the month I was super-happy to get a parcel from USWE, a ZULO 2l waist hydration pack. If USWE are a new name to you then they are a Swedish company specialising in 'Bounce Free Action Packs' and their Zulo comes in a very bright 'crazy yellow' colour, perfect to be seen on the water. I will be reviewing my pack soon but until then you can read about USWE on their website here.
Data
With nothing interesting to talk about this month, I decided to take a look at my Garmin stats from the start of my Booth Training journey, if you have read my first training blog you will remember that I was an enthusiastic paddler but I didn’t really do any training. If you’ve not read the first one then you can find it here and all the others from the sidebar in this blog or using this link.
In the time before Boothy my enthusiasm was propelling me at a reasonable speed on my prototype McConks race board. My personal best for the 5km SUP My Race Time Trial was 32 minutes 33 seconds, an average speed of 9.22 km/h and my 10km Time Trial personal best was 1 hour 6 minutes 9 seconds, an average speed of 9.07 km/h. Hold onto those figures.
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| One million paddle strokes with this EO SUP paddle |
One million.
Getting lots of data from Garmin Connect is not that easy, you would think that there would be a download feature where you could specify a date but no, when logged in on a browser you scroll back through your history until you get to the date you want and click download. Easy enough for a short period of time but I wanted/needed to go back to February 2022, 18 months of data. At least you can easily filter on activity type, Stand UP Paddle is hidden under the waters port icon.
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| Garmin Connect Activities Screen on a web browser |
With careful use of the trackpad and some patience and I was rewarded with a big dataset, on my second attempt.
I dropped that into a spreadsheet, did some tidying up and was a little surprised with some of the results. Before we go on I have used multiple Garmin devices in 18 months, my original Instinct, my backup Forerunner 230 and for this year, a Fenix 6X so the dataset I downloaded needed a little work simply because those watches produce different metrics.
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| EO SUP paddles |
1,060,484 paddle strokes
That is the stand-out figure but it means nothing without some more data.
Since the last week of February 2022 I have paddled 401 times covering a total distance of 3,282.38 km and in the process burning up 259,802 calories. Don’t worry, I replaced most of those!
In all those sessions I have completed 6251 intervals, and most of them went well but there were some shockers in there when I had to abandon a training session, that number should be higher.
I have paddled for 419 hours, 42 minutes and 15 seconds but my total paddle time, including stops for lunch and/or fika, was 478 hours 54 minutes and 8 seconds.
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| EO SUP Nebula FW |
You might wonder what all that achieved.
Back in May I collected a new race board from EO SUP in Latvia and on that red speed machine I have now set lifetime personal bests for both distances and on the way picked up a gold medal, West Sweden SUP Champion 2023.
The new magic numbers?
My 5km time is now 30 minutes 33 seconds, an average of 9.83 km/h and my 10km time is 1 hour 3 minutes 10 seconds, an average of 9.5 km/h.
I think that is quite a significant improvement, increasing my average speed for the shorter distance by 0.61 km/h and for the longer distance by 0.43 km/h. Small numbers but on a SUP that’s a big jump in speed.
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| Heading back out for the next session |
What next
I think that can get close to 30 minutes for the 5km, that is my primary goal for the rest of the 2023 fast paddling season. For the 10km then breaking 62 minutes has to be a target, harder to do but I think achievable. So does Michael which means I have to give it my best shot.
Invest in yourself
Investing in yourself is the BEST upgrade you can make, with no exceptions. And that is what this series of blog posts are all about, investing in this paddler with the help of World Champion Michael Booth.
You can find out more about Michael's training on his website Booth Training, from his Booth Training Instagram account and on his YouTube channel BoothTV.
You can find me running the Facebook group SUP My Race, writing about all sorts of paddling for TotalSUP and now, occasionally, on Instagram.
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.