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The problem this month was simple, what to write in a SUP training blog when you have a month free from training? Luckily enough has happened in my fitness world to make this blog relevant, I hope!
First, my stats! I think these stats illustrate the tricky start to my paddling year, less than 13km of paddling in 31 days.
Jan | Feb | March | April | May | June | July | August | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
KM paddled | 12.96 | |||||||||||
Weight | 101.4 | 97.3 | ||||||||||
VO2 Max | 49 | 50 | ||||||||||
Resting HR | 54 | 52 | ||||||||||
HRV | 45 | 48 | ||||||||||
Training load | 434 | 906 | ||||||||||
5km | N/A | |||||||||||
10km | N/A |
Sadly this means my target of 2400km in 2024 is already out of reach but I’ll see how close I can get in 11 months, although that might be 10.5 months as I wait for the ice to melt and give me some open water that is safe to paddle on!
So what does the ice-locked Stand Up Paddler do when he cannot paddle?
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| SUP My Race on Zwift |
Zwift
I used to cycle a lot, not seriously but I went car-free for nearly a decade and I would cycle decent distances on and off-road including trips to France to ride several Tour de France climbs in the real world. Now, most of my cycling is done in my basement using Zwift. This is a serious cycling training application crossed with a video game and I’ve been on the platform for 5 winters now.
In January my occasional Zwift sessions turned into my regular exercise sessions and contributed to my 4kg weight drop, my VO2 max hitting 50 and my FTP rising to 2.8 Wkg. On the way I tried to push my peak power, several rides with a maximum all-out one-off effort as hard as possible, I topped out at 1076W which was disappointing but I’d forgotten that sprinting needs technique not just brute force. That lack of technique nearly resulted in what would have been a very embarrassing indoor crash when I pulled my trainer from the floor! Oops. Will try to beat my best of 1199W in early February after my Testosterone shot, due on 6 Feb. If you are a Zwift user you will know the significance of my max power effort. RideOn.
Those increases in cycling fitness came from regular riding, not structured training because January was my month off!
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| Magnus, the SUP My Race Labrador on one of my local lakes. Ice thick enough to drive on! |
Hiking
Every day my Labrador needs a good walk, or two depending on his need to see one of his many girlfriends in the area. This means that my average step count is over 15k a day, regular, base fitness. Occasionally I do like to go further and spend a night under the stars. My dry January gave me the luxury of three nights out, one at -6 degrees, two in snow and one with a new tent! Happy days ready for longer hikes in the spring.
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| A night out at -6C beside a frozen lake in SW Sweden |
Garmin Problems
I have been a Garmin user for a long time, my first Strava entry with my Edge cycling computer was in December 2011, and over the years I have found Garmin devices to be reliable, robust and accurate. When things have gone wrong Garmin have been fantastic with help and, when needed replacement. So you can imagine how I felt when my Garmin Fenix 6X stopped working!
One morning I tracked my usual walk with Magnus, saved and auto-synched that activity with no problem, and then my Fenix lost the plot completely! Over the course of an hour, it started, and stopped dozens of activities with no input from me before freezing, nothing I did made any difference so Is at down and contacted Garmin, 2 hours of chat with them got nowhere and I thought I was faced with a significant cost to replace it. I bought a used Fenix so there was no warranty from Garmin.
That night I left it, dusted off my old Garmin Instinct and considered my options, I quite like the data the Fenix provides.
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| Rolling through a sprint section with me, myself and I. |
The Fenix rises from the ashes!
The next day I tried the Fenix again and … it slowly came back to life! It’s been fine since and this is what I think happened.
- Sticky buttons. I clean it regularly but sticky buttons are a problem with the Fenix series and although I’d not noticed any sign of this before that dayI can think of no other explanation for the watch independently starting and stopping activities.
- The watch froze. Also a documented issue with the Fenix series but one I thought I could avoid by frequently deleting old activities and switching the watch off when not wearing it - usually when on my indoor bike. This could have been because of the sticky button problem.
How did I get it back - pure luck! I read a thread on a Gamin forum about soaking the watch in a solution of warm, mildly soapy water. Left it in that overnight, cleaned it again with a soft brush and dried it off. That seems to have done the trick with the buttons. When the buttons started to work the hard reset procedure from Garmin eventually did the rest.
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| January power data from Garmin |
What’s the point of sharing that story?
Good question! Being Fenix-less for a day and looking at the high cost of replacement made me consider my data needs. This blog focuses on several datasets that are not available from my Instinct, HRV, VO2 Max etc. and the question I had to ask myself was …
Do I need that data?
I’m not really an athlete so the honest answer was ‘No’.
It’s nice to know and gives an indication of my fitness improvement over time but the best indicator is my speed on my race SUP and a very basic watch will tell me that - my Instinct or even the Forerunner I was gifted years ago has SUP as an activity.
But I like data and when the Fenix came back to life I started to think more about my luxury data needs specifically VO2 Max - which Garmin only calculate for some sports - and HRV.
I’ve covered a little about VO2 Max in this blog before but in my luxury-data reading I learned a lot more about the extra metrics that my Fenix calculates, sleep stats, HRV, Pulse Ox and more. And the maps on i have been useful so I’l relieved it’s back and I’ll look after it a bit more now.
From my reading this from Garmin might be helpful if you are looking at HRV, it might be the most useful data your watch calculates and I've embedded a video from Garmin at the end of this blog which might help you use your data.
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| January 2024 V All time best on Garmin |
That extra data helps you to 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.