As a rookie, I assume there is no formula for this, so I am looking for some fuzzy math.  We've come to a point in our training where we are trying to find what we call our "marathon pace".  What pace we need to shoot for to achieve our goal barring the million things that could possibly pop up and blow our plan out of the water.  Here is my question:

At this point in our rookie training (and this number we hope to increase) or comfortable "feel like we could go for ever" speed on flat water is about 4mph (assuming this pace may change at mile 100 or so, but it feels great right now)  Any ballpark on what our net speed would be if we were on a river moving approx 3mph instead of on flat water?

The easiest answer is obviously "hop on a river and find out dummy."  Which we will do, but that is a few weeks away.  Just curious if anyone out there has a fuzzy math conversion for flat water speed to net speed with the addition of current.

Very fuzzy, but figure on 2.5 mph.  Sometimes it will be more and sometimes it will be less.  6.5 moving average will get you there in very respectable time.  Traveling with a group tends to make paddlers faster as well.

Yes your speed plus an average of 2.5 mph is what you can figure. I live about a mile from the Missouri and I've paddled for many hundreds of miles on the river (probably a couple of thousand over the years) it varies with the river level but at "normal" levels that's always the figure I use.

Joe and I (Dark horse paddler dude) did a tandem run in 41 hours on a non-flood stage river, with what I consider to be "normal summertime river status and weather (we were second boat in to St. Charles).  We literally never got out of the boat at majority of check points...we would stand over boat (stradle) at each checkpoint to stretch legs a bit...but as soon and food and water in boat.....we were gone. 

Joe remembers all the statistics better than me...but our fastest check point was 1 minute 30 seconds (my daughter held a stop watch and would yell our time to us as soon as we hit the water again)..and I think we were typically under 3 minutes at all other stops.  The only exception was the very last ramp, 20 miles from finish.  We both were total zombies...and Joe started puking.  We spent almost 20 minutes aground....where I mumbled and walked around giving everyone hugs...while Joe fought dry heaves.

Then we got back on water and started to limp away for the finish... I turned around and looked back at ramp and thought for sure I saw the navigation lights of Los Humongous just coming into the ramp (turns out it was a river relief jon boat)...and I told Joe in a panick what I saw...and we both said..."Dude there is no way we are getting passed in last 20 miles"...we galvinized and hammered that last section in full on sprint mode...I have no idea where all that energy came from...because minutes before we were totally shot.   In fact, we were so out of it..that when we finished in St. Charles...they could not lift the boat...we had 4 inches of water in the bottom of the 24 tandem canoe (from a poorly shut bailer).  Keep in mind we had a bailer and an electric bilge pump and could have removed that extra 100 lbs of water...but no brain to recognize that fact

My memory of that year is dominated by that last section

anyway....babble, babble, babble....Joe is right....you simply cannot stay on shore.....get your stuff and get back into the current..that is where you can prep and put things away, eat and other stuff..........stay off the bank.

Bryan