I drove to where the race would start, just below a dam some eight miles up the White from Batesville. A small but eager group of racers had congregated, and after a brief meeting with director George Latus we put our boats in the water for the 9:30 AM start.
Andy Capel of Maumelle, Arkansas, sprinted into the lead off the starting line. This was my third time racing Andy this year, and he has started very fast all three times. This time I couldn't even hold on to his stern wake for the first couple of minutes, and I just had to let him go and hope he would back off the torrid pace soon. Eventually he did, and it took several hard sprints for me to move from several boatlengths back to a position on his left-side wake.
That's where I sat for a good long while, recovering from my sprints and sizing up the situation. This section of the White River meanders quite a bit and finding the fastest current was not always a simple matter. For once I had my G.P.S. device on board, and our speed seemed to average around 8.5 miles per hour. At one point we wandered too close to the inside of a bend and the shallow water dragged us down below 7.0 mph; at another moment we cruised through a constricted chute at over 12.0 mph.
Andy was hanging tough. As the race wore on I took the lead and pushed the pace at times but couldn't open a gap. A "safety" guy in a speed boat was following along, and a couple of times we both managed to ride his wake a little, but I didn't want something like that to determine the outcome of the race.
About two miles above Batesville the river makes a big bend to the left. Andy and I had gotten separated a bit so that neither was on the other's wake, and I decided it was time to commit to a move. I threw in a big surge and opened a bit of a gap, but not an obvious one. I knew it was too early to blow out everything I had, and I tried to apply consistent hard pressure and build my lead inch by inch.
The U.S. 167 bridge, where the finish line awaited, came into view with a good mile still to go. I continued to paddle the hardest pace I thought I could sustain for such a distance. I knew that failing to pull away would mean losing the race because I'd be a sitting duck for Andy to sprint by me in the last 50 meters. I wasn't seeing much with glances over my shoulder, but it felt like my gap was getting bigger. Each stroke seemed harder than the last, and I wondered if I was putting my tenuous recovery from the recent health woes in jeopardy. The dreaded sight of Andy's bow to my left or right never materialized, and with a couple dozen meters left I knew I had it. I passed beneath the bridge with a time of 58 minutes, 19 seconds. My G.P.S. device had measured the course at about 8.3 miles.
Andy crossed the finish line less than half a minute later. The man is getting harder and harder to beat every time I race him. We congratulated each other on a hard-fought contest and spent the next couple of minutes just gasping for breath. Eventually I found the energy to paddle back up above the bridge and cheer on folks like Mike Vaughn, Dale Burris, Becky Burris, Doug Pennington, and Phil Capel as they finished their races.
Here are the results:
We made our way up the bank to a pavilion in Kennedy Park, where we enjoyed a hot dog lunch and received wooden trophies made by the shop class at the local high school. I got a ride up to the start to retrieve my car, loaded up my boat, and headed back to Memphis, arriving home in the mid-afternoon.
I woke up this morning with some slight soreness in my shoulders, but otherwise feeling remarkably fresh. I went downtown and paddled for 60 minutes. There was a pretty good south breeze blowing and I found myself bobbing among a bunch of half-foot waves out on the Mississippi. The idyllic weather of last week is gone and we've got warm moist days ahead.
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