So the interesting thing about doing a consistent 5km time trial is you get data to analyse and see why your times are going down. Once you look at the data you then need to remember what type of paddling you did and how you did it on the day and figure out what to do next to improve the next time trial.
The data I have included here is for calm conditions, as chop has an effect and thought it best to only include flat to calm conditions, my goal after seeing these result would be to increase cadence over the 5km.





My increase in cadence increased a little and I tried to focus on the entry of the paddle with a 2min reduction.


On this paddle I tried bursts of high cadence as I have seen in sprints, shorter strokes but more of them for as long as possible. This caused some sloppy paddle entry as I fatigued but got another minute off the time so I was happy with what I thought would get a better result.
Also during this paddle I tried to bury as much of the paddle as deep as I could on entry as often as possible during normal cadence when not sprinting.


In the last 5km paddle yesterday I wanted to focus more on burying the paddle deep as often as possible and keep the technique for longer and not allow it to drop off. I also reduced the amount of strokes per side from 10 to 5 to reduce a zig zag effect and this is my best time to date.
What I find interesting is the cadence is very close to my slowest time at the start and almost 5min difference?





I thought I would try a 1km time trial after I completed the 5k to try a sprint cadence similar to the 3rd time and still try to focus on deep entry. Time was ok and if I could keep that pace up for 5k, which I can't at this stage my time would be 37.55 for 5km and I would be absolutely stuffed.


So the question is should you increase cadence to a sprint level with the power of a lower cadence over a long distance or should I keep focusing on entry and power when doing distance paddles?