For the twelfth time in the last 13 years, racers got in their boats and assembled in the cove near the Gulf Hills Hotel this morning for the Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race at Ocean Springs, Mississippi. I was pretty sure my most formidable competition would come from a pair of familiar faces in a tandem kayak. Mike Herbert and his daughter Savanna, residents of Rogers, Arkansas, have been racing tandem for five or six seasons now, and have improved steadily. I knew beating them would be a tall order, and as we lined up to start my plan was simply to get on their stern wake and see how long I could stay there.
A few seconds after the start I had my answer: not at all. Mike and Savanna rocketed into the lead and had a couple of boatlengths on me before I could even sidle into position behind them. As we turned left up into Old Fort Bayou they were steadily pulling away.
I resigned myself to a lonely morning on the race course--if I could hold off my nearest challengers, that is. In the corner of my eye I could see the bow of a tandem surfski, and I figured it was probably the father-son team of Jeb and Thaison Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi.
I settled in and tried to keep the stroke rate at or below 80 strokes per minute. Most of the time I was moving along at 12 kilometers per hour, and was pleasantly surprised considering the tough time I'd had in workouts maintaining that speed in pieces of 500 and 1000 meters. The race had started at low tide, however, and I wondered how much help I was getting from rising water flowing up into the bayou.
We would be paddling up the bayou some six and a half kilometers before rounding an island and heading back down to finish where we'd started. Up near the island there's an area where the bayou becomes braided and it's easy to make a wrong turn if you're not intimately familiar with the place. By now Mike and Savanna were just barely in view up ahead, and I saw them follow a chute to the left. As I got closer I realized that this looked like a place where I'd almost made a wrong turn myself in last year's race. The only thing that saved me from that gaffe was the presence of local paddlers Jeb Berry and Nick Kinderman right behind me.
This time there were no locals nearby to set us straight, and I followed Mike and Savanna's route with no small amount of concern that we might be going the wrong way. I rounded a tight bend to the right and discovered that I was right to be concerned: the Herberts were paddling back toward me.
Disconsolately we retraced our steps to get back on the right course. By this time at least a half-dozen boats, mostly tandems, had caught up to us. Mike and Savanna wasted no time sprinting back into the lead, but I found myself stuck back in seventh or eighth place, fighting to make my boat move through water churned up by no fewer than 20 paddle blades. I was overcome with waves of anguish that my race had been ruined.
A short time later we reached the turnaround island, and I told myself to relax as we followed the narrow, shallow channel to the right of it. There was plenty of race left to work my way past all these boats, though I wondered whether I would be able to reel in the Berrys, who were now in second place a good eight boatlengths ahead.
The channel was wider on the other side of the island where we headed back toward the start. I found some clean water and started to move past all the many boats. Before I knew it I was in third place and not so far behind the Berrys. I noticed that my speed had dropped down below 11 kph, confirming my suspicion that some tidal current was at work.
I threw in a couple of surges and managed to bridge up to Jeb and Thaison. I resolved to hang with them and conserve energy, gathering myself for what I hoped would be a strong finish in the closing kilometers. By this time the Herberts were nowhere to be seen.
We moved along patiently with me leading some and the Berrys leading some until the Washington Avenue drawbridge was in view. The bridge is almost exactly 2000 meters from the finish. I didn't want the race to come down to a sprint between our two boats: in that situation all bets are off with a powerful athlete like Jeb in the mix. I decided to start pushing the pace once we were past the bridge. But then I got a little gift: a fishing boat came zooming past to our left, sending steep waves our way. As we dealt with the turbulent conditions I realized that Jeb and Thaison were no longer on my wake, and I knew I had to press the advantage. I began to surge and I opened a gap. I could still see the tandem over my right shoulder and I knew I had to keep the power on. Memories of those painful 1000-meter pieces a few weeks ago took over my mind. I willed myself to keep pushing a little longer as 900 meters became 800 meters and 800 meters became 700 meters. Once I'd turned back into the cove where the finish line lay, I pushed the intensity even a little higher, the finish buoys sitting there taunting me as my thigh muscles began to throb. Stealing a couple of glances over my shoulder, I realized that I'd widened the gap on Jeb and Thaison and with fifty meters left I let up ever so slightly to the finish.
Mike and Savanna had taken the overall title convincingly with a time of one hour, 15 minutes flat, more than four and a half minutes ahead of yours truly. My time was 1:19:41, and the Berrys clocked 1:20:20.
Salli O'Donnell of Fort Walton Beach, Florida, was the fastest solo female finisher. Her time of 1:22:01 was good enough for fifth place overall. The complete results are posted here.
My G.P.S. device measured the distance at about 14.3 kilometers. If the advertised course length of 8.5 miles (13.7 km) is accurate, then I added some 600 meters to my race with my wrong turn. Mike and Savanna probably added an entire kilometer. Fortunately, the final finish order was about what it would have been anyway, I think.
I'm generally pleased with how my body held up, and with the grit I showed in the last few hundred meters. I wasn't thrilled about the spanking that Mike and Savanna laid on me, but the truth is that they're getting better and better, especially young Savanna. Whether I'm back in vintage form is hard to say, seeing as how I didn't have much direct competition with other solo paddlers today. One thing I know is that great racing form isn't something you can just wish yourself into; a variety of mental and physiological factors have to fall into place. The best thing I can do is be happy with how I did today, and keep paddling and having fun with it.
For more information on what this blog is about, click here.
No comments:
Post a Comment