Yesterday morning it was quite windy and cooler--the temperature was in the mid 60s Fahrenheit, and there was some cloud cover, too. After enduring the heat earlier in the week I was now having to throw on some extra layers.
Like I've said before, the Gorge Downwind Championships race would proceed up the Columbia River, because that's the way the wind blows. The start was at a place called Home Valley, located on the Washington side near the mouth of the Wind River. The finish was some 14 miles upriver at the town of Hood River.
Parking at Home Valley is tight for an event of this size, so I got an early start to make sure I'd have a place to park my car. I arrived around 9 o'clock and picked up my race packet with my number and a timing chip to strap onto my ankle. The pre-race meeting wouldn't start until 11 o'clock, with the race itself starting sometime between 12 and 1, so I grabbed my therma-rest pad and a pillow and walked off to the far side of a big field to lie down and be alone away from all the hubbub. I tend to be a little nervous before almost every race I do, just because I want to go out and perform up to my exacting standards. This event had the additional pressure of some challenging conditions. The wind was gusting over 40 miles per hour and the waves out on the river were pretty huge. Race director Carter Johnson was repeatedly urging people with even the slightest doubt in their ability to re-mount in rough conditions to withdraw from the race. The safety boats, he said, would be rescuing people but not boats, and so anybody who needed a rescue should expect never to see his boat again.
I practice re-mounts all the time and felt pretty good about my ability to handle the conditions. But not even the slightest doubt? Man, there's hardly a minute in the day when I'm not doubting myself about something. So all this was going through my mind as the minutes ticked by and the looming race drew closer. I lay there on the ground and tried to think soothing thoughts and conserve every ounce of energy I could.
At the pre-race meeting Carter spent close to an hour explaining the starting procedure. He gave all kinds of explicit instructions, but once we were finally out on the water it all devolved into chaos pretty quickly. A truly fair start was simply not possible. I positioned myself in the middle of the mass of boats and tried my best to hold that position until we were given the go-ahead. After what felt like forever they let us start, and the race was underway.
I spent the first ten minutes or so simply surviving. I was too close to the Washington bank and I was trying to sidle toward the middle of the river without getting creamed. Finally I was where I wanted to be and slowly began to find a groove, to have a feel for what the waves were and were not doing to me.
The rest of my race proceeded much like my practice runs earlier in the week: I would link together several good rides in a row, and then leave some good rides on the table. In downwind racing it's important to be paddling forward or poised to paddle forward at all times; when I missed a wave it was usually because I was off balance and leaning on a brace. The elite downwind racers almost certainly have a high caliber of balance and don't rely on braces. I will say that when I had to put down a brace, the spray off my paddle created the most beautiful rainbows I've ever seen.
I had one pretty close call near Viento State Park where I have no idea how I managed to stay upright; but otherwise I felt good and not particularly fazed by the conditions. As the finish line at Hood River Beach came into view I emerged from the big stuff unscathed and prepared to paddle hard to the end. There were several surf skis ahead of me that I thought I could overtake. Then, out of the blue: WHUMP! Over I went. I have no idea what happened other than that some supernatural force was reminding me of my fallibility. I lost some 30 seconds as I scrambled back onto my ski.
Mad at myself, I put the hammer down and churned toward the beach, where I would have to hop out of my boat and run across a cable on the sand that would register the chip on my ankle. I ran the hardest I've run since my cross-country-running days, and just like that, it was all over.
Like I said in my last post, this competition was like no other I've ever done. Sitting here almost a day later, I still have a surreal image of the whole thing in my mind. All told, I'm satisfied with how it went: I used the conditions as competently as I was able, and I can make a good-sized list of the new things I learned. Right now the only thing I know about my result is that my time was somewhere around two hours--forty minutes or so behind winner Kenny Rice. I would like to believe I was right smack in the middle of the pack, but for all I know my name could be down near the bottom whenever the results get posted. For the time being there's no point worrying about that. I'll link to the results when they are available.
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