Choosing the Right Board for You Part 3 – Some Thoughts on Boards and How You Paddle on Them

In the last couple of Tips of the Week I’ve talked about the importance of trying boards before you make a decision to buy one and what to consider when you are developing your own protocol for testing boards. This week I’d like to just share some things I discovered as I did my own testing and that I have learned over my time paddling SUP. Lots of principles from my sprint canoe racing days apply here as well, so what I’ll share here is really a bunch of ideas that come from everything I’ve experienced in paddling.

1. Stability is important. If you can’t stand on the board you’re trying to paddle you can’t paddle it fast. Put another way, if you can’t string a couple of really good, fully loaded strokes together on flat water then the board you’re testing is too unstable for you. Go for something more stable, even if you think it is a slower board.  You’ll be faster on that slower board because you’re more stable than you will be on the tippy board that is supposed to be faster.  I 100% guarantee that.  Even if you can paddle with those fully loaded strokes on flat water there is no guarantee you’ll be able to handle it on the ocean. For example I can handle the 14’ x 23” Starboard Sprint very well on flat water. In fact I love it.  But I know it is probably beyond me in anything but the tamest rough water conditions.
   
   The reality is that you can develop better balance and become more stable on a board but you can only do that so much.This is especially true the older you are. If you can’t string a couple of fully loaded strokes together on flat water, I honestly can’t see you developing the ability to paddle that board well in the ocean without first spending a considerable amount of time (read years) on a more stable board. In this instance I would strongly recommend you buy a more stable board and use it for a few years until you develop better SUP balance and skills.  Then you can try a more unstable board again and, if you can paddle effectively on it, you can buy it then.
   
   
2. Generally a narrower board is faster. Of course there are exceptions and this isn’t a hard and fast rule. As explained in the point above, if you can’t stand on the narrower board it isn’t going to be faster. And there are other design features that can make a slightly wider board faster than a narrower one. That said, generally, narrower boards are faster. If you’re looking for a faster board in all likelihood you’ll need to consider something narrower.
   
   
3. One of the reasons that a narrower board might not be faster for you is that it doesn’t float you properly. If you do your research you’ll see that most narrower boards have less volume. If you’re heavy, there’s going to be a point where a narrower board is too narrow for you and doesn’t have the volume to float you properly. When this happens the board sits deeper in the water than it is designed to and it won’t perform as intended.
   
   You need to consider the volume of the board you’re looking at purchasing very carefully, especially if you are a heavier paddler. I tested a few different boards. The one I chose was the narrowest, but because it had substantially more volume than the other boards it actually floated me the best. I think the fact it was the fastest one for me is attributable to both. It accelerates more quickly, sits on top of the water better and therefore maintains speed more easily. It was considerably better in chop and downwind conditions where a buoyant board is important. Some of the boards I tried that were slightly wider were underwater more in chop, particularly going upwind, and that makes the board a lot slower.
   
   Some of the lower volume boards I tried sank back down into the water as I got tired and my stroke became a little less dynamic. They were less forgiving, demanding I maintain a dynamic stroke all the time. I don’t care who you are, eventually you’ll get tired and your stroke will lose some of its zip. When that happened to me, the lower volume boards sank into the water, probably deeper than they were designed to and that resulted in a dramatic loss of speed.  That loss of speed that comes with fatigue was much less pronounced on the higher volume board.
   
   Take home point: Don’t forget to consider volume when you are choosing your board. At some point if you’re a heavier paddler, there is a balancing point between width and volume that you don’t want to pass. If you do you’re asking for trouble and the rocket you think you just bought might not be as fast for you as you’re hoping it will be.
   
   
4. It’s not just a paddler’s weight that affects the balancing point between width and volume, but also the paddler’s technique. In “Stroke Rate in SUP Paddling” , I introduced the concept of gears in paddling. If you’re a paddler that prefers a lighter gear with a higher stroke rate, then you can probably get away with a narrower or lower volume board. You’ll be taking more strokes and your board will have less time to sit back down in the water between strokes.
   
   I tend to prefer a more heavily loaded gear and a lower stroke rate. When testing boards I found that the narrow, lower volume boards (and even some of the wider ones) sank back into the water quite quickly, and in some instances too quickly. On those boards I often felt like I was constantly trying to lift my board back out of the water. Even on the better of the lower volume boards, when I got fatigued it became increasingly more difficult to keep that board on top of the water. If I adjusted my technique and paddled in a lighter gear it felt easier to keep the board on top of the water when I was tired. The problem is, I’ve been paddling in my preferred, slightly heavier gear my entire life. I can adjust my gearing a little but I’m never going to paddle efficiently in an extremely low load, high cadence gear like some paddlers do. My muscles and physiology are just too adapted to the more heavily loaded, slower stroke.
   
   Take home point #1: Recognize the nature of your stroke.Do you paddle in a light or heavy gear? Most older SUP paddlers that I’ve seen prefer a slower, slightly more heavily loaded stroke, as most just don’t have the cardiovascular fitness to paddle at low load, high rate for very long. They should be considering a little more volume in their boards.
   
   Take home point #2: You should always be playing with your gears and expanding the range of gears in which you feel comfortable paddling. Since switching to a narrower board I’ve found it easier to paddle with a somewhat lighter, higher cadence stroke and that stroke has been especially useful in keeping that narrower board on top of the water when I’m fatigued.
   
   
5. This point builds on the last one. The faster you can make your new board go, the more dynamic you need to be with your blade against the water to keep up with the board (see article ). This can be fatiguing. If you can’t do it for a long time your board will eventually slow down, and if it is a narrow, low volume board it might sink deeper in the water that it was designed to (especially if you’re a heavy paddler) and this will cause you to slow down even more. In this instance the board isn’t being asked to perform as it was designed to and there is a good chance you’d be faster on a wider or higher volume board.
   
   You can train yourself to paddle with a more dynamic stroke for a longer period of time without getting tired. I pretty quickly made that adaptation while paddling on the Starboard Sprint for a few weeks. It is a considerably faster flat-water board than anything else I’ve ever tested. I’m also a little heavy for it. The top of the recommended paddler weight range is 80 kg and I weigh 83 kg. Initially I noticed a marked loss of speed once I got tired and was unable to keep up with the board. As I trained myself into keeping up with the board better for a longer period of time that speed drop didn’t occur. Take home point: The board alone isn’t going to make you faster and a “faster board” actually puts greater demands on you. If you’re a heavy paddler make sure you’re fit enough to meet those greater demands. If you’re not and you’re heavy for the board you’re on, you run the risk of tiring yourself out quickly and then that fast board won’t be performing the way it was designed to and it might even become a slow board for you.
   
   
6. In general lighter boards are faster than heavier boards. They certainly accelerate more quickly. While there is a theory I’ve heard that a slightly heavier board carries its speed better between waves I don’t think I subscribe to that theory. Since I had the opportunity to test boards of varying weight I’ve concluded that lighter boards are faster in almost every situation. While a heavier board may well carry speed well between waves, there are too many negatives that come with the extra weight. I found lighter boards, in general, perform better in waves in almost every condition. They are incredibly easier to accelerate quickly to catch a bump, which is perhaps the aspect that I liked best. And when we are considering flat-water performance a lighter board is always going to be faster, all other things being equal. I suppose there may be a limit to how light a board should be, but the light boards in the 23-24 lbs. range are pretty ideal as far as I am concerned.
   
   
7. A quieter ride is better than a noisy one. I have no way to back this up other than personal experience. In sprint canoes if the boat is making excessive noise it very likely isn’t trimmed right. Fixing that makes the ride quieter and makes it faster. If no amount of adjusting the trim makes it ride more quietly then there’s a strong possibility the boat is poorly designed for you.
   
   When I was testing boards some of the boards were really quiet and some were very noisy. There was one board I loved at cruising speed except for the way it seemed to plow water at the nose. It was very noisy. At speed, given the way I paddle, it just seemed sticky in the water and was disappointing. The board I ended up choosing was the quietest ride of the boards I tested. It was also the fastest of the all round boards (I don’t count the Starboard Sprint as I don’t consider it an all round board). Possibly. But a clean, quiet nose wave and quiet release can’t be bad, especially at speed where every board or boat I’ve ever paddled get’s noisier

Hopefully these things that I’ve learned over the years and recognized in my board testing process will give you something to consider when you are looking for your new board. Remember, the objective is always to find the right board for you. For me that board turned out to be the 14’ x 25” Starboard All Star. It’s a narrow board with extremely high volume for its width. But I want to emphasize that just because it ended up being the right board for me doesn’t mean that it’s going to be right for you. Testing the boards you’re considering buying is hugely important. My hope is that some of what I’ve shared here might help you decide which boards to test and also help you make sense of what you see in your test results.

Good luck searching for the best board for you!

Choosing the Right Board for You Part 2 - Determining an Appropriate Protocol for Testing

So you’re thinking about getting a new board and know what its predominant use will be – flat water racing, racing in all types of conditions, or paddling downwind. You’re either looking for something highly specialized or something that is an all-round board that’s good in a variety of conditions. You’ve done your research. You’ve talked to other paddlers about the boards they’re on. You’ve looked at the catalogs of various manufacturers and read reviews on the internet. You’re about as well informed as you can be without actually trying the boards you’ve researched.

As we discussed last week, the most important thing to do after your research has narrowed your selection down to perhaps three or four boards is to try them. But what, specifically, can you do when you try them to truly find out which performs best for you? Ideally you want objective information about each one so you can make the most informed decision rather than one based on subjective feelings alone which can be deceiving.

If you’re looking for a downwind or ocean-only board it’s pretty hard to come up with some type of totally objective test. The problem with testing on the ocean is that conditions, even when they appear to be pretty consistent, are actually pretty random compared to flat water. While in flat water you can easily ensure conditions are the same from the test of one board to the next, it’s really difficult to do that on the ocean. The ocean is always changing and you just can’t do your testing with the same degree of control as you can on the flats. So lets look at appropriate protocols for testing to find the best flat water or all round board.

The first thing to consider is the type of event you want to compete in on your new board. If it is a 200m sprint on flat water you’re going to want to come up with a totally different test than if you are racing a 13-mile race in the ocean or in a mix of ocean and flat conditions like the Carolina Cup.

When I started my search for a new board I was looking for the ideal board for next year’s Carolina Cup. It’s the one big race my work schedule lets me do every year. It’s also easy logistically as it’s not too far away and I know I can race there on the board I train on. I’d love to race in more of the biggest events, but most of them conflict with my coaching responsibilities. If I’m looking for a board for the Carolina Cup, I’m looking for something that is good in the ocean. It has to be a good downwind board, a good surfing race board and yet fast enough in the flats that it isn’t a liability. While someone like Connor Baxter can race Carolina on a flat-water board like the Starboard Sprint, I honestly can’t see myself doing that. Given my relative strengths and weaknesses, I think it’s more ideal for me to approach Carolina from the opposite perspective – racing on a board that is a bit more all around in its characteristics and is going to help me in the ocean without penalizing me too much in the flats.

I decided to test four different boards based on what I thought would fit that description and that I could access to test. I knew I could use the advanced accelerometer/GPS that we are using with the Canadian Canoe Kayak Team to collect data during my testing. I was therefore confident that I’d be able to make a pretty accurate assessment of which board was fastest for me in the flats. Then I’d have to determine more subjectively which one allowed me to paddle the best in rough water conditions. That said, I still had to come up with a protocol for testing that would provide me with the answers to the primary question I was asking: “Which board would be the ideal Carolina Cup ride for me?”

The Carolina Cup is about 13 miles. It’s about 7 ½ miles in the flats and 5 ½ miles in the ocean, with the possibility of some surfing in one of the inlets and the need to deal with lots of chop and strong tidal conditions in the inlets as well. It’s a beach start and finish so you’ve got to ride something you feel comfortable on pounding out through the surf and surfing back to shore. Given the prevalence of flat water in the race and my feeling of mediocrity in the flats in the 2015 Carolina Cup, I decided the first thing I needed to do was find out which of these “all round” boards I was testing performed best for me in the flats. Once I was able to rank their flat-water performance I could experiment with them in big water.

Although a board’s max speed is interesting and provides an indication of how fast you might be able to make it go off the beach, it really isn’t relevant for 7 ½ miles of flat water. I wanted to do something that would test traveling speed and not just speed in a short sprint. I realized that if I was testing more than one board a session, and ideally you should in order to minimize the impact changing conditions might have on your results, I couldn’t make the test too long or fatigue would become a factor that affected the test results. After some consideration I came up with the following test protocol:

Test	Testing for
3 minutes at 7-mile race pace, controlling stroke rate at 46 strokes/minute	·         Ave. velocity ·         Peak velocity ·         Ave. distance per stroke
1 minute all out	·         Ave. velocity ·         Peak Velocity ·         Time to peak velocity ·         Distance to peak velocity ·         Ave. distance per stroke

Obviously, you’re interested in velocity when you’re trying to figure out which board is fastest. I think distance per stroke is important as well as it tells you how far you can make the board move when the blade is in the water and how well the board glides between strokes which is going to be really important in a long race. In the three minute race pace test, I controlled stroke rate at the approximate rate I’d use for an 8 mile race as I was interested in knowing how the board would perform at the pace I’d be paddling at in Carolina. And, because even when using a StrokeCoach or metronome, it is hard to maintain identical stroke rates for the duration of a three-minute test from test to test I decided to normalize stroke rate by calculating a velocity/stroke ratio for each test run.

In the one-minute all out test, time and distance to peak velocity indicate how quickly you can make the board accelerate. These are important pieces of information which shed light not only on how you might be able to make the board perform on the start, but also how well you might be able to accelerate to catch a draft during the race, catch a bump on the ocean or pull away from someone at some point on the course.

I tested each board against each other and against the board I used in the 2015 Carolina Cup and was able to rank my performance in the flats on each. I found that each board was pretty easy to paddle on the flats and required little adjustment time on flat water so I was confident in the quality of the results I got for each board. Once I had obtained a ranking on flat water I was able to experiment with the top ranking boards on Lake Ontario is various choppy and downwind conditions. This testing was more subjective as with constantly changing water conditions it was too difficult to do a test with a suitable level of control. As it turned out the board that performed best for me on the flats seemed easily superior in most of the rough water conditions I tested in.

Clearly I’m fortunate to have access to some technology that makes this type of comparative testing pretty precise and extremely easy. But with a GPS, a stopwatch(or just the chrono on your GPS), and something that measures stroke rate like an NK StrokeCoach you can pretty easily do a similar test yourself. You’re just going to have to do more math than I did when you interpret your data. In fact, you don’t even need a StrokeCoach as you can simply count strokes for each test run and then calculate a velocity/stroke ratio like I did to normalize stroke rate when you are compiling your results.

When developing your own test protocol here are some things to consider:

1. What boards are you testing?  Do some research and determine a maximum of three or four
   boards that you want to test.  You can’t test everything.
2. Determine what questions you’re trying to answer.  Are you looking for the fastest board in a
   200m sprint or for a 5-mile race?  There is a big difference and you’re making an assumption
   that may not necessarily be true if you assume without testing that the board that’s faster in the
   sprint will be faster over distance. 
3. What variables are you going to control?  What exactly are you going to measure?  To me it
   makes sense to try to control stroke rate from board to board as you test.  You can measure
   time over a certain distance or distance travelled over a given time.  If you count strokes this
   can give you what you need to determine distance per stroke.  You can determine velocity by    calculating distance travelled in a given time or simply go to your GPS data to see if it can
   provide it for you (it will depend on the type/model of GPS you’re using)
4. Where are you going to test?  You need flat water with constant current (preferably none) and
   pretty constant wind conditions.  You’ll need it to be straight for whatever distance you’re
   testing over. 
5. What is your schedule for testing?  You can’t test more that a couple of boards in a day without
   fatigue becoming a factor that will affect results.  You’ve got to test boards back-to-back on the
   same day to get a true comparison.   Comparing tests on different days can bring conditions
   into  question.  Wind, current and water temperature will all affect board speed.  You can’t
   assume these conditions will be the same from one day to the next.  But you can test by
   elimination.
   For example if a is faster than b on day 1 and c is faster than a on day 2 then you can assume c
   is also faster than b, etc. 
6. Are you certain of your results?  When you narrow it down to what you think are the two
   fastest boards, test them against each other again to be sure. This is especially necessary if
   you’ve established the two fastest boards by elimination and haven’t tested them back-to-back
   on the same day.

This week’s Tip of the Week is to follow a well-planned and logical protocol to test your boards. If you do you should be able to get some very accurate and meaningful results. Your results won’t say anything about how fast each board would be for another paddler, so be careful not to draw any such conclusions. What you’ve done is demonstrate which board is fastest with you paddling it, and that’s really what you ought to be interested in.If you’re well organized and know your protocol well you should be able to test two boards in not much more than 30 minutes.

There are some things I discovered in testing and experimenting with various boards that definitely seem to affect whether or not the board was a good match for me.  I may be stretching it a bit to draw conclusions about them, but I think they might be useful for you to consider when you’re trying out boards.  I’ll share them in next week’s Tip of the Week

Choosing the Right Board For You Part 1 – Try Before You Buy

After the Carolina Cup this year I realized I needed to upgrade my board if I am going to remain competitive.  Although I had the best ocean leg I’ve ever had, went faster than I have ever gone before by more than seven minutes and was closer to the winner than I have been in the past, I was pretty disappointed with my performance in the flats. I felt like I was just barely hanging on to the draft train when just three short years ago I was possibly the fastest of all the racers through that section.

Of course while choice of board can make a difference in performance, the first thing you should always look at is the person doing the paddling. When taking stock of my Carolina performance the first thing I looked at was my preparation. Was I fit enough? I actually had more water time leading into the race than I have had in any other year. The quality of that water time was great. In the gym my power endurance was at the highest level it has been since I started paddling SUP. I was careful in the lead in to the race not to do too much. I was well rested. I saw no indication that I should be slower at 52 than I was three years ago at 49. Only then did I begin to look at my board.

I was standing on a stable 27 ¼” board in Carolina.You can check out a previous blog post from July 2014 (“Board width, stability and training your balance”) , in which I discuss board width and how many novice racers are on boards that are a little too unstable to allow them to paddle effectively.  In that post I talk about the advantages of using a wider, more stable board in challenging conditions.   I have always believed in stability first. If I’m stable I can paddle well, and if I can paddle well I’ll do well in races. However I thought of the boards I saw others in my draft train using in Carolina. They were all 24” to 26” wide. Then I watched the SUPRacer.com video of the finish and noted what boards guys were riding as they came to the beach. It became apparent pretty quickly that I was on the widest board of anyone in the top forty. I was going to have to go to a narrower board if I was going to continue to be competitive in races like the Carolina Cup in the future.

I’ve always understood that just because a board is narrower doesn’t mean it is less stable. There are things shapers can do to enhance stability. And my experience from sprint canoeing has told me that just because a boat is narrower doesn’t mean that itis necessarily faster. Shape and volume can make a wider board work better for heavier paddlers than a narrower board. I knew I would have to try a number of different boards to see which ones worked best for me. Which boards could I make go fastest in the flats? Which ones could I still stand on and paddle effectively in the ocean? And ultimately which board did I think would work best next year in the Carolina Cup?

I’m fortunate that people are willing to loan me boards to try and test. Some local shops were happy to let me use some of their demo boards. One actually unwrapped a brand new board and turned it into a demo board for me. One manufacturer’s rep let me use a board on an extended loan to test. Another manufacturer helped arrange for a new board to be sent to a local shop at a great price for shop owner on the condition that I’d be able to test it before he sold it. I also was able to try a few of my friends’ boards.

With access to so many boards I was able to try them all and not only find out which specific boards worked best for me, but also which characteristics the ones that worked well had in common. This was an added benefit that will help in the future as it should allow me to better predict which new boards are likely to work best for me and narrow down which ones I should try first.

At the end of almost four weeks of testing I knew which board was best of me and was able to rank all the boards I tested in terms of how fast they were for me. I think it is really important to stress that it isn’t a case of one board being good and another bad. I think that most of the boards out there are really good. There’s been a lot of thought go into them and a certain level of testing before the shape ever goes into production. No manufacturer wants to market a slow board. I think the trick is trying to find the board that works best for you, your body weight, your technique and your preferred paddling gear (see “Stroke Rate in SUP Paddling”.  The only way to do that is to try them and experiment with them. Some of the boards I tested really surprised me, and I wouldn’t have been able to predict they would perform the way they did.

This week’s Tip of the Week is to try different boards before you buy. You may not have people as willing to lend you new boards to play around on as I did, but you still have opportunities. Just about every big race has a demo day associated with it. At the very least they have a few hours to demo boards before or after the race. Trade shows like the Outdoor Retail Show have lots of demo opportunities with all of the latest boards. And unless you’re living somewhere far away from everyone else you probably have friends with boards who’d be willing to let you try their board if you let them try yours. I swap boards all the time with the guys that I paddle with. It’s a great way to develop your skills (read post). You may not be able to try every board possible, but you should be able to find a good cross section of what’s on the market to test out.

I’ve seen too many barely used, almost new boards for sale out there to believe that everyone is trying before they buy. On the contrary I think a lot of people buy before they try and then are disappointed with what they purchase. Don’t buy solely on the recommendation of others. If you hear people raving about a particular board then it’s a sure sign that you should try that board, but for goodness sake don’t purchase one until you’ve established for yourself that it works really well for you.

Obviously when you test out a board there’s certain things you should be looking for. Over the next few weeks I’ll discuss some of them and share the types of things I looked for and discovered in the process of testing boards myself. You’ll want to consider width, stability, volume, tracking, maneuverability, weight and quality of construction as that will go a long way to determining durability. You’ll want to develop a test protocol so that the information you get is as objective as possible and not just subjective. I’ll share the protocol I used with you. I was actually surprised by some of the numbers I got when testing compared to what I felt on a particular board.

Stay tuned for next week when the Tip of the Week will be “Determining an Appropriate Protocol for Testing Boards”.