2026 PaddleSplash Festival at Lake Natoma: Races, Relays, Festivities, and Taking Home Gold

Just past halfway in the 8 Mile at PaddleSplash on September 13, 2026, I parked my 14-foot inflatable at the Aquatic Center turnaround on Lake Natoma, ate half a turkey, cheese and lettuce wrap, and took a selfie. I had ground the upwind leg toward the dam to bank time for that stop, made a second one at the island for the other half, and still finished in 1:49:01, first among the paddleboards.

I planned on two races that Sunday, the 8 Mile at nine and the First Timer’s Race at 11:30. I ended up doing three, because I got pulled into the four person relay at noon. First place in each one. Fun, but exhausting. Getting through all three came down to what I ate and when, which I had worked out on training paddles in the weeks before.

Lake Natoma runs four miles between Folsom Dam and Nimbus Dam, and for one weekend every September it fills up with boards. Nor Cal SUP, a 501(c)(3), puts the festival on out of Black Miner’s Bar with Visit Folsom presenting. Races go off Saturday and Sunday mornings, with stand-up boards, kayaks, outriggers and surfskis all starting from the same line.

Key Takeaways

• PaddleSplash is a three day water festival on Lake Natoma, run September 11 through 13, 2026 out of Black Miner’s Bar in Folsom, California. It is free to visit and spectate.
• It is a fundraiser. Nor Cal SUP is a 501(c)(3), and proceeds go to its Groms programs and outreach for foster and at-risk youth through water safety education, scholarships and access.
• I raced three times in one morning and won all three: the 8 Mile in 1:49:01, the First Timer’s Race in 14:17.56, and the four person relay.
• The 8 Mile was first in SUP and first in SUP Open 18-49, on a 14 by 28 inch inflatable, in a field where surfskis took the first six places.
• That works out to 4.40 mph, within a rounding error of the moving pace I have logged across a year of training on the same board.
• The eating schedule was written down in advance: rice two hours before the start, a banana at thirty minutes, three gels and a turkey wrap on the board, and a meal in the forty minutes between the first two races.

About the PaddleSplash Festival

PaddleSplash ran September 11 through 13, 2026 at Black Miner’s Bar on Lake Natoma, organized by Nor Cal SUP and presented by Visit Folsom. There were races, and there was also SUP yoga, a dog paddle, a poker paddle, beginner clinics, a kayaking seminar, and sessions on outrigger and sea kayak rescue technique.

The Big Splash closed the festival on Sunday evening with more than a hundred people on boards doing yoga underneath Rainbow Bridge. It is run by Spotted Dog Yoga & SUP, my friend Nick Clark’s outfit, and the boards get tethered in rows to a line strung across the water so the whole class holds formation while it moves through the poses. Watching it from the bridge is worth the walk.

The festival is free to visit and free to spectate. You pay to race, and a few of the sessions carry their own registration, and that money goes to the nonprofit.

You walk down to the sandy beach at Black Miner’s Bar and watch, so a family can come without racing.

Shelly Alves of Nor Cal SUP told Folsom Times, “This year, we’ve expanded the festival experience so paddlers of all abilities can find a way to participate.”

Where the Money Goes

Nor Cal SUP is a 501(c)(3), and PaddleSplash is its fundraiser of the year. The proceeds fund the Groms programs and community outreach that serve foster and at-risk youth: water safety education, scholarships, and getting kids onto boards who would otherwise never stand on one.

The Grom Sprint on Sunday morning had nine to twelve year olds finishing in twenty two and twenty five minutes, on the same course, off the same beach, an hour before the adults lined up for the First Timer’s Race.

The Three Races

Sunday puts five starts inside three hours: the 8 Mile at 9:00, the 2 Mile at 9:15, the Grom Sprint at 11:00, the First Timer’s Race at 11:30, and the four person relay at noon.

I entered the 8 Mile, the First Timer’s Race and the relay, which is how a person ends up racing three times before lunch. Unless you are me, in which case you bring lunch with you on the 8 Mile.

The 8 Mile: 1:49:01 on an Inflatable

My official time was 1:49:01.53, first in SUP for the eight mile and first in SUP Open 18-49, on an inflatable. I was seventh across the line in a twelve boat field, and the first six were surfskis. A surfski is a twenty one foot sit-down hull, and it covers eight miles about thirty minutes faster than a stand-up board.

The board was my Venture Wild Sierra Pro-Touring 14 by 28, run at 19 PSI for the day. This is the board I have been training on for about a year now, provided and sponsored by Mark O’Conner, the founder of Venture Wild, who has become a friend and one of my racing mentors. Their code THEMK takes 10 percent off.

What the Watch Recorded

Measure	Official result	Apple Watch
Distance	8 miles	8.58 miles
Time	1:49:01.53	1:53:20
Average speed	4.40 mph	4.54 mph
Active energy	not measured	1,278 kcal

The watch reads long. I started it a little before the gun, forgot to stop it at the finish and kept paddling in toward the beach, and it counted both stops for lunch. Use the official number when you have one.

What My Heart Rate Did

Across 1,221 readings during the eight mile, my mean heart rate was 165 bpm and the median was 167. The highest reading was 186. Nearly 92 percent of the samples sat at or above 150 bpm.

The first half of that recording averaged 171 bpm, because it was upwind, out toward the dam. The second half averaged 160, because it was downwind and contained two full stops to eat, and a stopped paddler’s heart rate falls.

Eight miles in 1:49:01 is 4.40 mph. Across sixty six logged sessions my moving pace on longer efforts sits at 4.47 mph, and I wrote up that whole dataset earlier this year. Racing pace and training pace landed within 0.07 mph of each other, which says the taper worked and the fueling held.

The First Timer’s Race

Forty minutes after finishing the eight mile I was back on the line for the First Timer’s Race at 11:30. I won it in 14:17.56, two and a half minutes clear of second place.

The Four Person Relay

Two teams race head to head. Each team is four paddlers, and the first half runs one at a time on a single board: out to a buoy, right hand turn around it, back to the beach, tag the next paddler. Once all four have run their leg, the entire team climbs onto one large inflatable, a four person manta ray, and paddles it out to the red buoy together.

With four adults on one board and two teams alongside each other, there is a certain amount of bumping and a great deal of splashing. Back on shore, a team wins the heat by slapping the hand of Shelly, the director of PaddleSplash, who waits at the finish line. Then the next two teams go, and the next, until it comes down to the final pair.

I raced the relay with Jaime Johnson, who owns SUP California in Folsom, and two paddling friends, Lourdes Ibarra and Marlene Gideon. We won it.

Jaime sponsored my entry, and a good share of what I know about racing came from her. She sorts out my gear and helps me pick what suits how I paddle, and her shop is where I like to buy.

Each relay leg was short and hard, and mine came after eight miles and a sprint.

Full PaddleSplash 2026 Results

Fifty-four paddlers put up 63 finishes across the five races, since eight of them entered more than one and Kylie Churillo raced three. Change of Pace timed the weekend and publishes the official results. Everything here comes from those sheets, and I worked out the average speeds for the three races that have a published distance.

The first six boats across the line in the 8 Mile were surfskis. I came seventh overall at 1:49:01.53, which was first among the paddleboards by 8 minutes and 59 seconds over Jim Pratt. The 5 Mile on Saturday had five surfskis at the front and Rod De La Rosa leading the paddleboards home in seventh at 6.17 mph.

A few paddlers went onto the published results page under the wrong craft. Those were sorted out at the awards ceremony on Sunday, and the placings read out there are the ones that stood. Marsha Arnold is recorded under SUP for both of her races. She rode a paddleboard in the 5 Mile, where that is right, and a surfski in the 8 Mile, where it is not. Her 8 Mile time of 1:26:39.73 sits ahead of mine, so the published sheet reads as though a paddleboard beat me by 22 minutes when none did. The 8 Mile line is corrected here and flagged in the table.

Training for the Races

Thirty-Five Days on Lake Natoma

Between August 2 and September 5 I put in 12 sessions, 65.1 miles and 22.3 hours on Lake Natoma, all of them on my Apple Watch Ultra 3.

A few more paddles are missing from that count, the ones where I forgot the watch and fell back to my phone and Strava. Both the sessions and the race times are there.

On August 24 I covered 8.31 miles at 4.47 mph moving, which is the race distance at the pace I wanted to hold. On September 5 I went 10.69 miles at that same 4.47 mph, average heart rate 157, maximum 188, and 1,726 active calories. That was the last long session on the calendar.

August 27 was buoy work. It ran 219 minutes with only 45 percent of that time moving, at a maximum heart rate of 173: sprint into a turn, turn, accelerate out of it, drift back, go again. The clock keeps running while you set up the next repetition, which is why the session averages 1.96 mph.

The session-by-session table for the whole block is in my Nationals article, because the block was built for Gig Harbor and PaddleSplash landed in the middle of it.

The Fueling Plan

I have written before about bonking on a long paddle, because I got the fueling wrong once. Since then I have treated food as equipment.

In the weeks before PaddleSplash I used my training paddles to test it. On the paddles where I was deliberate about what went in and when, I paddled better and I felt better afterward. On the paddles where I ate whatever was in the house and left at whatever time suited me, I was slower and flatter.

What I Tested in Training

I changed one thing at a time on training paddles, wrote down what I ate and when I ate it, and noted afterward whether the session felt strong or flat. I tried gels at different points, real food on the board against none, electrolytes in the water against plain water, and meals at two hours before the start against closer to it.

I ran the resulting plan at PaddleSplash without improvising.

The Day Before

Through Saturday I ate a honey ham sandwich on multigrain, a banana, a serving of Japanese soba noodles, and six potstickers. In the evening came about 250 grams of sashimi grade fish split between yellowfin tuna and Ora King salmon, dressed with sesame oil and ponzu. The fish alone is somewhere around 50 grams of protein.

Around it: a second banana, three dried apricots, four small slices of dried apple, two fresh jujubes, a pluot, three teaspoons of brown sugar, and a 260 ml coconut water carrying 11 grams of carbohydrate, 70 mg of sodium and 490 mg of potassium. Then roughly half of a shared meal, which came to part of a sandwich, some potato chips, a bowl of white rice and four pieces of vegetable sushi.

Call it 165 to 230 grams of carbohydrate in the evening, and somewhere near 2,700 calories across the day. Those are portion estimates. Nothing was weighed.

Carbohydrate went in across the whole day, protein landed in the evening, and electrolytes started the day before the race.

Race Morning

Breakfast was a cup of rice two hours before the start and a banana thirty minutes before.

Rice two hours out is enough time to clear the stomach and still have the carbohydrate available. The banana is the top-off, close enough to the gun that it is still working when the race begins and small enough that it does not sit there while you paddle.

On the Board During the Eight Mile

Two Huma chia energy gels went down in the first half. They are made from fruit puree and powdered chia rather than maltodextrin, and the Plus version carries 240 mg of sodium alongside the carbohydrate.

The outbound leg, out toward the dam, was all upwind. Stop on the way out and the wind pushes you backwards, so every second of rest costs you twice. Stop on the way home and the wind keeps working while you sit there. So I ground the outbound harder than felt sensible, banking time against a downwind return I intended to spend eating.

For most of that upwind leg I was thinking about a sandwich.

Just past halfway, at the Aquatic Center turnaround, I parked the board, ate half a turkey, cheese and lettuce wrap, and took a selfie of myself picnicking in the middle of a race.

A third gel went down on the way back. At the island I stopped a second time, ate the other half of the wrap, texted a couple of friends that I was about fifteen minutes out, and got back to paddling.

At both stops I drank a bottle of BODYARMOR Flash IV and worked through 800 ml of water with a Liquid IV packet in it.

Between Races

Off the water from the eight mile, I ate six potstickers, a pack of dried sweet potato from Costco, and drank another BODYARMOR, about forty minutes before lining up again.

After the First Timer’s Race came another 800 ml of water with Liquid IV and a whole grain sandwich with turkey and cheese. Through the relay and the awards after it, another two hours, I kept picking at the same things in small bites and kept drinking. The watch put the two recorded races at about 1,470 active calories.

How Long the Energy Held

I stayed up and functional through the afternoon and into the evening, and went down hard around nine at night.

What I Took to Nationals

The USA SUP National Championships ran September 18 through 20 in Gig Harbor, Washington, starting five days after PaddleSplash, and I raced the 100 meter sprint, the technical course and the 10K in the first inflatable division the event has run.

The eating schedule went with me. At PaddleSplash I settled in advance what went in and when. Nationals spread the Big Three across three days, against three starts in three hours on Lake Natoma.

Race pace matched training pace, so training pace was the plan. I held 4.40 mph on race day against 4.47 in the dataset, and for the 10K I planned to pace to what the data says I can hold.

Back-to-back racing is a skill of its own. PaddleSplash was my practice at recovering between efforts, and the sprint and the technical course at Nationals are run in heats.

Lake Natoma is flat, fresh and familiar, and Gig Harbor is salt water, with tide and current in the Narrows.

Racing PaddleSplash Yourself

The event runs annually out of Black Miner’s Bar, with registration through RunSignup. The distances span 2, 5 and 8 miles, with a First Timer’s Race and Grom Sprints for kids aged nine to seventeen, and every race is open to SUP, outrigger, kayak and surfski. There was a virtual division at $35, or $69 with a board rental, for anyone who could not get to Folsom.

If you have never raced, the First Timer’s Race is the entry point, and I have written a full guide to preparing for a first SUP race. If you want to know the launch itself before you show up, Black Miner’s Bar is covered in my Lake Natoma guide, including parking and the boat ramp.

Eight miles asks more of the shoulders and hands than a recreational paddle does. The strength work behind it is in my SUP strength program, and dorsal hand pain on long efforts usually traces back to grip pressure, which I worked through in paddle grip and hand position.

PaddleSplash 2026 in Photographs

The rest of the weekend, from the Friday meetup through Sunday afternoon on the beach at Black Miner’s Bar.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is PaddleSplash?

PaddleSplash is a three day paddling and wellness festival on Lake Natoma in Folsom, California, organized by Nor Cal SUP and presented by Visit Folsom. The 2026 edition ran September 11 through 13 out of Black Miner’s Bar. It combines racing at 2, 5 and 8 miles with SUP yoga, clinics, a dog paddle, a poker paddle and kids’ sprint races.

What charity does PaddleSplash support?

Nor Cal SUP, a 501(c)(3) organization. Proceeds fund its Groms programs and community outreach serving foster and at-risk youth, covering water safety education, scholarships and access to paddling.

Where is PaddleSplash held?

Black Miner’s Bar on Lake Natoma, in Folsom, California, inside Folsom Lake State Recreation Area. Spectators can watch the racing for free from the beach.

Can you race an inflatable SUP at PaddleSplash?

Yes. I raced the 8 Mile on a 14 by 28 inch inflatable at 19 PSI and finished first in SUP with a time of 1:49:01. The races are open to SUP, outrigger, kayak and surfski, and inflatables line up with everyone else.

How long does an 8 mile SUP race take?

Mine took 1 hour 49 minutes on an inflatable, an average of 4.40 mph. The 2026 field finished between 1:13 and 2:17, with the quickest times going to surfskis. For a stand-up paddler on a 14 foot board, somewhere between 1:45 and 2:15 is a realistic window.

Is the First Timer’s Race good for beginners?

Yes. It runs separately from the distance races, at 11:30 on Sunday, after the longer events have cleared the water.

What should you eat before a SUP race?

What worked for me before an eight mile race was a cup of rice two hours before the start and a banana thirty minutes before. The rice clears the stomach while the carbohydrate stays available, and the banana tops off close enough to the gun to still be working. During the race I took three chia energy gels, half a turkey wrap at the halfway point and the other half later, plus electrolyte drink and 800 ml of water with an electrolyte packet.

How do you recover between races on the same day?

Eat a real meal. Between my eight mile finish and the next start about forty minutes later, I had six potstickers, a pack of dried sweet potato and an electrolyte drink, then a turkey and cheese sandwich on whole grain after the second race. The watch estimated roughly 1,470 active calories across the two recorded races. Replacing some of that between efforts is what keeps the third race from falling apart.

How does the PaddleSplash four person relay work?

Two teams of four race head to head. Each paddler goes out to a buoy on a single board, turns right around it, comes back to the beach and tags the next one, until all four have run a leg. Then the whole team gets onto one large four person inflatable and paddles it out to the red buoy and back. The heat is won by slapping the hand of the race director at the finish line. Teams race in pairs until the final two are left.

Can you paddle Lake Natoma outside of race weekend?

Yes. Lake Natoma has been hand-launch recreation only since April 2025, which keeps it calm and makes it one of the better flatwater training venues in the Sacramento region. Launches, fees, hours and rentals are covered in my Lake Natoma guide.

Affiliate disclosure: Some gear links in this article are affiliate links, to Amazon and to Venture Wild. MK Library earns a small commission on qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. The gels linked here are the ones I raced on.

Sponsorship disclosure: SUP California sponsored my entries at PaddleSplash and provided paddling gear. Venture Wild provided and sponsors the board I race.

Article Updates

• October 10, 2026: Rewrote the opening around the mid-race stop at the Aquatic Center turnaround and moved the Nationals section into the past tense now that the event has been raced. Edited for clarity. Corrected the 8 Mile summary to the six surfskis that finished ahead of me and the Grom Sprint ages to nine through seventeen.
• September 19, 2026: Added the full PaddleSplash 2026 results: a chart of every finisher in the three distance races and a searchable table of all 63 finishes across the five races, pulled from the Change of Pace timing sheets. Corrected Marsha Arnold from SUP to surfski in the 8 Mile.
• September 14, 2026: Original publication, written the day after the September 13 race day. Event details, schedule and charity verified against Nor Cal SUP, Visit Folsom and Folsom Times. The 8 Mile finishing time and division placing come from the official timing at results.changeofpace.com.

Sources

• PaddleSplash 2026 official results, 8 Mile, Change of Pace timing, September 13, 2026.
• PaddleSplash 2026 8 Mile field statistics, Change of Pace timing.
• PaddleSplash 2026 at Lake Natoma, Nor Cal SUP, event organizer and 501(c)(3).
• PaddleSplash Brings Three Days of Racing, Recreation to Lake Natoma, Folsom Times, 2026. Source of the Shelly Alves quote.
• PaddleSplash 2026 race listings and start times, RunSignup.
• Michael Kahn on Strava, the training sessions and race recordings behind the numbers in this article.