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”.
