I got to Vicksburg Friday afternoon, crossed the river to drop off my boat up at Madison Parish Port, returned to town and went by the race check-in place, and retired to my motel for a good night's sleep.
Yesterday morning there was a line of strong storms over in Louisiana, but it looked as though they might hold off long enough to get the race in. I joined fellow racers on the shuttle bus up to the start at Madison Parish Port and went about the business of getting my boat and gear ready to go under overcast but not-too-threatening skies.
The Mississippi was a bit low for this year's race: the Vicksburg gauge reading was 26.9 feet and dropping as final race preparations were underway. Times were likely to be slow, and up at the start we had to navigate some knee-deep mud to get our boats in the water. As I fought my way from the quagmire near the bank out into open water, my rudder got stuck in the mud and twisted out of alignment, so I had to go back to the bank and stand in the mud again while I got it readjusted.
With that nuisance distraction behind me, I warmed up and moved into position on the starting line. There were three boats there that I figured would be my main competition. Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, had proven himself a sturdy nemesis even though he is a relative newcomer to the sport. The Pellerin triplets (Carson, Conrad, and Peyton) of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, were joined by Tave Lamperez of Lafayette to form a formidable K4. Brad Rex (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) and Randy Hargroder (Opelousas, Louisiana) were teamed up in a fast tandem kayak.
The gun went off and I sprinted hard off the line, just like I'd been training to do in recent weeks. In short order I sensed the familiar presence of Rick Carter on my stern wake, with Rex/Hargroder just behind him. Rick was paddling a brand new V-10L surf ski with a day-glo orange bow, and Brad and Randy were in a bright yellow boat, so it wasn't hard to make them out in my peripheral vision.
I glanced about expecting to see Tave and the Pellerins nearby, but couldn't find them. I don't know much about the boat they were paddling, but my guess is that it was a more stable (and therefore slower) craft than what I've been seeing the triplets paddle as a K3 lately. In any case, I assumed they were somewhere in the hunt back there.
Six weeks earlier I had come away from the race at Ocean Springs feeling as though I'd left some money on the table. In other words, I'd been content to hang back and ride people's wakes rather than push the pace and take control. I don't know that the results would have been any different had I behaved differently, but for this race I'd resolved to be more aggressive. I threw in several strong surges in the first couple of miles and managed to break away from my competitors.
I was fully aware that I was taking a gamble, but I reminded myself of the good training I'd done in the month of April and proceeded with confidence. I was beginning to feel the first signs of fatigue as I rounded the first sharp bend in the river about eight miles (12 kilometers) in, but I was determined to think only positive thoughts and told myself that as long as I kept the boat moving smoothly it would be difficult for the others to run me down.
After another sharp bend the river flows straight toward the city of Vicksburg for some seven miles or eleven kilometers. By this time fatigue was settling in for real, and I tried to stay relaxed and paddle as efficiently as possible, using my legs and my torso. Occasional glances over my shoulder told me that I still had a good lead on those bright-colored boats, but not an insurmountable one if I didn't keep my act together. I continued to keep my mind occupied with optimistic thoughts: "They're tired too." "This is the same river I train on all the time, so surely I'm handling this water at least a little bit better than they are." And so on. But twinges of doubt were creeping in, too. About a mile and a half (2.5 kilometers) from the finish the course leaves the Mississippi and heads up the Yazoo River, and here my "big river" advantage would be gone and I would be vulnerable to anybody who'd conserved his energy better than I had.
The wind was picking up and I paddled through a couple of kilometers of increasingly choppy water. At long last I reached the mouth of the Yazoo, and I approached it on a path that I thought would miss the squirrelly shallow water there. Once off the roiling Mississippi I found I had a bit more left in the tank than I'd expected, and I added some power to my strokes while keeping the stroke rate low overall. Maybe, just maybe, I was going to finish this job. And then...
I saw some day-glo orange over my right shoulder, and at that moment I knew I was in big trouble. I tried not to overreact, and just keep things steady, but knowing Rick was getting a ride on my stern I threw in a couple of little surges hoping to break free. That didn't work, so I shifted my priority to keeping him from moving up onto my side wake and a better position from which to sprint for the win.
Rick began to surge with a kilometer to go, and it was pretty clear that he had more left than I did. I hung in there and paddled as hard as I could, but in the final meters Rick separated himself and beat me by 15 seconds. According to my GPS we had traveled about 20.7 miles (about 33.4 km), and our times were 2 hours, 18 minutes, 31 seconds for Rick and 2:18:46 for me. Times were indeed slow with the low water; my personal record on this course is 1:56:34.
Brad Rex and Randy Hargroder were just 93 seconds back in taking third place. Tave Lamperez and the Pellerin triplets took fourth overall with a time of 2:28:15. The fastest overall female finisher was Denise D'Abundo of Baton Rouge, who clocked 2:55:18. The complete results are posted here.
I apparently made a mistake at the mouth of the Yazoo even though I didn't realize it at the time, allowing Rick to close the gap significantly. After the race Rick and Randy and Brad all asked me why I had "gone so wide." "Go wide?" I thought; "I didn't go wide!" But in this sport I've learned that what you see from your boat sometimes looks very different from what people outside your boat see, and maybe at some point I should go back to the mouth of the Yazoo and see if I can figure out why the line I took was so costly.
As usual, Rick deflected the praise he had earned: "You were robbed, man! You worked twice as hard as I did, and I just hung out back there and stole it from you at the very end!" But I see it as a perfectly fair-and-square victory for him. As I pointed out in this post a couple of weeks ago, part of winning is simply being in a position to capitalize when the competition makes a mistake or falters in some way, and that's exactly what Rick did. Expending your energy wisely is a big part of this game, and it turned out Rick did a better job of that than I did.
In any case, as the rain began to fall while we awaited the awards, I was in a surprisingly upbeat mood even though I'd spent the second half of the race in fear of being caught from behind and then seen that fear become reality. My goal was to win, but if I had to get beat I'm glad I got beat as a result of being overly aggressive rather than as a result of being overly timid. I went out and did exactly what I thought I had to do, and it just didn't quite work out.
If I'm counting correctly, this was the 12th edition of the Bluz Cruz Canoe and Kayak Race. The Vicksburgers who organize this event have done an outstanding job year after year, and once again I have returned home in high spirits after a gratifying race experience.
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