So, I’ve been diligently trying to follow your mantra on intervals, in terms of building throughout the piece rather than fading. However, I am noticing a consistent trend that  I seem to always have this initial speed spike that then settles and holds, for the most part, steady (see attached gps screen grab). Do I need to try and concentrate on eliminating that spike or is it not a big deal because I’m maintaing my speed throughout the piece?

Anonymous, California, USA

Answer: First things first. You are doing great. It is extremely difficult to properly pace intervals. Most athletes either 1) never focus on this at all and fail to maximize their training or 2) properly pace their first interval then lose focus and make a mess of things. Although we only have one interval in the series we will assume that all of your intervals are paced similarly

Before I get to your question, it is worth mentioning that your absolute speed is really pretty much irrelevant to us. Waves, rough water caused by paddlers nearby, current, wind, etc. will all affect your speed.  If you look closely at the interval graphs in the book what we are charting is power. Power is a direct measure of your effort. The only issue is that for a prone paddler there is no way to measure power. Therefore, we use your relative speed (e.g. are you trending faster or slower) and draw assumptions about your effort based on your speed because we can use your heart rate as an indirect measure of effort.

Looking at your graphs, your speed spikes initially as you overshot things at the beginning of the interval. This is an extremely common pattern as it is difficult to know how fast you should be going on a given day to maximize your effort in an interval. Over time, as you study your performance, you will get a feel of where you should be and things will smooth out. Although you could pace  things a little better and have a more gradual start to your interval, if you started every interval like this the world will not end.  We know you are not too far off because your heart rate graph has a nice gradual start. We would be more concerned if your heart rate had a huge initial spike and then you backed off.

Actually, it looks like you do a pretty darn good job with your interval up until about 4:30. At about this time your speed and heart rate dipped. My bet is that you lost focus. Alternatively, you were getting tired and slacked a bit. I do not think that your speed was slowing because you were cracking but putting out the same effort. If that was the case,  I would expect to see the speed dip while your heart rate continued to rise.

At about 5:00 it looks like you said to yourself “focus you idiot” and then put out a big effort to make up for lost time. At this point, you hammered it a bit too hard because your speed went well above baseline. Learning to keep your focus and pace things toward the end of an interval is extremely difficult but what separates the men from the boys.

Another thing to point out is that your speed (at least after the initial spike) remains relatively static while your heart rate rises. This is totally normal, expected, and good. If you tried to go faster at the beginning you would have cracked mid interval. The bottom line on this point is that it looks like you picked a good speed and your heart rate responded appropriately for the bulk of the interval.

The bottom line on all of this is

1. An initial speed spike is very common as you get your board up to speed. Ideally you should smooth it out but don’t lose sleep over it
2. I do not know what happened at 4:30 but my bet is that you lost focus a bit or got tired.
3. Heart rate will gradually rise over the course of an interval even if your speed is constant.
4. You did a pretty darn good job of pacing this one. Keep up the good work.

Roch