Monday photo feature

Yep, I'm a national champion.  Says so right on my shirt.

The reason for this post, besides the blustery braggadocio you've all come to expect of me, is to illustrate a curious quandary faced by participants in the particular branch of canoe and kayak racing that I do.

First, let me explain the circumstances of my national title.  I won it in the men's "K1 Unlimited" class at the 2017 USCA Nationals up at Dubuque, Iowa.  I actually finished fourth overall in the class, but because I was the first racer in the 40-49 age group to finish, I was awarded this shirt as the "champion" of that age group, even though there wasn't but one other forty-something entrant in the whole race.

The Dubuque Nationals wasn't particularly well attended.  In the 2016 Nationals at Northfield, Massachusetts, the competition was much more formidable: I managed only 14th place in men's K1 Unlimited, and I know at least one of the guys who beat me was in the 40-49 age group.  If I had made it up to this summer's Nationals at Syracuse, New York, my result would probably have been similar, as the K1 Unlimited field was loaded.  And having turned 50 in the previous year I would have been in a tougher age group, oddly enough.

I don't mean to throw cold water all over my 2017 accomplishment--you've got to show up to win, and that year I was the better of the two guys in their 40s who showed up.  The point I'm really trying to make in this post is the challenge of assigning "titles" in our sport: just because an event is billed as "The Nationals" doesn't mean you can count on having the very best racers in the nation there year in and year out.  Indeed, it's hard to get people to agree on just what "The Big Race" is.

Flatwater/open water/marathon canoe and kayak racing is not an Olympic discipline, so there's no gold medal to aspire to there.  The International Canoe Federation has recently begun having a world championships for surf ski racing, but I suspect a lot of top surf ski racers still take the annual Molokai race in Hawaii, long considered the unofficial "world championship," more seriously.  Many North American-style canoe racers are more interested in the "Triple Crown" events (the General Clinton Regatta, the Ausable Marathon, and La Classique Internationale de Canots de la Mauricie) than they are in the USCA Nationals.  On the U.S. domestic circuit many downwind enthusiasts shoot for the Gorge Downwind Championships on the Columbia River, while the more flatwater-endurance-oriented folks might save their best effort for the Chattajack race on the Tennessee River, which has managed to become very popular and therefore always has a competitive field.  Ultra-endurance types focus on the Texas Water Safari or the Missouri River 340 or the Tour du Teche.  As for myself, most years my biggest race is the Outdoors, Inc., Canoe and Kayak Race, because (a) it's a distance to which I think I'm athletically well suited, and (b) it's my hometown race and I want to do whatever I can to make canoe and kayak racing "a thing" in Memphis.

In the end, it all seems like a big hodgepodge that produces no agreement on who "the champion" really is.  But that's really the lesson we should be taking away from all this: awards and titles are not why we race.  We do it because we love it.  I've mentioned before that spending an hour or two in my boat is likely to be the most satisfying thing I do on any given day.  That's more valuable than anything you can print on a tee shirt.