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| Jim Terrell's "Flume" Testing Grounds |
How are you going to measure your improvement? By establishing a baseline of your performance and then testing against it throughout your training. There are various ways one can go about this. I'm going to assume you aren't going to use a heart rate monitor to test your lactate threshold or a GPS to measure distance or speed. What I'm instead going to suggest you do is measure your distance over a specific period of time. I'm going to suggest seeing how far you can paddle in calm conditions for 30 minutes, after an adequate warm-up. This isn't as simple as going all out right at the start. You'll need to pace yourself in order to finish strong. You want to paddle in that space where you feel lactic acid in your muscles, but your body is able to manage it. On the RPE scale, somewhere between 14-17. Calm conditions mean no wind and little to no tidal currents. Once you know how far you can paddle in 30 minutes, you can test yourself throughout your training season under the same conditions and compare your distances, as well as how you feel while paddling. Of course, another test would be to paddle a specific distance and see how your timing improves with training. But it's a little more difficult to know the precise distance you're paddling with any accuracy, at least without a GPS system.
Next: Periodization & Training Phases
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