There are several 30-50 mile river marathons in 2008 race calendar, e.g., Wyoming Outback Challenge on the North Platte River, Phatwater Kayak Challenge on the Mississippi River or an informal marathon on the South Platte. I hope that 50 and 35 mile races on the Kansas River will be added soon. Even the 9 mile upstream race on the South Platte belongs to this category since it requires maximum effort for several hours.
Tommy Yonley is organizing a new 39 mile race on the San Marcos River, Texas River Championship. So, I asked him to share some tips for training for this racing distance.
Tommy Yonley paddling through Cottonseed Rapid during 2007 Texas Water Safari
(photo courtesy of Bob Brooks)
I have never really done a race of this length before other than the ~40 mile Prelim for the Texas Water Safari (Texas River Marathon). I think if I manage to place well in my race, I will have a better idea. However, I may be able to come up with a few worthwhile comments:
Something to think about is the fact that most people do not regularly do training runs 5 or 6 hours long–and if they do, they don’t do them at a hard pace. (I think the winning time should be roughly 5 hours.)
One thing about the CR100 (a ~12 hour race) is that you find the winning teams manage to hold a very hard pace. Personally, I have improved over the last couple years (winning the solo division), but towards the end of the race (both years), and really for the last half, my arms were hurting and I couldn’t pull hard or maintain my heart rate above a reasonable level (2006 I think I averaged in the low 130s BPM–higher toward the beginning, lower toward the end, and 2007 I averaged 139 BPM).
I attribute this to
- not ever training the full distance (I think I did two ~7 hour runs getting ready for the race)
- not being strong enough
- holding an unrealistically hard pace early on (but this is needed to stay in the lead), and
- using an improperly sized paddle (too big of a blade, and too long).
Personally, I think that a mid sized wing is too big for these races. I am switching to a smaller blade this year — still not sure what I will end up with. (I just got a small sized Onno wing for my wife which I plan to test out as well.) Even for a 5 hour race, I suspect that mid sized wings are too big for most people (actually, I think that mid sized wings are larger than optimal for most people, even in a 1 hour race).
As far as getting stronger, doing long runs with lots of weight in your boat (and/or bungies to add resistance) helps. I had good results with this last year–in ~6 weeks of adding weight to my boat, and doing ~7 hour runs, I made noticable strength gains (not enough to beat Carter and Jerry though). I haven’t done a lot of weight lifting, but I am hoping to start doing that regularly as well.
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