An annual ritual on the Gulf Coast

On Saturday morning I joined some 70 other athletes for the Battle On The Bayou canoe and kayak race on Old Fort Bayou at Ocean Springs.  This was the thirteenth edition of this event: it started in 2010 and has taken place every year since except the pandemic year 2020.  I have attended every one.

We lined up in the cove down the hill from the Gulf Hills Hotel and were off just as soon as race director Mike Pornovets gave the word.  As we made the turn from the cove up into the bayou, I assessed the cast of characters at the front of the pack.  Up in first place was Mike Herbert of Rogers, Arkansas, a longtime friend as well as a three-time Olympian, a three-time world championships medalist, and a Pan Am Games champion.  I found myself in his wake jockeying for position with Alessia Faverio of Erwin, Tennessee, whom I’d last seen just a couple of months ago at our Florida training camp.  Advancing quickly to our right was a tandem surfski paddled by the father-son team of Jeb and Thaison Berry of Gulfport, Mississippi.  Also among the early leaders was Matt Taylor of Brantley, Alabama, with whom I wasn’t so familiar but who was moving his boat nicely in the early going.

Mike was methodically extending his lead by the time we reached the Washington Avenue drawbridge.  Jeb and Thaison had moved into second and put several boatlengths on Alessia and me.  By the 2-kilometer mark she and I had settled into some cooperative wake-riding in the hope of eventually reeling the Berrys in.  But then a bit of luck plopped in our laps: the Berrys took a wrong turn in the sometimes confusing maze of marsh channels, and suddenly Alessia and I went from being several boatlengths back to leading Jeb and Thaison by at least the same margin.

Alessia and I continued working together to try to extend our lead.  But the Berrys weren’t done.  In less than ten minutes they had closed the gap and were advancing on our right side.  Alessia moved onto their side wake while I tried to anticipate the next development.  It was clear that Jeb and Thaison intended to move on in front and pull away.  They opened a boatlength on us, and realizing that their generous wake was about to slip away, I threw down a hard sprint to get back up on their stern.  Though it hadn’t been my primary intention to drop Alessia, that was a result of my move.  The Berrys were moving fast and I concentrated hard on holding their stern wake for as long as I could.  I succeeded for a few minutes, but eventually their speed was more than I could handle and I had to let them get away.

As we approached the big island that represented the turnaround point, Mike was all but out of sight in first place.  Jeb and Thaison continued to pull away from me, leaving me in a place no marathon canoe and kayak racer really wants to be: all by my lonesome.  Alessia wasn’t far behind, and I could hear her chatting with a voice that I recognized as that of Don Walls of Russellville, Arkansas.  A many-time national champion in North American-style marathon canoe racing, Don was paddling a sleek outrigger canoe and doing an admirable job keeping up with us double-bladers.  As fatigue began to grip my body, I pondered my options.  I could back off and let Alessia and Don catch me, and then conserve energy trading wake rides with them in the hopes of sprinting away in the closing meters; or I could continue bearing down and make them work to catch me, and hope I would have just a bit more left than they did at the end.  I opted for the latter tactic, and realized that my sprint to keep up with the Berrys earlier had been a crucial move.  Even though I was getting tired and it was very likely that Alessia and Don would reel me in, I was still in a more desirable position than they were.

The second half of the race had an added challenge: the wind was coming from the southwest and the tide was flowing in, meaning that we had to fight both as we retraced our route from the turnaround point back to the Gulf Hills cove.  I’d averaged around 11.5 kilometers per hour on the way out, and it messed with my brain as I struggled to manage even 10 kph coming back.  I had to keep reminding myself that my competitors were all dealing with it, too.

When the Washington Avenue drawbridge came back into view I knew that I was sort of getting close to the end, but the bridge is about 2 kilometers from the finish, and I was probably another kilo from it when I could first see it, so there was still plenty of room for all kinds of funny things to happen.  Soon, what I knew was inevitable finally happened: one of the boats behind me caught up.  It was Don.  In my peripheral vision I could see another boat just behind him that I assumed was Alessia.  I was actually glad to have some company, not to mention some wakes I could ride.  As we passed beneath the bridge I started to gather myself for a strong finish.  As the two kilometers dwindled to just one, I realized there was another boat in our little pack: a tandem ski paddled by Susan Jordan of Lucedale, Mississippi, and Mike Malone of Fort Walton Beach, Florida.  At this point I was just managing my fatigue and I thought, hey, the more the merrier.

At long last, we rounded the point of the last marshy island and pointed our boats straight toward the finish line about 400 meters in the distance.  I found another gear and moved out in front of my competition--a reminder of why I do all those 1000- and 500-meter pieces back home.  My closest challenger was Susan/Mike, and I gauged their reaction to my surges to save as much as I could for the final 50.  I threw down one last splurge of effort and crossed the finish line in third place overall with a time of one hour, 17 minutes, 57 seconds for the 13.56-kilometer (8.43-mile) course.

Mike, of course, had taken the overall victory long before anybody else was even within sight of the finish line, clocking 1:08:52.  At age 62, the man seems in vintage form.

Jeb and Thaison were next across, nearly eight minutes later (1:16:38).  Behind me, the racers sorted themselves out as Susan and Mike in fourth (1:17:58), Alessia fifth (1:18:08), and Don sixth (1:18:12).  Matt Taylor finished in 1:20:02 to claim third place behind Mike and me in the men’s class for racing kayaks.

The complete results are posted here.

The day had been overcast to begin, but by race’s end the sun had come out and we all gathered on the bank to socialize, eat a barbecue lunch, and enjoy the nice day.  Once the awards had been handed out I returned to my accommodations at my friend Nick Kinderman’s house.  I actually had the place to myself, as Nick had just married the lovely Miss Kelly Platt and moved in with her.  (For the record, those two do have their priorities straight: the wedding and honeymoon weren’t enough to keep them from racing.  Nick clocked 1:31:20 to take first place in the men's K1 "Long" class, while Kelly was the third-fastest in women's K1 "Fast" at 1:46:09.)

I enjoyed a slow morning today, easing away from Nick’s house around 9 o'clock.  I needed a recovery paddle, so I drove back over to Gulf Hills and paddled easy in the Back Bay of Biloxi for an hour.  It felt good to get some blood flowing through my ragged muscles, and I also saw some neat wildlife, most notably some diving pelicans and a briefly-surfacing dolphin.  Such things are a good reminder of why I should leave the good old Memphis riverfront and paddle some other places once in a while.  Another cool thing I saw was on the railroad line that crosses the Back Bay near its entrance from Mississippi Sound: there's a bridge that rotates to allow boat traffic to pass through, and I got to watch it close back up in preparation for an approaching train.  I'm still a little kid when it comes to stuff like that.

I hit the road and was back in Memphis around 5 o'clock.  Thus concluded my first race trip of the year.  When will my next one be?  As I said in my last post, I really don't know.  Once I'm settled back in at home I'll give that some more serious thought.

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