I left home around 9 o'clock Friday morning. Driving to any destination in eastern Kentucky always seems to take longer than I expect it to: I was hoping to make it the greater Stearns-Whitley City area in between five and six hours, but it was nearing 6 o'clock when I finally rolled into Alum Ford Campground on the bank of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River. It didn't actually take me nine hours of driving--I lost an hour when I crossed into Eastern Time, and I also stopped for supper before heading into the woods to camp. I estimate the driving time at around seven hours.
Anyway, without much daylight left, I didn't have time to do a short paddle as I typically do the day before a race. I got busy pitching my tent, and in the process I realized that even though it was cooler on the Plateau than in Memphis, it was every bit as muggy. By the time camp was set up I was wet and sticky and exhausted. Alum Ford is a primitive camp with no running water, so I would be carrying on this existence for the weekend.
Just after dark my old racing friend Scott Cummins of Louisville, Kentucky, rolled in. I invited him to share my campsite and he put up his hammock. After a couple of beers and lots of conversation, we hit the hay.
It was not a good night of sleep for me. Something was bothering my sinuses in the worst way and I was unable to breathe through my nose. I'm guessing I got three or four hours of sleep at the most. It was still dark at 6:45 Saturday morning--Alum Ford is only a couple of dozen miles inside the western border of the Eastern Time zone--but I went ahead and got up and walked around, hoping that would clear my head. It sort of did.
Scott rolled out of his hammock a while later and we made some coffee and breakfast. The race would be starting right next to the campground, so we didn't have to go far to attend race director Gerry James's pre-race meeting and then put our boats in the water.
Scott and I have had a number of memorable head-to-head matches, but this weekend we were not in the same boat class, as Scott had decided to race tandem with fellow Louisvillian Elaine Harold. Even though they were paddling a Nelo boat designed more for instruction and surf-play than for speed ("this boat's a pig," said Scott), I knew this pair of fine athletes would be in the mix for the overall win. Once our 14-mile race was underway we were joined in the lead pack by a couple of guys who were in my boat class: Lee Droppelman of Louisville and Ryan Landis of Corwin, Ohio.
The course was laid out like so: from the start we were to paddle downstream for five miles, and then round a buoy and paddle back up to Alum Ford. We would continue on upriver for another two miles to another buoy, then come back down and finish at Alum Ford.
By the end of the first mile Ryan was looking strong in the lead and I settled onto his stern wake with the intention of staying there for a good long while. Lee was hanging in there off to our right. Elaine and Scott had fallen out of view but I figured they were someplace nearby. A bend to the left, a bend to the right, a bend to the left once more, we wound our way down the river. I say "down the river," but in fact there was no current at all that I could detect. I think we were in the upper reaches of Lake Cumberland even though on a map our race course appears to be quite a distance from that reservoir.
At last our first buoy came into view. I moved up onto Ryan's right-side wake and then took the lead so that I could be in control during the clockwise turn. Lee was right on our sterns. I kept my boat pointed straight downriver until we were abreast of the buoy and then I turned my rudder hard. Just like that, I had a boatlength lead. I rounded the buoy and threw in a surge: I wasn't ready to try to break away yet, but I wanted to make the other guys work a little to get back on my wake.
After this little episode it seemed as though the pace slowed down a bit from our early clip. Ryan rejoined me in the lead, and I could hear Scott chit-chatting about something behind us. As we pressed on, I could see Elaine and Scott's red boat moving up into my peripheral vision, and it sounded like they were bringing some roaring whitewater with them. As they pulled even with us, I saw where the racket was coming from: their bow was pushing a wad of leaves. There were quite a few leaves strewn over the surface of the water, and once in a while Ryan and Lee and I would get one caught on the bow and have to shake it off. But the tandem boat seemed designed to grab as many leaves as possible. "I'll be serving a salad at the finish," quipped our ever-witty friend Scott.
I'd noticed that Lee had mysteriously vanished from the lead group, and Scott went on to explain why. Moments earlier Lee and Elaine/Scott had paused to clean leaves off each other's boats, and Scott had inadvertently knocked the rudder guard off Lee's boat. So now Lee's rudder had no protection from the leaves, and the rest of the race was likely to be slow and miserable for him.
Those of us who remained continued to press on up the river. Whether it was the quick pace in the early miles, or my poor night of sleep, or my flagging commitment to training in the last few weeks, or improper nutrition, or the simple fact that I'm not really a long-distance athlete, I'm not sure; but I was really starting to feel the pain after eight or nine miles. As the start-finish buoys at Alum Ford came into view Elaine and Scott surged into the lead. So far they had been disappearing and reappearing in the lead pack, but now it looked like they planned to keep the lead for good. I started thinking less about the overall win and more about fighting for a win in my class.
We passed Alum Ford and entered the final four miles. I was feeling light-headed and I fought hard to keep my body engaged even though my brain was slipping away. At this point I knew my only chance of beating Ryan was if he was hurting at least as badly as I was. I tried a little sprint to see if he would fall off my right-side wake, but he responded right away, so I backed off. We continued on for another mile, and even though Ryan was moving his boat steadily he was not pushing the pace. Feeling I had to make him at least think I still had the competitive juice, I picked it up again, and this time... he fell off! He had nothing left! This was my big break! I was going to win this thing!
With the very last ounces of fight I had in me, I began to surge, hoping to put the race away right then and there. If I could steadily pull away from here to the last buoy, then surely I would be able to hold him off over the last two miles even if I blew up completely. He was out of my peripheral vision now and I pressed the advantage as hard as I could.
I was running on fumes as the final buoy came into view. From the buoy it would be a long two miles back to the finish, but I knew that as long as I kept my boat moving it would require a huge amount of energy from Ryan to catch me. After all, I've been in that position plenty of times myself, a minute or more behind somebody and struggling in vain to reel him in.
There was just one problem: Ryan wasn't a minute or more behind me. As Elaine and Scott rounded the buoy Scott called out: "He's three boatlengths back, Elmore!" Three boatlengths? That's all?? I paddled into the buoy turn myself and looked over my right shoulder. Ryan was right there. Right. There. I hadn't put anywhere near the gap on him that I'd thought.
At this moment, I realized that I was a dead man.
I had nothing left. I was teetering on the edge of the bonk-abyss. I went ahead and let Ryan pull back even with me so at least I'd have some assistance from his wake. But even then I could barely match his speed. With less than a mile to go Ryan left me behind and I fell over into bonk-despair.
Elaine and Scott cruised to the finish to claim the overall win in one hour, 57 minutes, 22 seconds. Ryan closed strong to win the single-kayak class a mere five seconds behind them. I was ashen and fighting off waves of nausea, but I still managed to bring my race to a close forty seconds behind Ryan. Lee fought off his technical difficulties to finish just 12 seconds over the two-hour mark.
Hollie Hall of South Point, Ohio, was the top solo female finisher, clocking two hours, 10 minutes, 4 seconds. The complete results are posted here.
I apologize for this post rambling on so long. Right now I'm just trying to get it done. Maybe later I'll come back and do some editing and tighten it up a little. Meanwhile, stay tuned for a second post about the rest of my weekend.
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