Sex Differences in Heart Rate, Paddle, and Portage Speed During an International Kayak Marathon Competition
International journal of sports physiology and performance · 2026
Elite kayak marathon paddlers sustain 85 to 91% HRmax for over two hours with frequent surges, useful raw material for interval design, but it's one race, not a training trial.
Studiet
Observational field study, N=30 (15 women, 15 men) elite K1/K2 marathon paddlers, GPS and HR monitoring during the 2022 European Marathon Championships.
Hvad de fandt
Paddlers held 85% to 91% HRmax for 121 to 129 minutes regardless of sex or boat class. Men had faster mean and peak paddling speeds than women (p<.001 throughout) and, in K1, more frequent 5% to 10% speed surges (35.6 vs 25.5 per race, p=.0283) and more surges above 10% (p as low as.0003). K2 crews showed no sex difference in surge frequency, so this pattern is a K1-specific finding. Every boat class finished the last 100 m faster than the start of the lap (p as low as.00000001), and portage running speed differed by 9.4% between sexes.
Vurderingen
This is a descriptive physiological characterisation, not an intervention trial, so risk of bias questions like blinding and control group don't really apply, but the usual limits of small observational cohorts do. N=30 from a single championship, no repeated-measures reliability across events or courses, and no adjustment for differing experience or equipment between paddlers. The very small p-values reflect large numbers of repeated within-race speed samples rather than huge practical differences, so read the surge-frequency and portage findings as descriptive patterns worth training around, not as precision estimates you can bank on.
Begrænsningen
Everything comes from one race on one course in one year, so it's unclear whether the pacing and surge pattern generalises to other championships, distances, or portage terrain, and there's no test-retest data showing these demands are stable for an individual paddler across races.
Referencestudie
I'm not confident there is a single landmark kayak marathon paper this directly extends. It sits alongside the broader GPS/HR race-demand literature from other endurance and intermittent sports (road cycling, rowing, distance running pacing studies), applying that same characterisation approach to a sport, kayak marathon, whose modern portage-heavy rule set had not previously been quantified this way.
Hvad du gør på mandag
For S&C coaches programming marathon kayak paddlers, this supports building sessions around prolonged high-intensity steady-state paddling (roughly 85 to 91% HRmax) interspersed with frequent short surges of 5% to 10% and occasional larger bursts, plus a finishing sprint, and training portage running separately with attention to sex-specific transition speed rather than assuming it scales directly from paddling speed.
In practice
This applies to national and international K1 and K2 marathon paddlers prepping for portage-heavy races, and as a rough template for other prolonged intermittent endurance sports (distance rowing, gravel racing) that need a surge-interval structure. On the S&C floor, build main sessions around sustained work near 85 to 91% HRmax for up to two hours, layer in 5 to 10% surges roughly matching the K1 frequency data (this did not hold in K2, so do not force it onto crew boats), and rehearse the paddle to run and run to paddle transition as its own conditioning block rather than assuming running fitness carries over automatically. In the clinic, treat the portage run as a distinct loading pattern for an athlete population that is otherwise almost entirely upper body and trunk dominant, so screen hip flexor, quad and ankle tolerance to fast transitions under fatigue and coach the transition mechanics themselves, since that is where falls and acute strains are most likely. Treat the specific numbers as a starting template from one championship rather than a fixed prescription, and check them against your own athletes' race files before locking in session design.
De fem studier, der betyder noget — hver uge, gratis.
Vi læser hele litteraturen om sportsmedicin, genoptræning og præstation og vurderer de studier, der er din tid værd.
Få den gratis ugentlige udgaveRelaterede vurderinger
Læs på dit sprog: English · Français · Deutsch · Español · Italiano · Nederlands · Dansk · Svenska