I arrived in Ocean Springs Friday evening amid grave concerns of stormy weather and strong winds on race day. Particularly troubling was the possibility of lightning, the standard deal-breaker for a water-borne event like a canoe and kayak race. But when Saturday dawned, the storms had just about moved out, and the heavier winds wouldn't arrive until late afternoon--in other words, we lucked out.
We lined up in the little cove of the Back Bay of Biloxi next to the Gulf Hills Hotel, and the starting gun went off promptly at 10:15 AM CDT. As expected, three-time Olympian Mike Herbert sprinted into the lead and was already beginning to pull away as we made the turn up into Old Fort Bayou just a couple hundred meters in.
I had my hands full from the start. I'd hoped to get a better start than I did, and maybe make my competitors do some work to pull even with me; but the Pellerin triplets (Carson, Conrad, and Peyton) of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, got a very good start and I had to settle for a spot on their wake immediately. Rick Carter of Eutawville, South Carolina, grabbed my stern wake. Before long we were joined by the tandem of Phil Capel (Sherwood, Arkansas) and Brad Rex (Baton Rouge, Louisiana), and our four boats would keep each other company for the next eighty minutes or so.
One thing I've learned in this business is that unless you have the speed of Mike Herbert and everybody else in the race has my degree of ability or worse, the race does not always go to the speediest. When you're racing in a pack of people who are all about as good as you are, you have to do more than just be the fittest or the strongest or the fastest to assure yourself of victory. In other words, you're not assured of victory, and I guess that's part of the beauty. In a situation like I was in yesterday morning, you have to know what your own strengths are, and assess how good a job you've done of racing efficiently and conserving energy, and make an educated guess of how well the other racers have conserved their energy, and make your move when the time is right, and hope for the best. And even if you do all those things beautifully, you still might not win.
I spent a huge chunk of the race just sitting on the wake of the triplets, who were paddling as a K3 in one of those hybrid boats you see in races like the Texas Water Safari. Rick, in turn, sat on my wake for most of that time. A little over halfway through Phil and Brad moved up front and started pushing the pace, and once they'd done that for a while I finally made a move of my own, hoping maybe they were getting tired. But they held me off and I dropped back, and with maybe 2000 meters left I had one of those mental lapses that was all the two team boats needed to open a couple of boat lengths on me. I still had something in the tank and I threw in a hard surge, but though I was able to open some distance on Rick, I couldn't quite regain a wake-ride on the triplets or Capel/Rex.
Mike Herbert had tucked his victory away by the time we were anywhere near the finish line. His time was a course-record one hour, 17 minutes, 57 seconds. Phil and Brad finished strong to take second place, with the triplets taking third just several seconds back. I held my lead over Rick to claim fourth, and a short while after Rick crossed the line Randy Hargroder of Opelousas, Louisiana, finished in a respectable sixth place overall.
Due to some software problems the results are not yet posted online. At the moment I don't even know what my own time was; I think I heard that our four-boat pack finished some eight minutes after Mike. The race organizers were hopeful they could get the results up by tomorrow, and I will post a link to them whenever they do.
Dana and Nick Kinderman very kindly hosted me during my stay on the Gulf Coast this weekend. Nick raced on the Bayou as well, while Dana spent the morning running a 10K over in Mobile, Alabama. As a result we were three tired people by late yesterday afternoon and we spent a quiet evening at their house in Ocean Springs. We ate some takeout Japanese hibachi and watched the movie Pee Wee's Big Holiday, which I thought was sublimely hilarious.
This morning I woke up feeling quite good for the day after a race. After a lovely breakfast of "protein pancakes" prepared by Chef Nick, I pondered my paddling options. Typically I have gone out on the Back Bay of Biloxi the day after racing at Ocean Springs, but a cold front had moved in yesterday evening, and it was chilly and very windy outside, and I wanted something more protected. On Nick's advice I drove up just north of Interstate 10 and put my boat on the Tchoutacabouffa (pronounced Chu-ta-ca-BUFF) River a few miles above where it empties into the Back Bay. I paddled comfortably, pushing the pace at times, for 80 minutes.
When I'd finished observing that ritual I got back in the car and made the six-hour trip home. Now it's time to recover a bit, and start up a new strength routine, and basically just see what I can do to get ready for the next race.
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