Even though my lodging was 35 miles outside the town of Apalachicola, Florida, I sort of got used to it after a while. Apalachicola is situated at the mouth of a river by the same name, and my main purpose for the weekend was the 8-mile "Oyster City Challenge" race on this river. The course map looks like this:
The start, which appears in the upper left-hand corner of this image, would be at a boat ramp a few miles upriver at a place called Old Woman's Bluff, and the finish, in the lower right-hand corner, would be right by the town just below the U.S. 98 bridge. That much is simple enough. But near the upper end of town we would make a little detour, turning up into Scipio Creek and paddling a mile and a half or so up to a buoy before coming back down. On Friday I put my boat in at the finish location and paddled up to the mouth of Scipio Creek to get familiar with this part of the course. There was a lot of shallow water there, especially at low tide, so later I checked with race director Joe Vinson and he assured me there would be a buoy placed where racers could make the turn safely.
So I was all set for some racing the next day. I got up good and early Saturday morning--5 AM local time, and since this area is just inside the Eastern Time zone it felt like 4 AM to me. As I made the long drive into town through pine-forested coastal bottomlands, I found myself in a dense fog that required my windshield wipers on an intermittent setting.
Upon arriving in the "Oyster City," I put my boat on the shuttle trailer and caught a ride to Old Woman's Bluff. Rick Baker, who'd intended to race but had hurt his right arm in an electrical mishap two nights before, assumed the starter's duties. We lined up, waited for his command, and took off.
Bruce Poacher had made the trip down from Erwin, Tennessee, to team up in a tandem surf ski with Bob Waters of Sanford, Florida, and these two immediately rocketed into the lead. I sprinted hard in pursuit along with old friend Pete Greene of Beaufort, South Carolina, and Pete managed to catch the tandem's stern wake with me on his stern.
The fog was so thick that visibility was limited to no more than a hundred feet or so. But I was so focused on maintaining contact with the lead pack, I wasn't really thinking much about it. I've paddled my share of foggy days at home on the Mississippi, and never had a problem as long as I kept the bank in sight. I trusted that Bob and Bruce were keeping us on track up front.
And that turned out to be a fatal mistake. Somewhere around 35 minutes in I began to sense something wasn't right when the tandem ski made an abrupt turn to the right. I peered through the fog looking for the river-right bank and any buildings or other evidence of the town. I realized I didn't have any idea where on the river we were. Then we passed a couple of red channel markers that typically line the river-left side, and my bosom swelled with a feeling of foreboding. Then the U.S. 98 bridge appeared through the fog, and we knew we were too far downriver. We took another hard-right turn and started paddling up toward where the mouth of Scipio Creek should be.
There were plenty of good strong racers in the field who were entirely capable of making us pay for such a blunder, and sure enough we found ourselves well back in the pack once we'd made it up into Scipio Creek.
Going astray on a race course, through my own fault or somebody else's, is something that does occasionally happen. Whenever it does, there's always a moment of uncertainty about what to do. Should I keep on racing as if nothing has happened, or should I just put down my paddle and stop? Should I cry out demanding justice? Back when I was racing whitewater slalom a racer would sometimes be granted a re-run if his run down the course was impeded in some way, but that's just not possible in the kind of racing I'm doing now.
As these thoughts occupied my mind, Bob and Bruce quietly opened up a lead on Pete and me. I tried to re-focus and reel them back in, but they were moving fast and the wakes coming off all the other boats made it harder for me to give chase. I realized that my race was now just a private match with Pete, and I settled into the strongest pace I could with Pete back on my stern.
As the last turning buoy came into view we saw the "new" lead pack coming back at us, and it was full of familiar faces: Scott Cummins and Lee Droppelman of Louisville, Kentucky. Ted Burnell of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Elaine Harold of Louisville. Jason Hjelseth of Chattanooga. There were also some folks whose names I didn't know until I saw the results later: Joe Hester, Jim Budi, Larry Dixon. Pete and I rounded the buoy ourselves and I began to feel a slight resurgence of motivation, even though for me it was all about moral victories now.
As the race moved into its final stages, it looked like the battle for the solo crown would be between Ted and Scott. Meanwhile, Bob and Bruce had moved methodically up through the pack and appeared to have a shot at the overall win even after their foggy misfortune. In the end Scott held everybody off to take the overall in one hour, 3 minutes, 21 seconds. Bob and Bruce edged out Ted for second place overall.
About a minute back, I had my hands full with Pete. I didn't know the exact location of the finish line--I just knew it was down below the U.S. 98 bridge somewhere--but once I was within about a half-mile of it I began to surge hard, not intending to stop until I'd reached the finish. I could feel myself opening a gap on Pete and that stoked my motivation to keep it up. Picking off a couple of other boats along the way, I claimed seventh place overall in 1:04:31.
Believe it or not, my effort was good enough to win a medal, because I was the third person in the Masters age group to finish. Though we didn't know it at the time, Pete and I had been fighting it out for that medal. Seeing as how victories over Pete have been extremely rare for me in the many years we've been racing each other, my bronze medal has a glimmer of gold to it.
Elaine Harold claimed the overall women's title with a time of 1:05:07.
The complete results are posted here. You have to click on the line that says "8 Mile Race (38 results)" to see the results of the race I did.
I'd be lying if I said I was not at all bummed out about what happened Saturday. It looks like I had an excellent chance to win, at least among solo paddlers. But I've said many times in this blog that I do this sport because I love it, not to win awards, and if I'm going to talk the talk I must be willing to walk the walk when something like this happens. And the fact is that I do have things to be happy about. Besides my rare win over Pete, this race told me that my speed-endurance is in a good place right now. Just like at Ocean Springs the week before, I was able to sustain a high intensity level over the entire eight miles.
Usually after I've finished a race I consider myself done for the day. But Scott was going to go paddle a new boat of his in the Gulf off Saint George's Island, and my feeling of unfinished business prompted me to join him. We paddled for an hour or so and that put the finishing touches on my state of utter exhaustion.
The drive home yesterday took me 12 hours. I could have stopped for the night along the way, but I'm glad I went ahead and knocked it all out. There's no place like home.
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