Interval speeds

I'm aiming at a 12,5 kph avg over 10K flat in an elite boat (moving up from an Evo to a Uno/SL). Was reasonably consistent with an 11.8-12.0 avg.

Have spent the last months in an SL to get comfortable in different water conditions, without too much focus on top speed /fitness. As the stability and home feeling is improving, it’s time for speed work and endurance.

As I train mostly alone with my GPS it would be interesting to hear your “target flat water speeds” for different interval.
Personally I’m at the following (range: speeds and form are deteriorating with sets done)

1 min intervals: 14.0-13.5 kph
2 min intervals: 13.5 – 13.0 kph
4/5 min intervals: 13.0 – 12.5 kph

My thinking has been that my initial interval speeds are OK but I feel I should try to work on reducing the speed drop while maintaining technique throughout the interval sets.

What speeds do you see on your GPS?

Sounds like you and I are at about the same point of development, I average about 12 over 11km but I reckon you may have me by a whisker being able to do it in an Evo.

My aim is also to do 12.5 over my 11km course.

Will be interested to hear how you go just with the change of ski, I am hoping to suddenly gain .3km/hr the other.2km/hr will just take more hard work.

Whereas I do most of my recovery sessions off the water at present I'm thinking that I will probably have to do a lot more on water recovery sessions to get accustomed to and remain stable in a tippier ski.

On Monday my group is doing some interval work, I will post up my Garmin link for your interest seeing as we seem to be around the same fitness/speed.

My paddling is also only in the ocean, but I have some sheltered bays which are reasonably calm (sometimes).

I think the transition to the SL has been a joy. I borrowed an Uno for a while, but the owner sold it, and I got hold of a SL.

the SL has been tippy, but it has a snug feeling and I have never fallen out. I paddle in Scandinavia so the winter temp in the sea has over the last months been around 5 deg C (sic!)

In my experience the only way to master an elite boat is to paddle an elite boat. I tried to switch between the Evo and the Uno/SL, but this just made the transition period longer.

I feel that the narrow catch on the elite boat promotes a better technique with stronger legdrive. Without a doubt there has been times in the chop when I feel it would have been more comfortable to sit in the Evo, but this feeling has not lasted long when my speed have never been below my comparable Evo speeds.(but at times the SL speed has not been higher than my Evo speeds).

I have found that by concentrating on relaxing the body (butt muscles in particular) , I feel my center of gravity is lower and my stability improves significantly

Today I only use the SL (was out in 50 kts winds a few weeks back in semi sheltered waters without worrying about falling in). We have strong winds but the waves is rarely more than 2 meters due to some offshore islands. I would be more relaxed in a more stable boat, but what the h***, I can relax when back home.

But best of all, the feeling of hitting the paddling sweet spot , catching the waves(you know what I mean, right) in an 11,5 kg elite boat is fantastic, that it is all worthwhile even if my speeds where just equal to my glass Evo boat.

Fredrik, you have not included the most important part of the equation.

Recovery time!

Your recovery is obviously too short and your intervals that you were hoping to develop speed, are actually turning into a lactate tolerance set.

If you want to develop the speed, keep the same distances or 'on' time, but dramatically increase your recovery time to the point where you can do the last set as fast as the first.

This stimulates Lactate development (more lactate, more power) not lactate tolerance by allowing the excess lactate to clear between sets.

Try having a minimum of around double the interval time as rest time.

I like a 450m interval (around 1m:45sec for me and just so happens to be the distance between two bridges) then turn around and slowly paddle back to the start taking roughly twice as long.
I like to get my HR right down around 100bpm during the recovery.

Over that distance I can max my HR by about the third set and do at least 10 of them without loss of speed before cooling down.

The reason that it takes 3 sets to max the HR is that the first couple are assisted by the stored creatine phosphate within the muscle and by the third this has been completely depleted as it takes at least 3-5mins to recover half of your original stores and this is further hampered by the high lactate environment during the set.

I like these sets because there is no guessing the level of work, it's just go flat out.
Because of this I find that I get very consistent times, within 2 or 3 seconds of each other.

If the times start to increase you are simply not getting enough rest and the residual lactate from the previous run has not cleared.
Simple to solve, paddle back slower.

Don't just stop for the recovery, keep paddling, but nice and slowly, as one of the ways the body deals with the high lactate generated is to shunt it to non working muscles to be metabolised, an active recovery aids this.




If this doesn't work for you, I'm sure Tony H and Smeddles can give you far better advice.
And I'm sorry for posting yet again, and I promise I will try hard not to help others out with their training in the future.

This is why I asked the question as to how are ski paddlers structuring their intervals (in the other thread on lactate threshold) as it seems that most have very limited time between efforts, say 1-1 1/2 minutes where as I've always leaned towards a full recovery up to 10 mins when doing 90-95% of HR intervals. I find it very hard to get any real reasons why people structure their sessions this way and I only have my cycling back ground to call upon to structure my training. No one seems willing to share what they are doing with their ski paddle training, ie levels of intensity, they just say "Oh I do efforts of 2mins-4mins-6mins-8mins-10mins and back down" Well how hard do you go, what % of HR? Just silence! Whats the big secret or is everyones ski training just hit and miss?

RAB and KG

Both of you - thanks for your input!

I have used this surfski.info page as a rough gudeline and as a list of session alternatives

www.surfski.info/reviews/paddler-profile...ad-in-the-world.html

And RAB you are probably perfectly correct, typically I have had 1 min rest or waited until 120 or less bpm when I remember to put on the chest strap.

Building up the endurance after a winter season with stability and technique work at 11.5 - 12.0 kph I have not worried too much about the drop in speed during the sessions - yet!

My primary objective right now is to develop my technique to sustain higher speed/stroke rate as I tire. Or rather : develop my mental stamina to focus on good technicque when I my body just want to stop.

Being buzy at work and with my family I will not be able to compete against the fitness levels of some, but I try to close the gap by trying to focus my sessions on good and efficent technique.

Thus, I like to focus on speed as an efficiency indicator, and fantastic motivator when I see "13+" on the gps.

That´s why I was interested in the interval "working speeds". Eg if typical 12,5 kph / 10K paddlers sustains 14 kph over 10 x 1 minutes I know what to aim for. (right now I see 14 every now and then, but at my current level it is more of an "you-will-blow-any-time" message

I´m not going to the Olympics, so good results on race day is great, but more importantly - every training day in between should be a blast.

Whats the big secret or is everyones ski training just hit and miss?

This is the truth.
What you will find is a bunch of people doing ladders and not much more structure than that.

All I ever hear is a bunch of mumbo jumbo, myth and speculation.
It's the nature of a small sport to have not developed a great deal of knowledge in the general participating population.
This is made worse by the difficulty of getting any sort of controlled conditions to really get to understand what is going on.



Cycling and paddling are hugely different in my experience.
You need to much more power work than threshold or tolerance work in paddling.

If you ain't fast enough to get on the wave, you've missed it and are in for a slog.

The biggest problem with your approach now with your falling speeds, is that the lactate tolerance workout you eventually end up doing with this approach, is truly a stressful beast and responsible for many an athletes breakdown.

It takes a long time to recover from and suppresses any gains in the more important power and threshold work.
Pretty much destroys any fat aerobic stuff and stops you from becoming a truly aerobic animal that gets a large amount of their energy from fat stores.

That sort of interval is really only for honing in readying for racing, as once you start it, you have pretty much set the point at which your other aerobic/power gains will cease.

Unless you are already right up near what your long term abilities are, you are much better off staying with the long rest stuff for power and moving into threshold work as you head towards racing, as tolerance stuff will only bring short term gains and stunt your overall improvement.


Because of the difficulty of controlling speeds or efforts in paddling, a very careful design of structured training needs to be done so as to make it easy to hit the right sort of session to achieve the goals for that session.

That's why ladders are so popular, you go through several types of training in the one session so you tend to get at least a little bit of training in all aspects as well as making for an easy to administrate group session.


Is it optimum for some? Yes.

Not many though, and most will benefit from training to target their own strengths and weaknesses taking into consideration the amount of time they have been paddling and where they are going in the future.

By far the best is to educate yourself as to what you need, slip into group paddles and sessions when they fit into your own plan, but do the important stuff by yourself or with somebody that is similar in their speeds and training requirements.

Happy training!

In regards to speeds, for those 450m intervals, my average speed for the distance is around 13.7 to 13.9.
Starts of much higher and I watch it fall towards the end using the carrot of trying to keep magical looking numbers like 14 something or 15avg's on screen for inspiration.
Usually hitting around 16 for the very first acceleration.

My flat water long term speed is round 12km/h, but for ocean paddling this seems pretty much non important as averages there are always much higher, and is seems to me there is a correlation between my speed over that 450m and the maximum speed reached during that set and how I perform in the open water.

Once I hit around 1:42 for the 450m, my open water paddling takes a big step and I find it much easier to link runs, but more importantly, if it is small and you are just chasing holes, once I can hit those higher speeds this becomes much easier and more rhythmic and my open water HR drops significantly as I can now get much more assistance from the water.

So what I have found is that it is critical to develop short term speed more than anything else.
So my recommendation is to forget that stressful tolerance stuff, do the long rests and concentrate on getting your power as high as possible and let you ocean brain do the work, not your muscles.

Looking at your posted speeds for intervals, it looks to me like I already have a higher short term speed to long term speed ratio than you, and yet I still feel myself that I need to keep pushing the speed side of my training far more than anything else.

Probably a byproduct of becoming an old fart that has pretty much been sedentary for the last 5 years whilst I recovered from injury and a little bit genetic in that I have always had great short term power for lower limb based sports, but struggled with upper body stuff.

Your results may vary to mine, but give it a go and see what happens, it may surprise you.

Interesting point RAB. I have also found that it is important to practise at higher speeds to ensure that the technique remains efficeient at higher stroke rates.

I´m looking forward to hit 16 on the display - so far I´m close but yet so far away

I find aiming for a speed a strange way to approach training, unless your on a windless lake, as where I train either the current is going in or out which always has an effect or its windy from one direction or the other. I personally don't even take notice of the speed but aim for a heart rate range and I do some intervals (400m-500m)or sprints (15-25 secs) into the wind or current which develop power and some with the current or wind to up the rating, all while trying to maintain good form.

Thank you for the link fredrik

Maybe I´m looking at this too simplisticly, but in my mind speed is an instant indicator of paddling efficiency during a training session. If the speed drops it is easy to check if it is due to fitness, technique and/or wind sea condition. This way you can quickly develop a habit of mitigate the loss of speed as appropriate. Thus, train as I would like to race, And of course, the guy with the highest avg speed wins the race - every time.

Greetings Fredrik, apologies for RAB erroneously recommending me for paddling advice - I am only a humble intermediate paddler with a great love for this sport & would be very hesitant to give you advice.

Do have the following 3 observations:

1. you are doing quite well, keep up the training

2. you are only as good as your teacher, so choose advice carefully.
there are many credible coaches (online if not one in your area) who will help you get the results you seek.

3. in RAB's area I am aware of 3 intermediate paddlers who have made tremendous progress in the last year in 3 different large paddling squads - led by a credible / reputable coaches or a group of elite paddlers. RAB has had no discernible success in this sport as a participant or coach & am not aware of any local paddler that seeks him out for competitive advice.

good luck Fredrik & primarily keep enjoying the paddling - don't loose the joy in the pursuit of improvement!

Fredrik, a list of some reputable resources online if there are no local training groups:

Dawid Mocke resources: www.kickmybutt.net/categories/Surfski/
(video series & training programs)

Oscar Chalupsky: www.coachchalupsky.com/

Julian Norton Smith: www.paddle2fitness.com.au/

Stewart O'Regan: www.mykayakcoach.com/

Thanks alot, tony h
Unfortunately, there are no short-cuts and it it is all a matter of a good catch and hard work. BTW, live TV from Duisburg WC2 if you want inspiration tomorrow

eurovision.digotel.com/icf/index.html

Kayaker greg.
I think most people's is hit and miss. I know mine is.

Rightarmbad wrote:


If this doesn't work for you, I'm sure Tony H and Smeddles can give you far better advice.
And I'm sorry for posting yet again, and I promise I will try hard not to help others out with their training in the future.

You still don't seem to get it do you Darryl?

Nobody is having a go at you because you give you 2 cents worth, or advice. Quite the opposite in fact. I myself find some of your posts quite informative and are good for the forum. New paddlers get some advice, the forums are busy with information and thats got to be a good thing right?

Where you get your information from is another story. Perhaps its cut and pasted from other sites, or maybe you know a bit of theory yourself.

I spoke out about you because I know who you are and I believe you don't have the credentials that you would have us all believe.

Now I understand that by bending the truth a little can make the story a bit more interesting for the listener, however, to make out that you are a high profile paddler and your advice is based on your experience is complete nonsense.

For example, the runs you caught in Currumbin @49kmh, nonsense. Even in this thread that you do 450mtr intervals between the bridges in 1:40. Thats 16kph average on flat water on a surf ski. The top paddlers would be happy with speeds like this. You just can't help yourself can you, its like a disease.

Bottom line is you just feed us too many lies. I train in currumbin daily and I have only seen you on the water once when you wrote your boat off. I have never seen you compete and I have never seen your name in the top 20 of any race anywhere.

If you can do 16kph then I am pretty sure most of us would have heard of you by now, even in a local Blast Paddle.

Keep up with posts on the forum. Some of the material is sound and well researched. However, tone down the personal achievements as these seem to be in your mind. In reality there seems to be a big gap between what you know and what you are physically capable of.

I am sure I have not heard the last of this as often the truth hurts. So you just have a pop back and we will call it quits.

Smeddles, every thing I write in these forums is straight off the top of my head.

There is no cut and pasting, that's just too time consuming.
Rattling down what falls out of my head takes me no longer to write, than you to read.

I have never said I am a high profile paddler, in fact if you follow this forum regularly you can quite easily track my development from the day I bought my boat.

My credentials come from running/triathlon/cycling/swimming where I had competed and coached at a high level for many years.

All the main stuff is directly transferable to paddling apart from technique and the differing energy requirements of this past time.

Again, if you take the time to research all of my posts from the very beginning, you will also be able to track my own search for what good technique is for me and for others.

You can also track my own search for knowledge into composite construction and how it relates to paddling craft.


The interval speeds are what I see on my Garmin.
There are influences from tidal currents and winds.

But when I do these intervals, those are the numbers I see.
Typically close to 16kmh top speed, note I said top speed, not average, These are momentarily reached speeds, and usually an average of around 13.7 to 13.9, I've seen a couple of 14's and these were certainly tidal assisted.
The speed drops off dramatically towards the end in these 450m as it is a balls out no pacing effort.

Just as I wrote above.

Nothing like the average of 16 that you have mistakenly read into it.
If I go and check carefully the Garmin readouts, the distance will more than likely be not exactly 450m, but close, a few meters either way, just like a few seconds either way over that distance dramatically alters the paper outcome, but for my needs, the length is around that and those are the times I saw just before I broke my boat the first time.

At the moment having been out of the boat for several weeks with a combination of flu, busted finger and again a busted boat, I certainly won't achieve those speeds for another couple of months at least, and won't even try as it is more important for me to just get back in and spend time in the boat and develop my basic aerobic stuff, so when my new boat turns up, you'll see me out doing the long stuff at my own pace for a few weeks before I will start the interval stuff again.

If you took the time to know me, you will find somebody capable of a sub 30min 10km run time and average speeds time trialing on the bike of around 44kmh.
You will then see that I do have the basic pedigree to be fast, although paddling will never reach that level, just as my swimming lagged behind the other disciplines.
You won't hear of me much here either because I only moved here a few years ago and have not coached or competed locally as I was struggling to walk with a foot injury and then two busted discs in my back.

My coached athletes are now scattered around Australia and because my style of coaching is to help the athlete learn for themselves, they are mostly self coached now apart from short calls for advice.
Every session we do is explained and they understand why it is structured that way.
Having this knowledge for themselves helps them to achieve the aims of the session, not merely do as they are told.

It also helps them when racing as they understand what should be avoided and to not get lost in the moment and blow it.

As for the attitude of Tony H that if you don't race you can't know anything or even be taken seriously, tell that to the hundreds of paddlers around here that what they do is not serious.
Just because they have kids to look after, small businesses to run and cannot get away to compete, doesn't mean that can't paddle or that they are not keen as mustard every time they get in the boat.

For my own racing asperations, again if you go back through my posts, you will find that until feb/march last year, my back injury was pretty much hit or miss each day whether or not I would be able to paddle, so it made no sense to me to sign up for a race that I probably couldn't do anyways, and if I did, I would be entering carrying an injury that may compromise my safety.
Hardly a good thing to load off onto the organisers.

When I finally did beat my back problem, and my speed started to get up there, I broke my boat.
This took ages to fix and I didn't buy a new boat at that stage as I found out most of the way through my search and demoing new boats, that a 5 old year court case would at last happen and after that I would be able get any boat I wanted without compromise.
This court case also took up a lot of time as well as me starting to finally work again, I didn't get in a boat for ages.
Again, not ideal conditions to go out and start racing.

Since xmas I have been struggling with a long term hand/finger injury from rock climbing that was being aggravated by paddling, so something had to give, and paddling is what gave.

I am now happily finding my old athletic self on the bike while my hand/finger heals and will be back in the boat soon when my new boat turns up.

At this stage, my goal is to finally compete in one of the local races in the last quarter of the year, I noticed a longer one just on my doorstep and this is a long enough time frame that I should have returned to where I was before my boat broke, hopefully better and in a faster craft:)


Now the top speed thing.
Carefully read my posts again.

I said that before I posted then, I wouldn't have believed it myself.
So you can see that I was already skeptical.
The info suggested that it may be true and if you understand the wave period/speed relationship, it is certainly possible.

I have come in on big days in front of Palmy in the high twenties in rough water and the day I posted that figure, the boat certainly felt to going much faster due to the way it skipped along and the way it accelerated.

Sure GPS make errors, all the bloody time and you can often spot them.
Sometimes there are errors but look like they are right and we don't even look twice.

Years ago I was entered in a car rally.
My navigator was a no show, so I headed off by myself with the map and instructions taped to my dash.

I got lost, it was bound to happen, but the way it happened is worth discussing.
I made a mistake, but the next four instructions involving distances and directions all clicked with the roads I was presented with.
It appeared to me that I was fine, but in reality, I had been off course for over 10 KM, it just happened that the instructions still worked in my new erroneous travels.
This eventually lead me to a small stream that looked uncrossable, but seeing as the recent instructions all seemed to add up, I tried to cross, fell into a big hole under the water, bottomed out the car and had the front in deep enough that the electrics went under and my car stopped and the dash lights slowly dimmed and went out.
The only power I had was to the starter, but it wouldn't start.

Frucked up really. But it gives me a great story to tell.

Now in my posts, I never categorically said, 'I went that fast', I said I may have, and outlined the reasons for the possibility of my considering it might be true.

Forum goes nuts, my computer goes bunk, I read on the iphone but don't post and the rest of the forum world created it's own opinion of reality.

That's what happens on forums, by the time I'm back on air, I'm over it, there are other things to keep my mind busy.
People that didn't read and comprehend properly, just like you have read that I claim 16kmh average when I didn't, then form whatever opinion they like to satisfy their own needs.

I don't care, it may be true, it may be a GPS blip that lines up just like my rally instructions, but If it happens again, in a more concrete way, I will not be surprised.

In the end, my coaching knowledge is solid or the info itself would have been shot down in flames long ago and not my person attacked.
My ability to analyse and hypothesise is well proven on this forum, and again when it come to paddling technique, none of my observations have been shot down in flames and I think that most people here on the forum opened their minds a little because of them.

So be careful reading my posts.
I'm like one of those wonderful adds on TV.

There is a lot of sublety in what I write in that I hardly ever say something catagorically, I will often say 'maybe' or 'maybe this happened' or maybe this is the reason' or 'what if'.

These are qualifiers and an indication to take what is written as maybe conjecture, wandering thoughts or things to follow up because I find the curious.

When I say say something I personally believe but may not neccessarily be known or believed by mainstream or if I am just theorising, I will usually preface the comment with 'I have found' or 'I believe'.

This is a hint that maybe I have no clue, but have found an effect and I am searching for others who may have found the same to further my ponderings.

You will not see me add any qualifiers when I am discussing something that I truely know.


Now what I will do, is thank you for your last post.
It was not a stupid flaming personal attack.
It clearly laid out what you believed, and what you thought was a problem and immediately opens channels for mature communications.

Unlike some of the other closed minded personal abuse posts that I am left with no reason not to continue the shits and giggles for the other forum posters and hit back with something similar.

Happy paddling.

I am checking out of any further discussions with you RAB.

Sorry mate, I am not a believer.
I agree to disagree.....our concepts of learning are very different.

You ask that people carefully read your essays but don't afford them the same decency & hence misquote them to suit your own delusions.

Tidal flows in currumbin creek get up to a couple Km's per hour, so any speeds on your GPS are largely erroneous.

I will continue to refer beginner / intermediate paddlers to credible & reputable coaches / elite paddlers for advice.

It sounds like you have had a tough time & hope things improve.

Actually, if you regularly paddle the creek you would know that the currents don't reach those speeds or at least if they do, they don't influence the boat that much.

If it did, I would see speeds way down under 10kmh and in excess of 17km/h.
Doesn't happen. Everybody that paddles there knows that.

So therefore by your own set of judgmental rules, you must be lying.
Now that's just a stupid harsh conclusion, but also in the league of your own musings.

(Actually, for an out and back course, Currumbin is one of the slowest places I have ever paddled, as the shallow bottom is always limiting speeds.)

The Blast course at Mermaid has far greater tidal variation than Currumbin creek, Yet I see people using this as a reliable benchmark to show their improvement.

My own times around that course which I used to paddle most afternoons after work as it was just around the corner, show huge variations.
And so do the top speeds reached there.
If you want real variation, jump in the Broadwater and see how it slaps you around.

You will also find that the Lake behind the Pines once the water goes level with the overflow wall, has no currents or waves at all, this is where I carry out any testing that requires accuracy and where I establish my own benchmark times for comparing my fitness.
(although it also suffers from a shallow depth)





Recommending to go and see other coaches is fine, because the elephant in the room, is that I have never said I am a paddling coach, don't seek paddlers to coach and recommend the same to all I paddle with who don't show the ability to self coach. If somebody does show the ability to self coach, then I will gladly help with any info I know.

What usually happens is because I am not afraid to say hello, and am glad to paddle with anyone when I am just doing easy paddling, I often meet rank beginners, point out a few things they are doing wrong and point them the way of somebody who can show them some technique or at least get them curious enough that they start their own search.

What I will always do, is to continue my own search for info/paddling nirvana and share any experiences with those here with a similar vision.
My musings are laid bare for all to see. I hide no secrets.
I'm not ashamed to ask silly questions or to go out on a limb with out of the norm ideas that show promise.

How many here have even messed around with shorter paddles until the discussions here?

The advantage I have over some, is simply that I have a coaching/sporting background from other sports that I bring to the table without the burden of the established folklore of the existing paddling community, so I am free to find the real answers without the waters being clouded by the many wives tales that circulate amongst what is a largely very primitive in terms of training knowledge paddling population.


Runners, swimmers, cyclists, triathletes in general are far more sports science knowledgeable than the paddling community, this is because of the difficulty of the influence of moving water that makes it difficult to compare apples to apples.
That and that a lot of paddlers have come from a background that has training based around getting out around a sets of cans through the surf and returning or come from a sprint flatwater background.

Simply nothing like what ocean racing is developing into.

RAB, from where I sit, your credibility would be enhanced if were to post up screenshots or links to the garmin tracks and or go and do a blast event so there is public record of your ability.

Now having said that I couldn't care less whether you can or cant paddle, some of the info and questions you have raised have been very interesting and encouraged/challenged a lot of input.

Could otherwise be a pretty dull place now having said that.....

In the interest of encouraging more people to post on the forum, pick your targets when deciding who to question or query, perhaps give those who have only posted a few times a free pass for a while unless it's spam type posts, us regulars should have a thicker skin

I only say this as some people have approached me at races to say gidday as they have recognised me through this forum. When I ask what their forum name is they say "Oh I just read it, I wouldn't post, there are too many ready to shoot you down".