Friday's drive went smoothly enough, and I spent the night at my friend Nick Kinderman's house in Ocean Springs. Yesterday morning the race was scheduled to start at 8:30 AM, so we were up bright and early to have a little breakfast, drive over to Pascagoula, drop our boats at the start, drive our cars down to the finish, and catch the shuttle back up.
The Pascagoula River is the largest free-flowing watershed left in the United States, and I'd heard for years how beautiful its swampy environs are. Finally I would get to see for myself. Up at Little River Marina where the race would start, we found ourselves in forested bottomland; as we paddled downstream toward Mississippi Sound the scenery would transition into coastal marshes and the river would distribute itself into numerous channels.
I admired it all but knew I had to focus on the task at hand. My main competition for the overall title would most likely come from Jeb Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi. Over the last eight years or so I had beaten Jeb handily at times but had to pull every trick in the book to hold him off at other times. I think Jeb's work schedule sometimes allows him ample training time and sometimes allows him hardly any. Based on his performance last month at Ocean Springs, when he was right on my tail until the very end, I'm guessing he's had some good time in the boat in the last few months.
We lined up next to the marina dock, and the gun went off. I tried to take the first 200 meters or so out pretty hard, so that anybody wanting to ride my wake would have to work a bit to get on it. Soon enough I could see Jeb's bow in my peripheral vision.
We were escorted by motorized craft from several agencies--sheriff's department, the local EMS, and so on--and as we covered the early miles through wooded terrain we had to contend with their wakes. Several times I saw what looked like a favorable wave moving in and I sprinted for it, hoping to stretch my lead a bit, but I gained no significant advantage. At one moment near the 3-mile mark a boat alongside us suddenly accelerated and sent a series of steep waves our way, causing both Jeb and me to spin out a little and swamping my footwell with water. Jeb moved out to a several-boatlength lead as I fumbled to open my drain valve, and I had to invest some energy in moving back up onto his stern wake over the next few minutes.
Once I was back on Jeb's wake, I sat there for a good long while and pondered my tactical plan. I was pretty sure I didn't want the race to go down to a sprint in the final hundred meters, because I'd probably be outmatched by Jeb's raw speed in that situation. But I also didn't want to try to out-grind Jeb over many miles because he's good at that, too. I figured my best bet would be to log as much time on Jeb's wake as I could and shorten the race to a three-mile-ish affair-- that's the kind of distance I think I do best.
So I sat on Jeb's wake some, and occasionally did my gentlemanly duty of taking a pull myself. Around mile 9 I threw in a surge and seemed to open a couple of boatlengths on Jeb, but moments later we reached the most puzzling part of the course. By now we were in the marshy grasslands and there were numerous forks in the channel. At one such place the race organizers had posted a sign with an arrow pointing toward the left fork, but the arrow was so small and my eyesight is so lousy that I practically had to paddle right up to the sign to see what it was telling me. Then, shortly after this fork, the channel forked again, and this time there was no sign. Neither fork looked any better than the other, and I had to stop paddling and throw up my hands in bewilderment. There were some spectators nearby, as well as a police boat, and of course Jeb, but nobody seemed to know for sure which way to go. By some process of inductive reasoning we decided the left fork was the way to go, and happily, it would turn out we were correct. But my attempt at a breakaway had been smothered.
No worries, I thought; I'll just try again. I proceeded to throw in a number of surges, but Jeb held fast on my wake over my right shoulder. Soon we were approaching the final bend in the course that revealed the U.S. 90 bridge, just beyond which the finish line lay. I knew my last chance to drive up the pace, and erode Jeb's ability to beat me in a short sprint at the finish, was at hand. As the bridge came into view some powerboat wakes swept through our path from right to left and I began to paddle hard, hoping that my comfort in such conditions would give me an advantage. And in the short run, I think it did. But as we moved within a hundred meters of the bridge, Jeb's bow roared into view to my right and seconds later he was in the lead, and just like that I was pretty sure he had me beat.
One final uncertainty remained, however: we'd been told that the finish line would be marked by two buoys, and as we passed beneath the bridge those buoys were nowhere in sight. I thought I had seen them when we were still four hundred meters out, but what I thought were the buoys turned out to be some rocks on the bank (my long-distance eyesight is poor, don't forget). It was only when we'd passed the solid concrete bridge piling on our left that the buoys were revealed. Jeb continued sprinting straight ahead until he'd crossed the imaginary line that passed through the two buoys, while I, ever the good little rule-follower, made a hard-left turn so that I could paddle between the buoys, as racers are technically supposed to do because it assures that the scorers on the bank can see their boat numbers.
So... for one who insists on following the letter of racing law, I was the inaugural Pascagoula Run champion. But in this case the spirit of the law deserved to prevail. When a race finishes on open water, it's important that the buoys be visible from a long distance out, and yesterday they weren't. So Jeb didn't know any better than I did where those buoys were, and when they popped into sight at the last second he'd just done what his instinct told him what was best. In fact, he'd done exactly what he had to do to beat me: he'd withstood my attempts to surge away from him out on the course, stayed within striking distance, and then proved stronger and faster at the end.
Fortunately, that's how the scorers saw it, and they declared Jeb the overall winner. The race organizers, meanwhile, quickly realized the flaw in the buoy placement and instructed the motorized support boats to advise racers still out on the course of where they were. I paddled back north of the bridge to help. That's where I saw my gracious host Nick finish up a good effort, beating out William Wolfe and Robert Brooks for third place overall. Lauren Drummond of D'Iberville, Mississippi, was the first female across the finish line. The race organizers are still working to get the complete results posted online; I will link to them when they do.
According to my G.P.S. device, the total race distance was about 12.38 miles (19,968 meters). Other racers got different readings because of the many choices of lines all along the course. The advertised distance was 12.5 miles. Jeb and I finished the course in about an hour and 50 minutes; again, I'll share the official results here when they are available.
All told, I thought this was a good event. It was quite well organized despite the couple of course-marking glitches. With any luck there will be more editions of this race for me to attend in the future.
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