How much difference does the material make in a race?
The Austrian State Championships in LongDistance took place on September 6th, 2020.
The conditions are never comparable 1: 1 and the daily form will also vary. But if we compare the statistics of the Weissensee Classics race with those of the Grundlsee, one thing is extremely noticeable when looking at my stats.
AVERGAGE HR
The average pace was almost identical in both races and the conditions were also very comparable. If you also consider the dilemma at the Weissensee with the lack of drinking water supply, the significantly higher average heart rate is particularly noticeable.
But how did it feel?
Keeping in mind, that it was way colder at lake Grundlsee and camelbak served me well, I have to state that it was way harder to keep my desired pace! The Velocitek Makai is such a great piece of gear to react instanttanously, when paddling technique starts to suffer from getting tired. But the downside is, that you’re getting pushed to try even harder even when muscle fattigue kicks in. Everything seemed to go a lot easier with the new 2021 Allstar, and the glide of the 2019 Allstar is way worse than with its successor. I had no reserves for short sprints or to significantly increase the pace for a longer period of time.
Summarized
The 2019 Allstar is perfect for challenging conditions but it’s definitely not the best flatwater board. The target group for the 2021 model is the same, but faster by quite some margin in flatwater conditions. I’m totally happy with my results as these are showing 1:1 what I’m able to do in my training sessions, but there’s a lot of room for improvements 😉
In the 200m sprint race, I couldn’t find any significant differences and claim that the new board can’t be moved any faster. Perhaps that was one of the reasons to get an excellent fourth place.