First weekend of vacation, Part B: Racing in Nashville

The weatherman had promised some relief from the sweltering summer heat, and it seemed that he'd delivered as I prepared to head out to the race site yesterday morning.  My stomach still felt a bit heavy from that massive burger but my bodily functions seemed to be proceeding on schedule.

My race was on J. Percy Priest Reservoir on the east side of town.  This body of water, formed by the construction of a dam on the Stones River near its confluence with the Cumberland River, is a place I hadn't visited since I'd been a college student in Nashville in the late 1980s.  I arrived at the race site yesterday morning and realized I'd forgotten what a nice lake it is.

The race distance was 6 miles: three laps of a 2-mile loop.  We warmed up and assembled at the starting line, and off we went.  Very quickly I found myself in the lead pack with Scott Cummins of Louisville, Kentucky, and Ted Burnell of Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Out on the lake there were some decent-sized waves driven by an 8- or 9-mile-per-hour wind, and each leg of the triangular course offered its own particular challenge.  The stretch from the starting line to the first buoy turn seemed to be the "calmest" of the three legs; the second leg went straight into a headwind; and the final leg featured waves running from about four o'clock to ten o'clock, if our bows were pointed toward twelve o'clock.

By the three-mile mark Scott and I had opened a gap on Ted, and I knew I was in familiar territory.  I've been racing with Scott off and on for the last fifteen years or so, and while we're generally evenly matched, he has seemed to have my number when the finish line comes into view and it's time to go for the win.

This history between us was at the front of my mind as more and more of the course passed beneath us.  As we began the third and final lap I was still feeling reasonably fresh, and given the regular sprint workouts I'd done during the summer, I thought I should have a good shot at him as long as I conserved my energy for a strong finish.  Scott seemed content to hold the lead--he later told me he wanted to control how we approached the buoy turns among the standup-paddleboard racers who were also on the course--so I tried to stay positioned on his stern wake, especially on the upwind leg.

I didn't do myself any favors at the final buoy turn.  Scott went to the outside of a pair of SUP racers, and I thought I could cut inside and gain an instant boatlength or two on him.  But at the last second one of the boarders turned sharply right in front of me, and because he was in right-of-way position, there wasn't much I could do but stop paddling for the few seconds it took him to get out of my way.  Then I had to throw in a sprint just to regain contact with Scott.  Now we were headed toward the finish line with the waves following us at an oblique angle, and we tried to tack back and forth to get whatever boost from them we could.  The final 400 meters or so were in slightly more protected water, and as soon as I sensed the waves were starting to abate I began my final sprint.  By this time Scott had drifted off some distance to my left and it was hard to tell which of us was actually in the lead, but I liked my chances.  I pretended I was back on Patriot Lake where our "Thursday evening sprints" take place, and sprinted as hard as I could.

But as our paths toward the finish line converged, Scott wasn't giving an inch.  My fitness was there, enabling me to bear down ever harder, but the necessary speed was not, and Scott held me off to win by about a third of a boatlength.

The results are posted here.  You have to click on "Results," and then choose "6 mile" from the "select an event" menu.  Scott (who is listed as William Cummins) officially beat me by 1.46 seconds, but I think the true margin was about a second less than that.

But that's "all academic," as they say.  It was a good hard-fought contest and I have no complaints.  Surely it's only a matter of time before I finally end up on the winning end of a mad sprint to the finish with my Kentucky rival.