I attended the Firecracker Race on the upper Mississippi River yesterday. This event has occurred in several different locations over the years; these days it's a 24-kilometer (15-mile) race from Grafton, Illinois, to Alton, Illinois. I think it took place on Independence Day weekend years ago, and that explains its name.
Turnout for the race was robust. Because I hadn't decided to register until just a few days before, I missed out on both a post-race meal ticket and a seat on the shuttle bus that transported racers who had left their vehicles down at Alton back to the start. Meanwhile, race director Craig Heaton decided to split the field into two waves at the start: most boats would start at the advertised time of 9:30 AM, but a couple of men's solo kayak classes, including mine, would start ten minutes later.
Grafton is located where the Illinois River flows into the Mississippi. As soon as the bulk of the field started in the first wave at 9:30, the rest of us lined up in the mouth of the Illinois as the ten-minute stagger interval ticked down. Soon enough, we were off. Within the first ten minutes I found myself all alone in first place among all second-wavers, and from there on out the race would be an exercise in river-reading, pacing, and energy conservation.
I was definitely getting help from the current: I think once or twice the reading on my G.P.S. device went as high as 14.8 kilometers per hour. Most of the time it hovered in the high 13s and low 14s. Pretty soon I was overtaking some of the first-wave racers, and that aided my river-reading mission, since the majority of them were local to the region and knew this section of the river better than I.
My speed made it clear that my race would take somewhere between 100 minutes and two hours. That's well within my comfort zone, but several factors--the heat (around 90 degrees Fahrenheit), the headwind, and the fact that I hadn't been doing any racing this year--compelled me to be conservative to avoid the dreaded "bonk." I tried to paddle at a controlled 70 strokes per minute; I kept wanting to wander up closer to 75 spm, and continually I had to make myself back off.
Meanwhile, my competitive urges were spurring me along. While it seemed that I had my own boat class (solo race kayaks) well in hand, I was hoping maybe I could clock the fastest time of the day. The trouble was, my main competition for that distinction--tandem race boats--had started in the first wave, and so I had no idea how I was doing relative to them. As the race went on I passed most of the boats in the first wave, and I scanned the river in front of me to see if I could spot any of those fastest boats.
Fatigue was starting to set in as I neared the one-hour mark. And the water conditions seemed to be getting choppier and choppier. There was a breeze blowing upriver, as I said, and there were some barges and other motorized boat traffic as well. By the time I rounded the bend to get my first glimpse of the bridge at Alton, some 8 kilometers off in the distance, all kinds of confused little waves were slapping at my boat. Though the conditions were nothing I don't see all the time back home on the lower Mississippi, 16 kilometers into a 24-kilometer race my motor coordination was starting to crumble. More and more I started to concentrate just on staying upright.
With around 7 kilometers to go my speed plummeted as low as 10 kph, and I wondered if I was losing the assistance of the current. There's a dam not far below the race's finish line, and I thought maybe I had hit the water that was backed up behind it. Soon, however, I realized I had simply made a river-reading error: I looked to my left and saw that there were sandbars separating me from the main channel. I worked my way over as aggressively as I dared, and before long I was back up around 14 kph. Such is life when you race on a big river like the Mississippi: your G.P.S. device shows a drop in your speed, and you ask yourself, "Have I moved into some slower water? Is the headwind getting worse? Have I hit the slackwater behind the dam? Or am I just getting tired and slowing down?"
Ever so painfully, the Alton riverfront inched closer. By now I was overtaking the fastest female kayakers and could see a tandem surfski in the distance. As long as I was within ten minutes of a first-wave boat like that one, I would finish with a better time. Little by little I reeled it in, and with less than two kilometers left I went by it.
I was continuing to move along at over 14 kph. (I later learned that all of the dam's gates were open, providing us with strong current all the way to the finish.) Now, the only boat I could see was a four-person "Voyager" canoe. I tried to pull even with it, but its paddlers were stubbornly keeping it beyond my reach. The finish line loomed a few hundred meters ahead, alongside a sea wall where the timing officials were perched with their clipboards and stopwatches. Waves reverberating from the seawall made stability trickier than ever, but I relaxed my core muscles and sprinted as hard as I could. I advanced to within half a boatlength of beating the canoe, but that was as good as I was going to do: I crossed the line with a time of one hour, 46 minutes, 27 seconds. The canoe, of course, had had a ten-minute head start on me, so its official time came to 1:56:24.
The paddlers of the tandem surfski I had recently passed congratulated me on my race. I asked them if they were the fastest tandem, and they replied, "Oh, no. There were a couple of boats in front of us that we lost sight of long ago."
As it turned out, the fastest time of the day was clocked by a tandem outrigger canoe (OC2) paddled by Rusty Self and Thomas Selva. They crossed the line one hour, 43 minutes, 30 seconds after they'd started. Just behind them, a tandem surfski paddled by the husband-and-wife team of Alma and Bryan Hopkins clocked 1:43:42. So I would have to settle for being the third-fastest boat in the field.
I really don't think it was necessary to split the field into two waves; there weren't that many people registered, and the Mississippi is a big river that could have accommodated everybody in one mass start. In that scenario I would have been able to compete directly with the fastest boats, trade some wake rides with them, and maybe have a shot at the "fastest overall" distinction by the end of the race. Then again, three minutes is a lot... it had taken all I had just to go 1:46, so I don't know if I could have challenged those other two boats or not.
But, honestly... it's foolish of me to quibble over something like that. The fact is that the paddlers of those fastest boats performed really well and clocked great times. And I performed well and beat all the other solo racers. I should just let myself be happy with that.
The complete results are posted here.
I was beat to the socks, but I still had work to do. Because I'd registered too late to get a seat on the shuttle bus, I had to come up with another plan to retrieve my truck from the start up at Grafton. And that plan involved my bicycle, which I'd left on the Alton riverfront before driving up to the start. Now it was time to hop on the bike and start riding. There's a bike path alongside Illinois highway 100 between the two towns, and I spent the next hour pedaling the 24 kilometers back to where my truck was parked. All this summer paddling and bike-riding have been staples of my Grand Canyon conditioning program, so yesterday amounted to a massive training day for that expedition that's now just 17 days away.
If racing on the river had worn me out pretty good, the bike ride finished me off completely. I drove back to Alton and joined in the post-race event at a local brewpub. I'd registered after all the meal tickets had been spoken for, so I just paid for my own meal--a big old chicken sandwich and french fries. I wolfed it down, received my first-place award in the men's racing kayak class, and walked out to my truck to begin the five-hour drive back to Memphis.
I was dead-dog tired and hoping I had enough energy for the trip. But the day's drama wasn't quite over yet. Driving south on Interstate 255, which bypasses Saint Louis en route to I-55 South to Memphis, I sensed that something wasn't quite right about how the truck was running. Soon the whole cab was vibrating, and I wasn't sure if the problem was my truck or a bumpy road surface. Seconds later, I got my answer: my driver's side front tire blew out. I managed to get to the road's left shoulder, fish the jack and related tools from beneath the bench seat, and get the tire off. It was clear that this tire had made its final spin:
Fortunately, my truck's spare tire is an actual tire, not one of those silly "donut" wheels. It would get me back to Memphis just fine (as long as I didn't have another flat, that is). But it was mounted underneath the chassis at the truck's rear, and to access it I ended up having to remove my bike and the bike rack (and the only reason I'd even brought my bike was that I'd missed out on a shuttle bus ticket... aargh). Working under the blazing sun in muggy 92-degree heat, I got the spare tire put on and was thoroughly covered in grime and drenched in sweat when it was over.
The rest of the drive home, through southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas, was dull. But I'd had all the excitement I needed for the day, and then some. I arrived home a little after nine o'clock. Glad to have had a sizable late lunch, I whipped up a small, simple supper. Then I took a shower and went to bed, falling asleep in no time.
I woke up this morning feeling sluggish and achy, but not as sore as I sometimes feel the day after a race. By way of a recovery session I did some full-body stretching at home, then went to the riverfront for an easy half-hour in the whitewater boat. A typical round of stroke drills for me is a vigorous affair, with me putting all the explosive power I can into my strokes. Afterward I feel like I've been in the weight room. But today I kept the intensity low. I've continued to feel sluggish and weary the rest of today, but hopefully I'll have some pep back in my step as a new week gets underway.
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