After reading the comments from the readers (huge thanks to all those whom helped out) I'd like to include another slant to the debate.

A paddling friend of mine once said that doing the Avon was about doing 100% of the 1% things.

While this has been said about many sports, and often said about AFL, it is VERY TRUE when it comes to the Avon.

To complete, and then do well in an Avon you have to do a lot of little things properly. I'll have to say that some things require more time & attention than others, however there is no point in training 10 hours a week for 20 weeks & then forgetting to check your rudder cables once you've arrived in Northam; only to have your rudder fall off in the first ten minutes of the race!

So, in light of this, I'm going to start another thread & see if we can build up a list of the 100 'must do' things for an Avon preparation.

Cheers,

WP.

What are you paddling?

In the white water, the river level will have a far greater impact on times than any paddling fitness. In 2008 something ridiculous like the top 30 long plastics all broke the exisiting LP race record.

I have a 9km ocean course that I use before work when I get a chance.

With a Spirit CTR I managed a fastest time of 1:04:30 (8.4kph) with a more usual time of 1:08:00 (7.9 kph) However this was fairly hard work

In an Endorfinn I would average round 0:58:00 to 1:02:00 (9.3 kph to 8.7 kph) depending on conditions and did manage to do 0:56:00 a few times when the ocean was particularly calm (9.6 kph)

My Spirit PRS has never taken longer than 1 hr even in some really crappy mid winter chop and regularly do times in the 52 min (10.4 kph) when there is little wind.

The glass and kevlar boats are much faster than this (12+kph), but as a novice I'm assuming you're in something similar to the above. My advice would be to set yourself a regular flat water course so you can see if you're improving. My times incidentally put me a little bit better than mid pack for the Avon Descent so there are a lot of guys quicker

I often make the trek to Perth when the Avon is flowing and my fastest training Walyunga to Amiens time is 40 minutes on a Spirit CTR. Yes the river was huge that day and I have never come close to that time on any other craft. Moral of the story: Never look at training times on white water. An inner tube at a river height of 1.8m could beat my PRS time at 0.4m.

This only works if it's a FAST bathtub. Juffy's just jealous that we kicked his backside all the way down the river! And we provided a free shuttle ride for the paddlers we passed. It was a community service really! (Except for that guy who pushed us into the only ti tree on a 50 m wide stretch of river when we tried to pass him - not nice).

I've got almost nothing to add to Juffy and Wally80's comments (except - I agree!). I will say that as well as using WP's excellent training schedule (we all love intervals that someone else has worked out rather than having to write our own program) you might try and focus on heart rate with the intervals rather than speed, as for some people this helps to work at their best rate. Remember that in a real race your heart rate will go crazy for the first few minutes, but I have used a HR monitor to keep my rate up on some races leading up to the Descent. This helped me to get a feel for my racing pace.

Another aspect that I found helped on my first (and only!) Avon Descent is to scout/paddle as much of the course as possible. The flat water on the second day is currently paddle-able, and sometimes the upper part of day one is ok to paddle before there is enough water to go down the ti trees and rapids. This helped me to work out where to push and where to chill out.

To help on race day - practice wash riding! Ride the wash of every boat you can (remembering that if you are going fast enough to continuously tap the back of the boat in front of you it may be courteous to take a turn on the front). You can save a huge proportion of your energy wash riding, and if you can find someone who is a little bit faster than your normal pace they may pull you a long way. If you can find a large boat to pull you through the valley and down the flat water on the second day it's a bonus!

A good example of why the water level affects times for more than just the actual water speed - the '08 times are shorter than usual because you could bypass at least half of the day 1 ti-trees by paddling down the bank between the gum trees.

For training pace....you would want to be able to maintain 9-9.5kph on dead flat water. Your actual training should be the usual mix of LSD/intervals of course, as covered very nicely by WP.

I agree that time based goals are dangerous. I just broke the 12 hours last year but after day 1 I looked at the results to see that wasRookie beat me by an hour...... I was looking at the 08 results.

perhaps picking a placing (12 hours would have put you 133rd last year 47th LP) would be more realistic. Or just stay in front of me.

Logically, sub-12hr time means you have to average ~11kph real speed (ie. including the river pushing you along) over the entire race. The feasibility of doing that depends entirely on the water level and what craft you're paddling.

eg. In a short plastic at 0.7 you're basically dreaming - only one SP broke 12 hours last year. In '08 the top 24 male, and 3 female, SPs broke it. For K1s, in '08 it was hard NOT to beat 12 hours. On flat water 11kph is a serious effort for most people - I know shortplastic himself belts along at (what looks like) 12kph in his Wavehopper, but he's crazy.

IMO for your first Descent your focus should be on enjoying it and learning the river, unless you're already an accomplished moving-water paddler.