I was up bright and early yesterday morning for my big trip around Cape Ann in the annual Blackburn Challenge. After some breakfast in my hotel room I headed over to Gloucester High School, which is situated on a cove off the Annisquam River. I went to the school's cafeteria and got myself checked in, scouted out a good access to the water, and soon enough I was in my boat awaiting the 8:35 AM EDT start.
As I've said in the past, I like a good hour-or-less race. But this one was likely to take me around three hours, and so I had no illusions of being a hero. My plan was to go out relaxed and controlled and let the race develop at an intensity level I could withstand for a long time. I wasn't familiar with many of my fellow surfski racers, but I did know that two of them, Rob Jehn of New Jersey and Boston area resident Greg Lesher, were among the top athletes in the Northeast. So when the gun went off and they moved right out front, I let them. There were plenty of other people to settle in with, and as we moved up the Annisquam River I found myself sitting on the stern wake of a tall tattooed chap whose stroke rate was nearly double mine in this early stage of the race.
I'd set my G.P.S. device to show me only the elapsed time and the distance covered. I figured knowing my speed would only be a distraction, seeing as how nature would be throwing all kinds of conditions at us that would slow us down. On the Annisquam River we were working against some current, for instance. So if I was moving significantly slower than I'm used to going on flatwater, I didn't want to know.
One reason I've done poorly in long races in the past is that I wasn't disciplined about having a good plan for in-race hydration and nutrition. This time I was ready, with two camelback pouches (one on my back deck, one in the back pocket of my PFD) full of a carbohydrate-rich drink that I'd researched back home. I made sure to take a drink every ten minutes as the race went along, and as we emerged from the river into Annisquam Harbor and Ipswich Bay, I was still feeling really, really good. Keeping my stroke rate nice and low, I was having no trouble staying on the guy's wake. After a while I moved up onto his side wake and occasionally took the lead so he could ride my wake for a bit. That's what a gentleman does in our sport, after all.
We rounded the northernmost tip of Cape Ann at Halibut Point State Park, and here the conditions began to change. Up to this point we'd been paddling in very manageable waves and chop, but now the ground swell was presenting us with bigger cross-beam waves, and even though it wasn't particularly windy, there was a bunch of wind chop coming in at weird angles and I was starting to get tossed around. I'd been hanging very comfortably with the tattooed guy and one or two other paddlers, but suddenly they'd opened several boatlengths on me as they handled the conditions slightly better than I did. As we moved through Sandy Bay toward Straitsmouth Island I told myself to stay in striking distance so that once we were in Gloucester Harbor I'd have a chance to run them down.
Straitsmouth Island gave us a brief bit of shelter from the conditions, but then we were out in the open Atlantic, and it felt like paddling in a washing machine, especially in the areas close to shore where the waves were reverberating off the rocky coastlines. Paddling my least-stable surfski, the one I use for mostly-flatwater races closer to home, I realized that I had underestimated the conditions I would be seeing in this race. I have a friend at home who has done this race a few times, and his description of the conditions led me to believe that the swells would be glassy-smooth and just like paddling on flatwater except for the bobbing up and down. I'm not blaming him for my troubles; I very well may have mis-interpreted what he said. And I do have my own cockiness to blame: I'd been thinking, "Hey, I've paddled the Miller's Run in South Africa, the Columbia Gorge in the Pacific Northwest... I shouldn't have any problem with anything New England can throw at me!"
Oh, how wrong I was. As the Atlantic tossed me right and left and every which way, I began to doubt whether I even belonged out there. My paddling rhythm had been wrecked, and I was glad my G.P.S. display didn't show me my speed because to know would have been more than I could bear. The conditions just got worse and worse in the later stages of the race, and I flipped three times. As my elapsed time approached and then exceeded three hours, the only thing on my mind was "Where is the harbor???"
As a first-timer in this race I didn't know all the landmarks, but at last I saw racers ahead of me making a turn to the right after what turned out to be the Dog Bar lighthouse. We were at Gloucester Harbor at last, and maybe I could salvage a shred of respectability. But after all that wasted energy on the ocean I had practically nothing left. There were actually some nice clean surfable waves moving past the lighthouse, but I couldn't really manage the sprints to get on them, and I got minimal help. Then in the harbor I realized I didn't know the landmarks as well as I should have, and it was a long time before I was sure where the finish line was.
I crossed the line with a time of 3 hours, 23 minutes, 32 seconds. My G.P.S. device measured the course at 31.67 kilometers (19.68 miles). My average speed for the race was 9.3 kilometers per hour. That's not even 6 miles per hour... ouch. Frankly, I'm surprised I was even that fast.
Rob Jehn took the win for men's single surfski in 2 hours, 54 minutes, 3 seconds. Greg Lesher was second in 2:58:42, and Jakob Van Dorp finished third in 3:03:35. The fastest time of the day was turned in by a 6-person outrigger canoe: 2:42:15. The complete results are available here.
I actually felt slightly less crummy once I'd heard those guys' times. They'd been already out of my sight when I reached the rough part of the course, and as my pace slowed to a crawl I was sure they were pulling ever farther away and would beat me by close to an hour. To learn that I'd finished "only" 29 minutes and 31 seconds behind Rob, and a mere 19:57 out of the medals, softened my disappointment at least a little.
Now, a day later, I'm still processing my feelings about it all. I knew coming in that I wasn't likely to win the thing, but I really was hoping to make a good showing. For the first hour of the race it seemed that I was doing that beautifully, that my planning and preparation were paying off. But then my lack of preparedness for the ocean conditions was brutally exposed. And that's the main thing that makes me think I failed: out on the Atlantic I wasn't really even racing, but just surviving.
My fellow racers were very kind and supportive. Greg Lesher remarked that my time was in fact perfectly respectable. Rhode Island resident Tim Dwyer, who had won the men's double surfski class in 3:00:40 with partner Wesley Echols, told me "Give it a few days. You're gonna feel like such a badass for getting through this thing!"
An important thing I need to remember--I actually have to remind myself of this fairly often--is that how well or how poorly Elmore Holmes is doing has no bearing on the vitality of the sport. None at all.
As I mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, South African surfski legend Oscar Chalupsky was in town to conduct a clinic and promote his book No Retreat, No Surrender. I was happy to buy a copy and get Oscar to sign it. Oscar didn't know how I'd done in the race, but the inscription he wrote contains exactly the advice I need right now:
This morning I am sore and achy and tired, not surprisingly. Some kind of recovery paddle is in order, and I reckon I'll go back down to Gloucester High School and paddle in the protected water there in a little while.
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