I departed around 9 AM Central Time Friday and by late afternoon had reached my home for the next two nights in Charlestown State Park on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. Before making camp I went to the river access for a short paddle. I did four 12-stroke sprints and otherwise unwound from the six-plus-hour drive.
The campground was the kind that caters primarily to RVs and similar "industrial tourists." I heard loud music and plenty of noisy kids running around as I pitched my tent and made a quick supper, and as I settled down for the night I wondered how well people there abided by the quiet hours. Eventually I dozed off, and when I woke up at one point in the early morning hours all was peaceful.
I got up around 5:30 and made some breakfast in the dark. The greater Louisville area sits near the western edge of the Eastern Time zone, and it was nearly 7 o'clock before some daylight finally began to appear in the eastern sky. A fog was descending on the landscape, prolonging the darkness.
The race site was only eight or ten miles upriver at Westport, Kentucky, but it took me nearly an hour to get there because I had to drive downriver via a network of roads to cross the Lewis & Clark Bridge and then navigate another network of roads back upriver on the Kentucky side to reach the tiny hamlet. Once there it was simple enough to find the racers congregated in Schamback Park.
Fist bumps and waves replaced the usual handshakes and hugs, and everybody wore a mask, but otherwise it was the usual pre-race buzz. Athletes checked in and taped their numbers to their boats. Race directors Elaine Harold and Lee Droppelman greeted visitors and disseminated information while keeping an eye on the food preparation for after the race. Little by little the nearly two dozen racers made their way down the boat ramp and onto the water.
The course for the Ohio River Invitational was two laps of a loop that measured a hair over 4.5 miles (about 7300 meters). We would start alongside Schamback Park, proceed downriver to Eighteen Mile Island, round the lower end of the island in counterclockwise direction, and paddle back upriver to a buoy where we'd started.
We lined up, listened as Lee counted down the seconds from the deck of his motorboat, and got to work as he shouted "Go!" Though I feel like I've done more than my share of short sprints this summer, that didn't translate into blazing speed off the line. In the blink of an eye I was chasing five or six other racers and frantically trying to put my boat in a desirable position.
Fast-improving Chattanoogan Roy Roberts rocketed into the lead. Scott Cummins of Louisville did the best job of keeping Roy within reach in the first few hundred meters. West Virginian Gregg Peters and Michael Alexeev of Columbus, Ohio, charged hard to stay in contact with the two leaders while I dug deep to stay with them. By the end of three minutes we had formed a fragile single-file string: Roy, then Scott, then Gregg, then Michael, then me. We were flying along at 8.5 miles per hour, and as I strained to stay on Michael's stern wake, my challenge wasn't so much the physical toll as simply keeping my boat moving fast enough to hold that position. I would slip off the wake and sprint hard to get back on; but after several rounds of that, I decided there had to be a better use of my energy, and I let the lead pack go.
Just like that, I was where nobody likes to be: all alone. The lead pack quickly increased its lead on me, while my nearest pursuers appeared to be 20 or 30 seconds back. As I chugged along I realized my only choice was to maintain the fastest pace I could and hope that the guys up ahead would eventually slow a bit so I could reel them in.
That possibility wasn't farfetched, really. Roy and Scott had separated themselves from Gregg and Michael, but by the 3000-meter mark Roy had dropped Scott and Scott was fading back toward Gregg and Michael. Maybe my old friend Scott would be ripe for the plucking, I thought.
But the early quick pace had done a number on me, too. As we rounded the lower end of Eighteen Mile Island for the first time, the shallow water there felt like a cinder block tethered to my boat. As we headed up the narrow channel between the island and the Kentucky bank, I struggled to move at 6.8 mph. Lee had told us before the race that the river had virtually no current, that we were basically paddling on a lake. Was this slow pace really all I had left in me for the rest of the way?
As we lumbered up the chute, I calculated that the Scott/Gregg/Michael trio was about 55 seconds ahead of me. The only way I was going to catch any of those guys was if he died completely, or flipped, or broke his rudder. The chances of this vampire getting his blood meal seemed slim.
It was maybe 1500 meters from the top of the island back to where we'd started, and I tried to push my doubts aside and keep going. Once in a while my favorite baseball team falls behind by a gaudy number of runs, and the radio announcers always say "At this point, the guys just need to keep playing. Keep taking good at-bats, and stick to the fundamentals they practice every day... they've got an uphill climb, but comebacks do happen!"
Fundamentals. I've worked on them for years, and now they were all I could count on to take care of me. I tried to relax my body, take solid strokes, use the power of my legs and lower abdominals. As I rounded the buoy and headed back downstream for the second lap, I got a mental boost as my speed shot up to around 7.5 mph. Apparently there was some current of at least a half-mile-per-hour or so, and my slow progress in the chute wasn't entirely my fault.
Lee had been tooling around the course in his boat, and as I made my way downriver toward Eighteen Mile Island he came up alongside me trailing an inviting wake. I hopped on and rode it while first mate Cindy Massa stood on deck and shot video, and I couldn't help smiling as my speed leapt up near 9 mph. But of course, it wouldn't be fair for me to let them pull me all the way up to where I could rejoin Scott and Gregg and Michael, so I gave up my surf after maybe ten seconds. Lee then zipped over to Scott and Gregg and Michael and offered them a ride; Scott got the best ride and opened a several-boatlength gap on the other two. But then he voluntarily backed off the speed so that the pack could re-form.
If only we could count on such selfless sportsmanship in the upcoming presidential election.
I reached the bottom of Eighteen Mile Island with my spirit uplifted by the aid of both the current and Lee's motor. But once I was plodding up the chute I again calculated about a 55-second gap between me and the pack up ahead. By this time I didn't seem to have any close pursuers, so it looked like a fifth-place finish was my destiny unless one of the top-four guys had the mother of all collapses.
Roy Roberts had taken his training up a notch this year, and that was evident from the start of the race to the finish. Once he'd dropped Scott he cruised along unchallenged to take first place in one hour, 12 minutes, 31 seconds. The chase pack finally began to string out a bit as the three athletes made their final charge toward the finish line. Scott claimed second overall nearly two minutes behind Roy. Gregg was third five seconds back, with Michael fourth ten seconds later.
I made up my mind to surge as hard as I could over the final kilometer to the finish, but I was unable to nudge my speed much above 6.9 or so. I crossed the line more than a minute after Michael and more than four minutes ahead of the sixth-place finisher, Gregg's son Corbin Peters. At 15 years old, Corbin has a future that promises faster and faster times while quinquagenarians like me get slower and slower.
Elaine Harold of Louisville was the lone female surfski racer in the field, and she acquitted herself nicely five seconds behind Corbin. Here are the complete results:
I've spent all summer looking for towboat wakes to play around on. So even though I was beat to the socks when the race was over, my reaction was automatic when I saw a barge rig moving up the river. I paddled out to it and found a very nice set of waves trailing behind. Once I got myself situated I was gliding along between 7 and 8 mph, and it wasn't long before at least a half-dozen other boats were paddling out to join me. There was a pattern to the waves not unlike a downwind run and we had a blast moving back and forth linking rides together.
I for one could have spent the next several hours out there, but doing so would have carried me miles away from the barbecue luncheon, generously prepared by members of Elaine's family, that awaited back at the park. The others realized the same thing, so before long we were all paddling back to get in the chow line.
After some great food and the usual rituals of awards, raffle prizes, and swag handouts, we all headed our separate ways. I returned to my campsite in Charlestown State Park for an afternoon nap. There's nothing like the exhaustion of a canoe and kayak race to help you doze off in a noisy RV compound.
I ventured into the nearby town of Charlestown, Indiana, for supper. The choices were few, and I opted for the local pizza joint. Due to COVID-19 restrictions the place offered carry-out only, so I took my 10-inch pie across the street to a picnic table in the city park. The pizza wasn't great, but it was good, especially at the end of a physically-demanding day.
I was in my sleeping bag by 9 PM. Scott and I had agreed to get together the next morning for a Sunday paddle, so once we were both awake yesterday morning we reached a text-message agreement to meet at the Harrods Creek boathouse upriver from downtown Louisville.
We were both tired and sore, but we knew a good 90- or 100-minute session would help us on the road to recovery. We paddled up the Ohio, looped around Twelve Mile Island, and came back to where we'd started. There was a steady wind blowing and we almost had some downwind conditions to play in... almost. But that was nothing to fret about. I had fun paddling along and catching up with my friend whom I hadn't seen face-to-face in over a year. On the way back toward Louisville several big pleasure craft cruised by us and we had some fun trying to surf their wakes as they moved against the wind-driven swells. We didn't get any sweet rides but it was a good way to practice some skills in confused water.
We got back to the boathouse, changed into dry clothes, and drove farther into Louisville to have coffee at a shop owned and operated by members of the local paddleboard element. After some conversation and relaxation there, it was 2 PM Eastern Time and I had to head home. I got in the car and headed south on Interstate 65, happy to have seen some friendly faces and raced semi-respectably in this oddest of years.
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