Ok, this post may sound counter to everything I posted before about working on speed, quickness, power, etc. In training you should concentrate on those things. But when it comes race time, you shouldn't be concentrating on going faster. You already have your natural speed from training and you just go with that and concentrate instead on your lines.
Sprinters in running say that if you try to hard, you actually run slower. You need to somehow, zen-like, move fast without trying too hard. You keep the boat flowing on the water. You need to be confident in your speed to do this. If you are thinking about how fast someone else is or how you need to beat someone else, or how you need to make up some time because of some mistake you made, you will be out of the flow. It is counter-intuitive, but you will go slower by trying to go faster.
There is an exception to this rule. This is rare in bigger competitions, but sometimes there is a section of the course where you need to pick up the pace. On certain courses, the top half is difficult and the bottom half is easier. On this type of course if you just try to stay on line the whole way, you will lose a little time on the bottom section. On easier water or flatwater, you do go faster by picking it up a little. This still shouldn't be something strange or different from what you do in training. But you may need to incorporate into your race plan that you paddle a little faster starting at gate 15 or whatever.
But basically, you go at your own speed. You can't magically get faster at the race than you were in training. You are only as fast as you already are. So, you go that speed in the race. Trying to all of a sudden go faster because it is race day won't work. It will throw you off since your body isn't used to that.
This has implications for your training. You need to do a lot of training at race pace for race simulation and some training faster than pace in order to get faster. If you do a lot of training slower than race pace, your body will get used to that slow pace and you will race at the slower pace. Paddling slowly is a bad habit to get into. So, it's better not to train than to train when you are exhausted and can't maintain proper technique or a reasonable speed.
If you practice like you race, then you can race like you practice. Get used to paddling fast and clean and with good technique in practice and then it will automatically happen on race day. You don't have to have any special plan to change things on race day. You just go out and take the same kind of run you would in practice. Race your own race. Go at your own speed. You can't be someone else. You can only do your best. That is all you can ask of yourself- to do the best that you can do. So don't try to go at someone else's speed or faster than you have ever been before. By performing your best, you might be surprised by how fast you actually are if you are confident enough to just race at your own speed.
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