SUP RACE PACING

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Most people only think about SUP Race Pacing half way through a race as their peers slowly pull away from them.

You were not to know that they have been practicing race starts for 6 months and that hanging with them for the first KM was designed to blow you up.

At least you made their day?

So SUP Race Pacing is all about racing “Your own race”, but knowing how much you can flex to respond to others, and when to let it go.

This is a fairly simplified look at how to do this.

How hard can it be?

If you want to finish a 5km race in 50 minutes then just paddle each Kilometre at 10min/km pace.

  • Is it really that easy: No.

Your Split Time would be 10 minutes every Kilometre but it’s not that simple 😮

Lets simplify races to:

  • Start
  • Middle
  • End

If you paddle the entire race at a steady pace, then you will end up in others messy wakes for the whole time.
You have to Plan your races!

So how do I have a more productive race.

Work out your race pace.
You can approach this a few different ways

  1. Have a Target Time for the distance and work out what speed is needed to achieve it. You can then work out the Race Pace (minutes/km)
  2. Have a Target Speed and work out what this is in Race Pace (minutes/km
  3. Race using Heart Rate zones (not really covered this in this post)

When you know the Race Pace, you can use it as the basis of each race section:

Race Start

  • Paddle the Start at around 102% to 105% of your planned race pace.
  • This will get you ahead of your near peers and avoid paddling in their messy wake.
  • It is still slow. enough that you should not burn out though.

Race Middle:

  • Settle into the middle of the race and aim for 99% of your planned race pace
  • You can flex this up and down depending on how your competitors are doing.
  • You may need to pulse between 99% and 100% of race pace.
  • Save a little for the finish BUT don’t let anyone get too far ahead unless they look like they are going to burn out.

Race Finish:

  • Having saved a tiny bit of energy in the middle of the race, you should hopefully be able to step up your speed at the finish.
  • There is no point in saving energy at this point but don’t flat out sprint and then explode before the finish.
  • The trick is to slowly raise your speed to the highest point you can sustain.

So is that my race plan?

  • No. Not yet.

Wind and waves

  • Rowers and kayakers have it easy when it’s windy. We don’t.
  • Every Kilometre will be faster or slower than planned, due to headwinds, tailwinds, paddling into waves, paddling with waves and cross chop
  • In training you need to practice and find out how much your race pace is impacted by each of these.
  • Ideally you are going to create a cheat sheet that will let you quickly work out your 1km splits.
  • Once you have this cheat sheet you can use it to modify each kilometre of the race accordingly.

The end result?

You should now have a list of split times (we have used 1km splits to make it simple) and the target time for each.

How do I stick to these if I can’t afford a Speed Coach?

  • Stroke Rate is the easiest method.
  • In a race you are probably pulling as hard as you really want to. The biggest variable is Stroke Rate
  • When you are preparing your Cheat Sheet also add your Stroke Rate for each situation.
    This is based on your observations during practice sessions.
  • You know have a Target Stroke Rate for each split (km) based on that KM’s conditions.

But I still don’t have a Speed Coach and it is too hard to look at my is to ask

  • The easiest answer is a Metronome.
  • No. Not the mechanical types they had in school music classes.
  • Use your phone.
  • If you have an Iphone then there are two easy methods
    • Use SIRI. Say “Hey Siri, set Metronome to 40 beats per minute”
    • Or use the Apple Music built in Metronome
    • You can also use Apple Shortcuts to use a shorter sentence or even start up a Metronome app such as Pulse or Hey Metronome.
    • Hey Metronome my favourite so far.
    • In truth, they work better during training to help you Dial In desired stroke rates.
      The trick is to know what 40 SPM vs 45 SPM feels like

So what does. a race plan look like

They are quite individual BUT the raw elements might look like this:

Example of a Race Plan Chart
  • Section 1: A drawing of the course to work out what is upwind, downwind, crosswind, straight, twisty etc…
  • Section 2: A summary of each section. with a simple description that can be used in section 3
  • Section 3: Your Cheat sheet for 10km/h winds (Have one for 5km/h and 15km/h as well) This shows Speed, Stroke Rate and Actual Time Splits for each KM. This lets you work out overall timings.
  • Section 4: Work out the actual timings for each section. I have used 105% for the start and finish. I have lazily not tried to work out teh 99% for the middle sections.)

Extras:

  1. You might also want to sprinkle some annotation on the route around Dangers and Opportunities.
  2. If you have specific Self Talk that you expect to use, then add that in. the relevant places.

SUPER TIP

  • It is really really hard to multiply hours minutes and seconds.
  • I set Race Pace at 6km/h just to make it easier to work out these examples 😮
  • Use an AI such as ChatGPT or Bing Chat to do teh work for you. BUT sense check the results as they occasionally really mess up.

ChatGPT (chat.openai.com)

Bing Chat (bing.com. Currently only on Edge browser)

So where do I start?

  1. Start logging your practices to learn what Speed and Stroke Rate you achieve in various situations (waves, wind etc…) when paddling at Race Pace.
    Hopefully this will go up during the years training.
  2. Start to build up a set of Cheat Sheets with these calculations
  3. Check out races before hand.
    Google maps and old race reports are pretty handy.
  4. Start Practicing by creating Race Plan for your practice sessions and seeing how well they work out for you.
  5. Go Race, Have Fun and do well 🙂

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