25 Feb 2013
Posted by mattwright
In theory, performing an interval during your SUP race training is simple. In practice, most athletes make a mess of their SUP interval training. To get the most out of your interval work, you need to pace each interval properly. In our opinion, this is one of the most important posts you will ever read on the Riding Bumps website. Seriously, it is that important. Please read this post ten times. Make that 30. Memorize it. Post it on your bathroom wall. Tattoo it to your girlfriend or boyfriends forehead if you must. Whatever you do, you need to become one with pacing.
Pacing an interval means dosing out your effort so that you do not blow up mid way through the interval. You must be able to finish an interval as hard or harder than when you started.
To properly pace an SUP interval, you want to pick an intensity that will allow you to finish the interval at your maximum power output. That means that if the interval is longer than about 15 seconds you are going to have to start out at a slower pace so you can ramp things up over the course of the interval.
Figure 1: Graph of power output over time for a properly paced interval. The power output goes up over the course of the interval and peaks just before the end of the interval.
As hard as they try, inexperienced athletes commonly “reverse pace” their SUP intervals because their emotions and adrenaline get the best of them and they overestimate the amount of work they can do over the course of an interval. Figure 2 demonstrates the power profile of an improperly paced interval.
Figure 2: Graph of power output over time for an improperly paced interval. As you can see, this individual overshot the effort at the beginning of the interval and their power output wanes over the course of the interval.
You cannot always use your heart rate monitor to help you pace an interval. Your heart rate only tells you how hard you are working. The problem is that if you go too hard (e.g. you “blow up” or “red line”) during an SUP interval and keep working your heart rate stays right where it is. The problem is that your power output and speed decline even though you are working just as hard as you were at the beginning of the interval. While you are interval training you need to be smarter than your heart rate monitor. Figures 3 and 4 demonstrate this concept graphically.
Figure 3: In this diagram the black line is power output and the red line is heart rate over time. As you can see, even though heart rate is increasing the power output is decreasing. This is a train wreck of an interval but it demonstrates why heart rate can be deceiving. If this athlete was only focusing on heart rate they would think they are properly pacing the interval. Now you know better.
Figure 4: In this diagram we see a properly paced interval. As you can see the heart rate slowly rises over the course of the interval and the power output is peaking toward the end of the interval. This is good. Do this when you train.
The reason that pacing is so important for you to get the most out of your intervals is because the amount of quality SUP race training you do equates to the “area under the curve.” The larger the area under the curve – the more quality work you are doing. Maximizing the area under the curve requires good pacing.
An additional benefit of pacing is that you will learn to race better and kick your training partners butt during training sessions. When your training partners and competitors blow up you will be pacing yourself and pass them when it counts. It works every time.
This pacing business does not end with a single interval. You also want to pace yourself over the course of an interval workout where each successive interval is done at a higher intensity than the previous (e.g. build your intensity over the course of a workout). Figures 5 and 6 depict a series of intervals performed during a workout. In figure 5, the interval session is improperly paced. In figure 6, the session (and the individual intervals during the session) are properly paced.
Figure 5: An improperly paced interval will look like this. As you can see this athlete really botched things. They are going slower and slower as the interval session went on. They went out much too hard in the first and second interval.
Figure 6: A properly paced interval session. As you can see each interval is properly paced and there is proper pacing over the course of the session as the power output of each interval is greater than the last.
Please go back and read this section 10 more times. We do not want to see any paddler who has read this book ever reverse pace an interval again. Do not blow yourself up in the first 10 seconds and do not overestimate how much work you and do in the interval. PACE YOURSELF PEOPLE.
Now that you know how to pace an SUP interval, check out our weekly interval training program .
Reference: High-Intensity Training for Cyclists – Progressive Systems Training, 15 th Edition by Arnie Baker, MD.
