Several hundred paddlers descended on the Memphis riverfront today for the 32nd Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race. The race course is approximately 5000 meters in length; racers start in the mouth of the Wolf River, paddle out onto the Mississippi and down the river to the mouth of Wolf River Harbor, and up into the harbor a half-mile or so to the finish.
I expected the times to be fast today: the river was at a pretty high level at 26.3 feet on the Memphis gauge, winds were light and variable, and the water was calm. But once we had finished and the results were tabulated, they were quite a bit faster even than I had guessed. Mike Herbert, the three-time Olympian and three-time world championships medalist, bettered Greg Barton's course record by one second with his time of 15 minutes, 38 seconds. A short while later Pete Greene, Eric Mims, and I finished second, third, and fourth, respectively, each of us breaking 17 minutes for the first time in his many appearances in this race. Fast times continued to be the rule moving down the list through all the various boat classes.
Greg Barton set his course record back in 2002. That year, the river was almost as high (25.6 feet), conditions were calm, and the river was smooth. Racers in all boat classes posted fast times. The only difference between that year and this one that I can think of is that in 2002, race director Joe Royer placed a buoy some twenty feet off the southern tip of Mud Island to keep paddlers out of the shallow water there, whereas this year there was no buoy, making the course slightly shorter but subjecting racers to the shallow-water hazard.
My time in 2002 was 17:32, and until today that stood as my PR. Today I clocked 16:51. Am I really that much better than I was eleven years ago? Were the conditions just faster in subtle ways? Are the little changes to my stroke that Shaun Caven suggested two weeks ago already making that big a difference? But then, I was about the same relative to Pete and Eric that I usually am. I could drive myself crazy trying to analyze these results, and it's probably a fool's game because there's absolutely no guarantee that today's course was anywhere near the same length as the 2002 course.
Oh well. I had a great time and a hard-fought competition. I love this time each year when canoe and kayak racing takes over the Memphis riverfront for a morning.
UPDATE: The results are now posted here. If you scroll down a bit you'll see the results in "finish time sequence," or the overall order of finish regardless of boat class.
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