I have created Northern Colorado Fitness Paddling group on Facebook to coordinate our winter paddling on the South Platte River. I will post incoming events and updates there as well as in a calendar on a sidebar here. Paddlers of all skills and fitness level are welcome to join us.

Sunday afternoon, February 22, 2009. 2×4.5 mile paddling workout on the South Platte River: upstream from Kuner and back down the river, about 2.5 hours at moderate pace. Flow at Kersey: ~550cfs.

Four solo kayakers: Jeremy in a wildwater racer, Rob in Spencer X-treme canoe (see his pictures on Facebook), Belen in Seda Glider, and me in Thunderbolt-X kayak.

The graph from my Garmin Forerunner GPS shows our speed during this workout. It was possible to maintain about 3 mph when going upstream, but the downstream speed on the shallow river was not so good as one would expect. The river near Kuner and Kersey is slower and deeper than above the confluence with the Poudre River. It is getting even more shallow above Evans.

I am trying to do paddling workout on the South Platte every weekend. If you would like to join please contact me. I am sending e-mail to interested paddlers around Thursday with time and location taking into account weather and flow conditions.

I am planning two informal races on the South Platte like in recent years:
(1) 9 miles upstream from Kersey to Evans to join the club down river paddling trip on Sunday, March 22,
(2) South Platte River Marathon from Wildcat on St Vrain Creek to Kuner, probably two weeks later.
If there is any interest we can run more races, e.g., 5 miles upstream from Kersey to the Plumb Ditch Dam as a warm-up..

South Platte River below Denver – GPS/photo river guide

32 Shallow Miles of the 2008 South Platte River Marathon

2nd South Platte Upstream “Rotten Egg” Race – Results

Wesley Echols of Rhode Island, USA announced the launch of a new US surfski website
SurfskiRacing.com.

A collection of links to articles in my blog and other on-line resources.

This post is a first one from a mini series on training for long distance paddle races. I asked several racers with a potentially different perspective to share their experience.