When is long, long?

With the DW becoming more imminent it's getting to the stage where it becomes understandable to start worrying if the long paddles are long enough. But what is 'long enough?' In the triathlon world the general consensus for an average age grouper undertaking a triathlon of any duration is that if you have done the distance you need to complete in the individual disciplines in training then that should be enough to get you through, as long as you as get your pacing right. So far, that's worked for me, although I have usually completed the odd longer bike in my middle distance preparation. With a Long course race coming up in June, I intend to adopt the same procedure although with my history in recent years of injury when upping my run volume I will probably cap my long run training at two and a half hours; this combined with a run / walk strategy should see me through.

But what about preparing for paddling for 24+ hours? What's an appropriate length for a weekly long training paddle? I know that last year I originally wanted to adopt the tri approach and attempt to put in regular 6, 7, 8 hour paddles. Thankfully, we didn't. Dan at the MPCC advised us to not paddle for longer than 2.5 hours, but that just seemed far too short. How on earth could that prepare you for paddling all day and all night? The answer was of course, that realistically, you can't .  :-0   This time round, with Adam starting completely from scratch the most important thing has been for us to get into a boat as regularly as possible with the length of the paddle being immaterial. Be consistent and we would improve. At times it's not felt that way but we've come a hell of a long way in a relatively short space of time and the very fact that we 'll be starting the race is an enormous achievement.

So, what is our long weekly paddle? Our average duration is 2.5 hours although we have completed one at 4 hours in length and the Waterside A at 3 hours (well, 2.45 + 15 minutes swimming :-(   ). Over the next 4 weeks we are going to aim to build towards 3.5 hours but we are not going to stress if that doesn't happen. Our longest paddle will be the Waterside D route at DW pace which will probably take us something like 7 hours. What's more important is that we are paddling 3 times per week, working on our technique and getting comfortable in the boat. In my opinion, a well executed 3 hour paddle with good technique will be of more benefit than slogging away in the boat for 6 or 7 hours every week. The risk of injury is too great but more importantly I would have thought that it would be quite soul destroying; save the hardship for the race, training's meant to be fun.

Is this going to be enough? Well, that's the thing about the DW isn't it? You may have done the event many times before but when you paddle to the start line you can never be sure if what you have done is enough, because quite frankly it's such a ridiculous thing to do. I'll let you know at about midday on Sunday 24th April as to whether our long has been long enough.  ;-)