The paddling expedition had barely begun when the sound of a saxophone began reverberating off canyon walls. It was only the second night of a weeks-long journey to set a new speed record on the Missouri River this summer.
The four-man team had been paddling for 30 hours straight through western Montana when they heard someone yell out, “Good luck!” followed by a sax playing the melody of “Long as I Can See the Light,” by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
“The sun was setting, and there were these high, tree-lined ridges. The river is unbelievably beautiful. Then we begin to hear this saxophone. None of us could even speak. It was just magical,” Scott Miller, a 46-year-old from Minneapolis, told GearJunkie.
“The next day, about 80 miles further downriver, we hear the sax again. This time it’s ‘Proud Mary.’ I’m picturing some 60-year-old musician. Then we finally pull up on the riverbank, and it’s this 15-year-old girl with her brother and parents.”
The family was among thousands of people following Miller’s team through a live tracker posted to social media. About 3 weeks later, Miller and his three fellow paddlers had conquered 2,341 miles of the Missouri River, breaking the previous speed record set in 1980. But despite their intention to set a new record, the team didn’t hesitate to stop and chat with the family that had serenaded them. For Miller, that attitude is part of what he loves about adventure paddling.
Two years ago, he created the website Fastest Known Paddle, a water sports equivalent to the running record site Fastest Known Time.
To date, the website only has 56 speed records, mostly in the U.S. But more than half of those are from paddlers who have never set a record before. Miller hopes for a future where more people see paddling records not just as an athletic goal, but a way to reconnect with the country’s rivers and “an excuse to have an adventure.”
A New Horizon for Paddle Records
Initially, Miller reached out to the founders of Fastest Known Time (FKT) about expanding the running site to include paddle records. They turned him down, but gave him advice about how to move forward on his own.
Miller thinks it’s likely because paddling has several important distinctions from running. For one, the start and finish lines of a set distance on a river or coastline are inherently more ambiguous than a trailhead: “If you break a record by 5 minutes, we might have to consider it a tie. There’s too many loosey-goosey things.”
In addition, fastest known paddles (FKPs) can involve teams, whereas FKTs are usually solo records. Finally, paddling usually requires more preparation, logistics, and multiple skills.
Despite these complications, Miller thinks that paddling is likely to keep expanding in popularity — and the numbers back that up.
Paddlesports added more than 10 million participants since 2019, according to research by the Outdoor Industry Association (OIA). More than 34 million Americans got on the water in 2025 — an increase of 446,000 in a single year: “The industry has the participants,” OIA wrote in a report. “The bigger question is how deep the engagement runs.”
There are several reasons to believe that engagement will increase. Paddle boats have improved massively in recent decades, with huge boosts to speed. And thanks to social media, the sport can reach and inspire newcomers in a way that wasn’t possible before the internet.
“If you wanted to set a speed record in 1980, nobody was going to know about it,” Miller said. “There was no repository of those records.”
The Lure of Competition
The newest record on Fastest Known Paddle belongs to Brett Young, a 48-year-old resident of Newnan, Ga. By paddling around North Carolina’s Masonboro Island in 5 hours, 23 minutes on a windy day in September, Young created a new record for the site. He did it partly for fun, and partly to prepare for a much larger goal: the Watertribe Ultimate Florida Challenge, a 1,200-mile expedition-style race that circumnavigates the state of Florida.
“Jiminy crickets, it was beautiful out there,” he wrote in his trip report. “All in all, coastal rowing for time is much more fun than golf.”
Young is a perfect example of how paddling continues to attract new participants of all ages. The COVID pandemic will forever serve as an important marker for the expansion of outdoor recreation, and Young is no exception.
That’s when he got interested in stand-up paddleboarding. He was already an experienced endurance athlete with marathons and triathlons, so “endurance water sports felt like a logical next step for me,” he told GearJunkie.
Then he spent several years competing in the Suwannee 230 — a paddle race that follows this Georgia river to the Gulf of Mexico. “I was hooked on this format of racing — challenging, scenic, and raced by a small community of nutty people.”
Then Young got his two teenage sons involved, and they ended up paddling the Suwannee together. His 17-year-old son Hayden is now a competitive rower, and he’s working toward a scholarship in collegiate rowing.
In an interview with GearJunkie, Young said that “long-distance paddling has had a transformational impact on our lives.”
And his son Hayden agreed: “I couldn’t have imagined this two years ago… It’s changed how I view the world,” he said. “If I was given the choice a year ago between burning 4,000 calories every day for two weeks and going to the beach, I would have chosen the beach.”
Looking to the Future
Despite the increased popularity of paddling, there’s no denying several significant obstacles for those chasing records. A river trip, for example, demands the navigation of challenging logistics. Most notably: How do you get back to your car?
Moreover, transporting a kayak or other speedy paddle boat requires a large vehicle and a roof rack. Inflatable kayaks and SUP boards have vastly increased the accessibility of paddle sports — but they can’t match hardshell boats for speed.
Yet both Miller and Young think paddling is likely to keep attracting aspiring speedsters. For starters, it offers a chance to chase big achievements.
“Paddle races aren’t always convenient and apps like Strava don’t feel significant enough,” Young said. “It’s the gamification of a thing. As soon as there’s a ranked list, it changes that task. I think that’s what Scott has done. We’re gamifying an experience so that it can be shared or recreated by other people.”
Most importantly, they both agree that America’s rivers and coasts deserve more love.
“People think you have to go to the Himalayas or the Rockies or Boundary Waters for a big adventure,” Miller said. “But rivers and creeks are everywhere. And even when they’ve been developed by humans, they still retain their wildness.”
