New year, new targets.
After a busy end of year on SUP My Race is it now time to sit down and do two things, review my 2024 performances and look ahead to 2025.
2024 was a very good year for my SUP progress even though it started very slowly and I didn’t quite hit my performance goals for speed.
Jan | Feb | March | April | May | June | July | Aug | Sept | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
KM | 12,96 | 120,71 | 230,88 | 217,3 | 363,66 | 212,16 | 228,69 | 200,83 | 272,09 | 207,18 | 223,09 | 182,67 |
Kg | 101,4 | 97,3 | 98,3 | 98,2 | 98,6 | 96,4 | 97,9 | 97,2 | 97,4 | 96,8 | 95,6 | 97,0 |
VO2 Max | 49 | 50 | 48 | 49 | 49 | 49 | 49 | 49 | 49 | N/A | 46 | 46 |
HR Rest | 54 | 52 | 53 | 53 | 51 | 51 | 52 | 52 | 51 | 52 | 52 | 53 |
HRV | 45 | 48 | 50 | 47 | 48 | 52 | 51 | 54 | 53 | N/A | 64 | 63 |
Train load | 434 | 804 | 1402 | 942 | 1001 | 1510 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
5km | N/A | 33m 47s | 32m 33s | 33m 41s | 31m 7s | N/A | 32m 14s | 34m 8s | 32m 8s | 31m 8s | 32m 54s | N/A |
10km | N/A | 1h 7m 29s | 1h 11m 23s | 1h 7m 39s | 1h 3m 35s | 1h 5m 47s | 1h 3m 54s | 1h 7m 33s | 1h 3m 42s | 1h 4m 29s | 1h 6m 0s | 1h 17m 48s |
January 2024 here in Sweden was all about ice, ice baby and that meant a January total of 12,96km! And that put my 2024 target distance of 2400km, or 200km a month almost immediately out of reach.
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| Ice, Ice, Ice. |
Things started to warm up in March and April and then in May I ticked off my first target of the year, finally joining the 300 club on SUP My Race by paddling 360km. I really do not know how some paddlers manage this total every month!
May 2024 was also my quickest month on the EO SUP Nebula with my year best for 5km and 10km.
The rest of the year was focused on my 2024 total distance goal. May’s big month left me 80km off my half-year target, which slipped a bit in June but over the next few months I gradually closed in on beating 2400 and, with a week left in the year I did it!
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| Hands up if you hit your 2024 distance goal! |
The need for speed
After a promising pair of time trials in May I struggled to get close to my 2023 benchmarks in either the 5km or 10km despite feeling fitter and faster than I have ever felt before. I finished the year with seventh place in the SUP My Race 5km and third place in the 10km. Respectable positions for one of the older paddlers taking part but I should have been faster.
I think this was down to two factors, the first being bad luck, every time I tried to do a TT the weather decided ‘no’ and the second might have been equipment, the speedy EO SUP prototype fin went back to EO SUP in early June, make of that what you will.
This year I will be looking at fin choice more carefully!
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| The Airboard Rocket Light, a very fast inflatable SUP |
One highlight with speed was my July 5km TT on the Airboard Rocket Light, this board arrived in Sweden at the end of the Spring and it proved to be a very fast thing indeed. My time of 34 minutes and 23 seconds saw me finish the year in 35th place from 153 male paddlers in the SUP My Race 5km TT: Very good speed for an inflatable board.
Other highlights
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| Boothy (on the right) |
In June the EO SUP Team came to visit and they brought with them some prototype boards to try out. The 2024 Nebula was gorgeous and I wish I had had more time on it and the new Juno board for slightly rougher conditions.
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| EO SUP Fortis paddle and Juno board. |
You can read about that visit here.
The SUP My Race shop was launched in 2024, working with the team behind TotalSUP you can now get SMR merchandise anywhere in the world using this link!
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| The SUP My Race rash guard |
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| Exploring near Marstrand, Sweden |
2025 Faster, faster, faster!
In early January I had a video chat with Michael to set my 2025 goals and unlike 2024 I have only one, sub-30-minute 5km SUP My Race TT. Once I have ticked that off my to-do list then I will focus on the 10km, one thing at a time.
Getting under 30 minutes will take a lot of work on my part, Michael and I know it is possible. My 2023 best was 30 minutes 33 seconds, set in the warm water of June so June 2025 is my deadline and I have 5 full months of training to get there.
My new programme will have less SUP paddling, more home gym work and more cross-training. My time on the water will be focused on shorter, higher-intensity workouts and, of course, getting that all-important 180-degree turn sharpened up! This will mean I have to commit more to that turn, instead of a slow, safe turn be more assertive and save some time.
Ideally, I will find a perfect day on the local fjord in late May or early June, a day with minimal wind and no swell on salty, deep water. We can all dream!
And, there could be a new SUP My Race board on the way...
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| Strava know that I am awesome! |
Stravaversary
I had an email from Strava the other day, for my Stravaversary, marking the day I first used the tracking app back in 2012. This made me wonder about my Strava stats since January 2012, and it did not take long to find them.
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| My SUP Activity on Strava |
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| My watersport activity on Strava |
Since then I have almost always used a Garmin device, starting in 2011 with an Edge cycling computer that migrated from bike to SUP, then an old Forerunner 310XT, an original VivoActive HR, an Instinct version 1, a Fenix 6X, a Forerunner 255 and now a Fenix 7X Solar.
The difference in the capabilities of these devices is huge but the core functionality is the same, they have been tracking my movement on land and water for years. I still have that Edge bike computer, the 310XT and the Instinct and they all still work.
I was a very keen cyclist back in the day which is how this blog started, documenting my cycling trips so let's start there.
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| Up high on my road bike |
Cycling (2012 -> today)
Cycling used to be my main focus and I would ride anywhere on almost any bike that would fit me. I still have a singlespeed, cyclocross, carbon road bike and full-suspension mountain bike but, sadly, they do not get as much use as they should.
My bike history is this...
- 1067 recorded rides, including indoor sessions.
- Total distance 32,928.3km
- Total elevation gain 381,930m
- Total time riding 1328.5 hours
- Longest recorded ride 157,7km - The Wiggle Jurrasic Coast ride in 2013
- Most elevation in one ride 2791m - one of my regular routes on Dartmoor, UK.
- Longest continuous climb 1937m - The Col Du Galibier
- Fastest 100km - 3 hours 44 minutes. This included 1600m of elevation.
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| The 2013 edition of me |
SUP
A car accident and resulting neck injury forced me to reduce my cycling dramatically but that led me to SUP because there was a lot less pressure on my neck. My first SUP activity on Strava was in March 2013 and that is featured in this blog, here
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| My first Strava SUP! |
I took part in my first SUP race the following year with the Exe Hammer in September 2014 and then joined a club, Waterborn SUP, got a job writing about SUP and I started to paddle more frequently. However, when I moved to Sweden my SUP addiction really took over as I discovered what might be the best place in the world for distance SUP paddling!
- 1692 paddle trips
- Total distance paddled 12,963.3km
- Total time paddling 2083 hours.
The total distance for SUP is probably a little higher because I use my Strava account for my cropped Time Trials for SUP My Race, losing distance from my Strava total each time I crop for a virtual event. And there is a difference between my Watersport total activity and SUP activity which is largely down to SUP Surfing V SUP everything else.
Walking
I usually, but not always, track one of my daily dog walks but have only been doing this regularly for a few years.
- 894 tracked walks
- Total distance 4,473.2km
- Total elevation 81,262m
- Total time walking 887.5 hours.
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| Garmin Stats |
Compare with Garmin…
Since that first Strava upload, in 2011 I have logged 4213 activities on their site, but because Strava is my backup for my GPS I wondered how that contrasted with Garmin and sure enough my history is available to see in Garmin Connect but only through the website, not the Connect App.
It is clear that the focus of the two tracking services is different.
Garmin provides access to limited data on their website, I guess you could scroll for hours to the end and see it all but who has time for that? To see everything in Garmin you need to request the data, which can take 30 days although usually it is quicker. and it is supplied as a link used to download the entire data dump to a local device.
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| Garmin Activity List (Web) |
Strava is much easier to use with every activity available on a sortable and searchable webpage, each activity listed in the summary page has a clickable link so you can quickly go and see your data in detail and, in my case, remember so pretty epic bike rides!
It is harder to break the Garmin data down by activity without getting that download while Strava helps by listing your most popular activity types and the data for them on screen.
For my data, there is a little difference between the two, not really a surprise given the way I use each service.
Garmin has me at 4213 activities for a total distance of 52,422.23 km in 4855 hours, 32 minutes and 1 second. In that time I have burned up 2,596,250 calories. That is a lot of cake!
Garmin also counts my steps, and there have been a few of those! I got my first watch that tracked steps in Spring 2016, the Vivoactive HR, and since then I have covered 50,257,211 steps,
50 million steps!
That equates to 45,888 km and nearly 12 million calories. If you are interested I have an average step count of 16,270 per day. That’s what owning a Labrador does to your walking habits!
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 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.