“Eric. It's been two hours and twenty minutes.” Shit! The “and twenty minutes” part snapped me awake quick. I was already worried about wasting too much time and now we'd slept for an extra twenty minutes. Seemed like a big deal. “Matt. Get up. Time to go.”
I scooped up the inflatable cushion and emergency blanket that I'd used as sleeping gear and waited for Matt to get up and moving. Taking that muscle relaxer before sleep probably wasn't the best idea. I felt a little heavy and lethargic, but at least I'd gotten a solid two hours of sleep. Eventually, we stumbled down the hill and started gearing up to push on. My shorts and compression top were still wet (obviously) from my midnight pleasure swim through the rapids. I hated the idea of putting those on in the cool, foggy, early hours, but the sooner they dried the better.
As we finished situating our food and hydration, we talked with one of the checkpoint officials. He mentioned some thing about us being right in the middle of the pack. Hmm. I guess we'd moved up a few positions, despite the slow pace, hallucinations, and lack of sleep. Not that we cared much at this point. Our main focus was getting to the next check point, and then the next, and the next...
We pushed off and began paddling into the early morning fog. I wasn't too thrilled about the lack of visibility (after our adventures earlier that night), but we'd only have a couples of hours or so before sunrise. Not to mention, this next section was the easiest we were going to see for the rest of the race: less than 15 miles of non-descript river between Cheapside and Cuero. I was starting to get a bit more excited and focused on the thought of running Cuero to Victoria. After Hocheim, Victoria was the next big milestone in my mind. Victoria is the end of the Texas River Marathon course (which I had never paddled) and the 200 mile mark. I knew there were rapids and sweepers on this section, so this seemed like our last big challenge before the log jam portage and the bay.
It's funny how little you remember some times. I recently paddled this section of the river in the Cuero Turkey Fest race. Aside from Cheapside, the rapids upstream, and the rock that knocked the paddle out of my hand, not one bit of the course looked familiar, haha. That's not surprising. Like I said, this section is mostly non-descript, with small sweepers and junk here and there. We did spot some wildlife on this section: a big vulture standing on a gravel bar with his wings spread, trying to intimidate us, and a couple of deer, maybe ten feet away on a grassy bank. Besides that, this section is nice, secluded, and a warm up for the prelim course.
Before long, we pulled up to the checkpoint and the 236 bridge in Cuero. It was still morning and I was starting to feel really good. This was mile 160, we had only 100 miles left (which seemed totally reasonable, at the time), an interesting and slightly challenging section of river ahead of us, and a relatively “short” section. Cuero to Victoria is 38 miles, BUT the Thomaston bridge is 18 miles in. So, you can have your crew meet you there, which basically gives you another checkpoint and, more importantly, a mental recharge. As far as I was concerned, today was going to be great.
Zoltan cruised past the checkpoint in his C-1, telling his team captain he was good for now. We exchanged our water jugs, took care of a couple of other things, and told Ed to meet us at Thomaston. Less than a mile from the checkpoint is one of the more technical obstacles on this section. The river swings left, with a shallow gravel bar on the inside and a nasty sweeper spanning the entire river. The water is pushy there, making that small slot through the tree a bit challenging. At night, things might have been interesting. As it was, we managed with out too much trouble.
This was another interesting example of the huge mental swings that go on during the race. As high as I was running the prelim course, Matt was hitting a low. Fatigue and pain are big factors after two days on the river, but I was starting to suspect the gps. At some point on day 2 (I think...?) Matt turned on the gps. I had been against it, only wanting use it for navigation later on. Matt was use to paddling with a gps and felt like he needed the reference to make sure we didn't slack. Sounds great, but what really happens (just like on long training runs) is you tend to focus WAY too much on the damn thing and the miles start to crawl by. “Man, turn that fucking gps off.” Not that I blamed him for the mood, but the hell with the gps. Matt flipped it over, so he couldn't see it...then got really annoyed any time I asked him what the mileage was...I asked several times.
Like the Hochheim section, I mostly remember Cuero to Victoria as one big blur, only punctuated with little events here and there to break up the monotony. Miles and miles of wide, slow river roll by with little to no signs of civilization. Although, when we finally did see a house, we got one of the biggest surprises of the race. Right there on the bank, down from one of the homes, was a big tent with a table full of water bottles and jugs, and of course, a “free water” sign for Safari racers. If the situation wasn't such a surprise, we might have been pissed at our horrible timing. As it was, we thought it was pretty damn hilarious.
Night number two had spread the pack a bit. Some teams likely pushed on, while others slept longer than we did. On the prelim course we only traded places with Travis and Zoltan. Travis started the race with his father, who dropped at Palmetto due to an injury. Travis pushed on solo and seemed determined to keep grinding away. Zoltan was making his attempt at being the oldest Safari finisher ever at 71 years. I tried to grill him for course information and mileage, but mostly he was just entertaining to listen to. Zoltan has run the Safari many times, with mixed results. As he put it, “I'm famous for breaking boats”.
Those 18 miles rolled off quickly. I was still feeling great as we pulled up to our unofficial checkpoint at the Thomaston bridge. Our crew was in the water, swimming with Zoltan's team captain. It seemed like a good time to tie the boat off and take a dip. We only spent a few minutes in the water, but it was amazing. Our crew seemed happy at the moment and Zoltan's captain told us to give him some thing to chase. Some where in there, Travis paddled in, grabbed his water, and paddled on. I managed to get a little info on where the rapids were and what to expect before the clock spurred us on. You'd be surprised what a short break like this will do. I was still high.
I'm not exactly clear on how many rapids there are on this section, I wasn't sure before the race and it's still not clear. I remember two. Neither of them was an issue. The first, we approached after swinging out wide to river right. We back paddled and slowed a bit to get a good look. It would have been easy enough to portage, if needed, but we ran them with no trouble. Later in the day, we paddled up to the second rapids with Travis. He slowed and had a good look before going in, as he was paddling a tandem boat solo, from the stern. He had no issues and neither did we. Another team in an unlimited tandem was pulled over in the rapids. They had some sort of accident. Some of their gear was in the river and I think they'd made repairs. We'd seen them making repairs earlier in the race. Obviously, the low water was causing issues. We managed to scoop up one of their water bottles down stream.
The more challenging features in this section were the sweepers. The shallow river and tight channels force you into narrow spots that are often clogged with junk. When we weren't alone, I tried to follow Travis or Zoltan into sweepers to pick up on their line, depending on how successful it was. Often, you have a choice of two routes, inside the junk or outside. If you choose wrong, you may run aground on the inside and have to portage over the gravel bar, or worse, get caught on the outside with no where to go other than straight into a pile of shit.
I know we had a few close calls and less than graceful lines, but only one stands out. There was a left turn with a shallow gravel bar on the inside. The river wants to swing you outside, however, there's a nice pile of junk right in the way, with a big log pointing back to the left. Zoltan took an inside line and slipped through. I tried to follow, but we weren't so successful. We approached from the inside and swept out further than I intended. Soon enough, we slammed sideways into the log. This is not a situation you want to be in. If the canoe tips upstream, the current rushed in, fills it with water, and either pins it to the log or sucks it under. Fortunately, we managed to push and pull until we slid past the log. Later, we'd find the damage.
Some where in that long stretch we noticed we were bailing water more often than we should be. There were no rapids since the last time we'd bailed and we hadn't been out of the canoe. We pulled over on a gravel bar and flipped that canoe. There it was, two missing rivets. More than likely, we'd knocked them out when we slammed into that sweeper. Matt wanted to dig the epoxy out and take care of it right there. I thought we'd be better off pushing on to Victoria, where we could sleep while the epoxy dried. Victoria it is.
Afternoon turned to evening and the miles started to add up. The heat was not fun. You get accustom to it after a while and only notice when your pace starts to slip and your energy evaporates. If you're really competing, you suck it up and keep paddling. In our position, you take a quick dip, just enough to cool your core down. Like the Hochheim stretch, we'd do this every time I noticed our pace dragging too much. Of course, we were always conscious of the clock and strict about limiting ourselves to a couple of minutes. At one point, we chose the wrong route, ran aground, and decided this was a good enough time to stop for a swim. Zoltan paddled up, taking the correct route, but decided to join us any way. We talked for a couple of minutes before climbing back in and pushing on.
Conditions in the evening were the first sign of what was to come in the bay, although I chose to ignore that thought at the time. The winds were picking up. Paddling into a stiff wind is never fun, especially 200 miles into a race, after a long day. We were paddling in a loose pack with Zoltan and Travis at this point. I did my best to steer us back and forth across the river, where ever there was a tall bank to shield us from the wind. It helped...slightly. Matt was not in a good mood. He was ready to get there. I had a hard time convincing him that 3 more hours wasn't that long. Hell, it was longer than I wanted to admit, but what options do you have at the time? None. You keep paddling.
As typical, those last few miles sucked. Just when you manage to convince yourself that you're almost there, you see a TWS mileage sign that shatters your hopes. “GO TWS! ONLY 1,435 miles to VICTORIA!!!” Ah, son of a bitch! It was getting close to dark at this point and I was really looking forward to slugging down a Denti Moore and taking a nap. Soon enough though, we pulled up to Victoria City Park. Seeing that “200 Miles” sign was awesome. For what ever reason, it was a big landmark for me. The remaining 60 miles seemed like a mere training run...except for the log jam and the bay, of course.
While we were trying to figure out how to haul our boat out, Zoltan pulled up, along with the tandem unlimited team. “He guys. Is this your water bottle?” They looked uneasy saying “yes”, which is understandable as, strictly speaking, assistance is not allowed. “I'm just going to set it on the bank over here.” Hey, I found a water bottle and chose to leave it on the bank. No harm, no foul.
Matt got a little impatient trying to pull the canoe onto the boat ramp...while I was still standing in it. Luckily, I fell backwards right into my seat. Probably looked more graceful than it was. We dragged the canoe up the boat ramp a bit, where we thought it would be out of the way, then flipped it over so Matt could work. I headed up the hill to check the time sheet and started shoveling down a Denti Moore. Cruising in the middle of the pack, we were always curious what was going on ahead of us in the race.
I've been told that Victoria is not a good checkpoint for sleep. I don't know about that, maybe the mosquitoes are usually bad there? We found a nice, grassy spot up the hill and laid down for a nap. I told Ed to wake us up in 1 hour. Unfortunately, I couldn't really sleep. When Ed came back after 1 hour, I told him to give us another 30 minutes. I might have slept a little that time.
It was dark now and and I felt a bit out of it. We walked back down the ramp to load our canoe up and noticed that several teams had made it in while we slept. Some were sleeping, some were hanging around the boat ramp, and some had pushed on without stopping. We hadn't really been in “race mode” up to this point...but I didn't like being passed by a pack of boats in the night. When we finally got every thing ready and back on the water, I set a hard enough pace to reel in every boat.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Friday, August 19, 2011
Gonzales to Cheapside: Miles 85-145
Dehydration, sleep deprivation, hallucinations, relieving yourself in the river, shitty, muddy check points, sweltering heat, impromptu night swims through rapids to chase down a $260 racing paddle, hypothermia in the Texas summer, the Safari has it all...some times within the span of 24 hours. Where else would you pay $125 for that kind of treatment?
I won't lie, realizing that we had forgotten our extra gallon of water had me seriously worried. 38 miles of paddling is some thing I can “manage” on just 1 gallon of water, especially at our easy pace, but I wasn't crazy about the idea of rationing water in the afternoon heat. An even bigger concern was how long Matt would survive. We started the Safari with a ½ gallon of water each to stay light for all the portages in the first 16 miles. By the time our crew surprised us, about 1.5 hours into the race, Matt was already through his ½ gallon. How the hell was he suppose to paddle 9-10 hours on just 1 gallon?
Nothing to do about it now. There's no where for the crew to meet us before Hochheim and no real options other than to keep paddling and see what happens. That didn't keep us from fantasizing or cooking up some “strategery” on how we might obtain extra water. I determined that at some point we'd have to see a house and they'd have to have some sort of faucet out back. Even better, maybe we'd just find a full water jug along the bank some where...
Despite our crisis, the race and the day proceeded along as usual. The Gonzales to Hochheim stretch is relentlessly monotonous. The river is wide, slow, shallow, and mostly uneventful. I expected this section to be horrible, but it actually wasn't too bad. OK, so maybe my expectations were so horrible that the reality was some what tolerable in comparison..? It really is a nice stretch of river, even if it is a bit boring. After some of my coastal bayou paddles, where the tallest thing around is a blade of grass, you won't hear me complain too much about paddling along tall, tree lined banks.
This is another case where the low water had it's benefits. As pissed off as I was running into logs and junk during the first night, we both agreed that all of that in and out of the boat stuff seemed good for conditioning. It kept the circulation going in your lower body. Similarly, on the Guadalupe, low water meant that there was usually a reason to pay attention and stay alert as you were looking for deeper channels and trying to avoid running aground. These little rapids were at least a little entertaining on an otherwise mundane stretch of river. Better circulation or not, it's hot, and long, and you really REALLY don't want to run shallow and have to hop out. We were always alert and searching for that deeper channel. After our argument on day 1, Matt had taken to being the spotter in the bow, and he usually did a better job than me on determining which route was deeper. I'm less patient and would rather pick a route and hit it.
At some point on the way to Hochheim we started catching up to other boats, mostly Novice class teams. Pretty much every one (except us) either goes hard on day 1 or tries to hit their pace as soon as possible. Most of these teams were probably dragging after a tough first day or they were already locked on to a pace. I felt like we had energy on reserve and I knew I could paddle significantly harder if I had a reason. Really though, I couldn't see a reason. I knew we were some where in the back half of the pack. I was still dead focused on finishing the race, but I couldn't see what was to gain by trying to race these guys.
We traded places with these teams over and over. One of us would stop to lay in the water and cool off or one of us would pick up or drop the pace. Some teams pulled over for a nap. I couldn't blame them, it was hot and the river to Hochheim just goes on and on and on. We weren't using the GPS at this point, so we had no idea of the mileage we'd covered. That was fine with me and was actually part of the plan. With a GPS, it's too easy to lock onto mileage and start waiting for an end, even if you're having a good time. I wanted a bit of mystery, with only a watch and the time to give any clue of where you might be. At least then you can tell yourself that it's just a couple more hours to the check point...
Some where along this stretch we passed Brian, who was paddling an aluminum canoe, from the bow, by himself, with a big pile of rocks in the stern to trim the boat. His partner had dropped out at Gonzales and like most other Safari racers, Brian refused to let that stop him. He'd run the Safari in 2010 and agreed with us as to our assessment of the suckiness of this section. Brian thought we were about 10 miles from the check point. Now armed with a “must be correct” estimate of mileage, Matt picked up the pace, desperate to get to Hochheim.
I didn't like the increased pace. We were spending a lot of energy in the heat and were probably not moving all that much faster. Over that type of distance (especially in our slow as shit, heavy canoe) a slight increase in pace is better than a more intense pace that you can't hold, especially in the day time. Of course, it wasn't long before we started passing teams, one of which told us the mileage. The news was not good. We had hammered the pace for I don't remember how long and still had 10 miles to go. Matt was slightly pissed defeated...I though that was funny.
Shortly after this, Matt ran out of water and I passed him what was left of one of my jugs. We had both been trying hard to ration all day. Holy shit do those cooler jugs work! We couldn't even get the rest of the water, because it was still ice. That was almost unbelievable to us. I guess we've both spent too much time hiking or paddling with uninsulated hydration bladders that melt with 10 seconds. I knew we were both dehydrated, but again, nothing to do about it until we hit the check point...when ever the F**K that was going to be. And speaking of the check point, I swear that river was taking it's sweat ass time in getting there. It felt like we were swerving back and forth, towards, then away from the check point. Google Earth does not confirm this, but possibly some one has altered those satellite images.
Two weeks after leaving Gonzales (or maybe it was 10 hours?) we arrived at Hochheim, dehydrated and ready for sleep. We had jumped from 55th place to 49th place. As much as any thing else, this felt like a TWS rite of passage, not just surviving the stretch to Hochheim, but surviving and arriving there to proclaim to any one within earshot that yes, in fact, “this check point sucks!!!”. I probably looked lost and delirious, but I walked back and forth determined that there had to be some where suitable for sleep. There was not. Hochheim is just a steep, muddy slope under a bridge. A couple of teams pulled up and blasted off as we were standing there, but I didn't care, we were SUPPOSE to get some sleep. Screw it then, we told our crew that we'd pull over up the river and grab a nap. Another team's captain at the check point suggested that we just push on to Cheapside, “it's only 24 miles”. Hah! That sounded like an eternity at this point. No way we'd make it that long...right?
Or maybe we would. We pulled over on the bank about 5 minutes down river. We both climbed up and found reasonably flat spots to lie down. For what ever reason, neither of us could sleep. After 5 or 10 minutes we said F**k it and pushed on. Not long after, we both popped some caffeine and decided to just keep plugging along until we hit Cheapside. “It's only 5 hours” I said. At the time, that seemed perfectly easy for some reason. Funny thing though, as soon as the sun set, my brain *clicked* and I knew it was going to be an interesting night. I think I told Matt some thing along the lines of “I'm going to start saying some weird shit later, just ignore it”. I can't describe the feeling, but the sense that “things are going to get weird” was undeniable.
Fortunately for both of us, I didn't completely lose my mind that night, but shit most definitely got weird. The caffeine pill probably kept me charged for 2 hours or so (damn the caffeine tolerance of a coffee junky...). After that, I started hallucinating. I was never confused about what was going on. I knew I was hallucinating, I knew some of what I was seeing was not what it appeared to be, and I knew some of what I was seeing just wasn't there. I wasn't really worried about it, but steering the canoe was a hell of a lot more interesting all of the sudden. I had enough awareness of the situation to tell Matt that he'd have to tell me where the hell we were going.
OK, so maybe I lied about not being confused, because there were a few odd thoughts running through my head during those miles. For one, I couldn't tell what was in the bow of my canoe. Had I not already spent 40 hours paddling with Matt, you might have convinced me that there was some sort of amorphous, alien blob paddling bow. I don't wear my glasses when paddling, so squinting up towards the bow just made things more confusing, “yep, a brown blob with light radiating from him, definitely NOT shaped like a human, but he keeps burping and trying to communicate with me, so it MUST be Matt”. Even more odd was the thought that we were missing some one. Who it was or why we would have had a third person with us, I couldn't say. But, there had been some one else in the canoe, I was almost sure of that. Was it Ed? No, that's our team captain, he's at the check point. Well, who the hell was it then!? I know we had some one else with us, when and why did they get out of the canoe..? And who was it, damnit?
Even weirder still, I was now questioning whether I had even paddled with Matt today. I could distinctly remember paddling the Hochheim stretch with my brother. Yep, I could clearly remember navigating the little rapids and channels with my brother in the bow. Over and over we had discussed which channel would be deeper and whether we should steer left or right. When the hell did Matt replace him? That daytime stretch seemed like an eternity apart from what we were currently doing and where we were. At least I didn't voice any of these mental debates. I was feeling a little sick and was probably fairly quiet. Had I actually said any of this, Matt surely would have thought I was out of my mind.
In the midst of this, the free entertainment, I mean the hallucinations, continued. Often, it was as simple as seeing a stump that wasn't there or seeing a stump that WAS there, but not being sure exactly how far away it was. I had almost no spacial awareness, I couldn't have told you whether the stump was 50 yards away or 5 feet. During the day time, I'd see a sun bleached log on the distant bank and think it was a canoe. This was more severe at night. EVERY log on the bank was a canoe, at least until we were nearly right next to it. That thought alone had me seeing people on the banks and in the woods. The most convincing one was wearing a green headlamp and peeking out from behind the trees. Why was he hiding? Was this one real? When Matt looked in that direction I was sure that this one had to be real! After discussing this with Matt later on (NOT while it was happening) he told me there was a green reflector on one of the trees. I could have swore it was moving...
Steering was not getting any easier. Matt was telling me “left, right, 20 yards ahead”, but I was still hallucinating and having trouble focusing. At one point, we ran into a small patch of fog and I suddenly saw a gravel bar with a tent on it right in front of us. I jammed my paddle in the water to steer around it, then it vanished. Hmm. I could see more gravel bars and tents up ahead, were any of them real? My paddling and steering slowed as I had NO idea any more which objects were actually there.
Not long after this, we started on the “endless river” to Cheapside. We kept waiting for the check point and waiting and waiting. Google Earth does confirm this one, as the river in this area starts to snake back and forth. On top of that, you're sort of running parallel to the highway, so you hear traffic and assume it's the bridge, but it's not. It really felt like we were running through one hairpin turn after another, barely moving south at all. We when did hit a straight away it would look almost infinite. I'd squint into the darkness ahead, but couldn't tell what was at the end of the tunnel. Matt was starting to crack now. He REALLY wanted to get to the check point and couldn't understand why the hell it was taking so long. At one point, he suggested that we must have missed the check point...some how. Holy hell, I'm glad I wasn't out of my mind enough to agree with that assessment, that's how Safari legends are born. We'd turn around, paddle back up river, and if we were lucky, we'd bump into another team who'd set us straight. If we weren't lucky, we might pull over and wander off into the woods in search of civilization, before our sanity returned at day break...
“No way in HELL we passed that check point!” I knew that wasn't possible. A big bridge, with people, and lights, not a chance of missing that. “Did you see that tent back there though?” “No.” “Really!? I swear this one was real. It was a big tarp with chairs under it. Didn't see any people though...”
The weirdness continued as we were still running through tight, bending turns, then long, infinite straight aways. We were both looking forward to sleep at Cheapside. Matt only had about 15-20 minutes of sleep after the first night and I'd had zero sleep. Suddenly, the river made a couple of turns and we were running through rapids. Not rocky, frothy rapids, just fast flowing channels with sweeping turns. In the darkness and in my condition, it was happening way too fast. I reminded Matt to give me steering directions, but I was mostly just hanging on. We cleared a couple and then I thought I could actually see a slope ahead in the darkness. We got swept into a right turn and then sharply left. Just as we were swinging out of the left turn we slide into some thing, hard, probably a stump. The canoe tipped to one side and when it did, my paddle flew right out of my hands.
Funny, there was not a single thought in my head, I dove straight out of the canoe and grabbed the paddle. Shit! Now I'm getting swept down stream. I think Matt was much more shocked than I was. No big deal, I'm about to float on this gravel bar. Wait, I KNOW there was a gravel bar right there? Where the hell did it go!? Matt pulled over, but the water was deep and I was getting washed down stream too quickly, so he pushed off again and gave chase. I don't remember if I washed ashore or climbed back into the canoe. We ended up on a gravel bar, a little shocked, only to look up and see...the F***ING check point!!! You have to be shitting me!? I stayed dry all night only to get completely F***ING soaked RIGHT before a sleep break!? Son of a bitch...I wasn't happy. Of course, what are you gonna do? I climbed out, got naked, and put on the only dry set of clothes I had. I'd have to leave my paddling clothes out and hope they were reasonably dry in the morning.
Pulling up to Cheapside was not as joyous as I'd imagined, not under these conditions. My new clothes were dry, but my hair was wet and I was still slightly pissed. Lots of people were sleeping and it was quiet, so that was good. We told Ed that we hadn't slept and that we were going to knock out for two hours. The muscles in my shoulders were getting severely knotted, so I popped a muscle relaxer (left over from a tweaked back muscle two weeks before the race) and shoveled down a Dinti Moore. Ed lead us up the hill next to the car. I brought the emergency blanket and my inflatable seat cushion. It really wasn't a bad spot on the cliff over looking the river. I laid down, tossed around for 5 minutes or so, then was out cold. Unfortunately, this was the only real sleep I'd have the entire race.
I won't lie, realizing that we had forgotten our extra gallon of water had me seriously worried. 38 miles of paddling is some thing I can “manage” on just 1 gallon of water, especially at our easy pace, but I wasn't crazy about the idea of rationing water in the afternoon heat. An even bigger concern was how long Matt would survive. We started the Safari with a ½ gallon of water each to stay light for all the portages in the first 16 miles. By the time our crew surprised us, about 1.5 hours into the race, Matt was already through his ½ gallon. How the hell was he suppose to paddle 9-10 hours on just 1 gallon?
Nothing to do about it now. There's no where for the crew to meet us before Hochheim and no real options other than to keep paddling and see what happens. That didn't keep us from fantasizing or cooking up some “strategery” on how we might obtain extra water. I determined that at some point we'd have to see a house and they'd have to have some sort of faucet out back. Even better, maybe we'd just find a full water jug along the bank some where...
Despite our crisis, the race and the day proceeded along as usual. The Gonzales to Hochheim stretch is relentlessly monotonous. The river is wide, slow, shallow, and mostly uneventful. I expected this section to be horrible, but it actually wasn't too bad. OK, so maybe my expectations were so horrible that the reality was some what tolerable in comparison..? It really is a nice stretch of river, even if it is a bit boring. After some of my coastal bayou paddles, where the tallest thing around is a blade of grass, you won't hear me complain too much about paddling along tall, tree lined banks.
This is another case where the low water had it's benefits. As pissed off as I was running into logs and junk during the first night, we both agreed that all of that in and out of the boat stuff seemed good for conditioning. It kept the circulation going in your lower body. Similarly, on the Guadalupe, low water meant that there was usually a reason to pay attention and stay alert as you were looking for deeper channels and trying to avoid running aground. These little rapids were at least a little entertaining on an otherwise mundane stretch of river. Better circulation or not, it's hot, and long, and you really REALLY don't want to run shallow and have to hop out. We were always alert and searching for that deeper channel. After our argument on day 1, Matt had taken to being the spotter in the bow, and he usually did a better job than me on determining which route was deeper. I'm less patient and would rather pick a route and hit it.
At some point on the way to Hochheim we started catching up to other boats, mostly Novice class teams. Pretty much every one (except us) either goes hard on day 1 or tries to hit their pace as soon as possible. Most of these teams were probably dragging after a tough first day or they were already locked on to a pace. I felt like we had energy on reserve and I knew I could paddle significantly harder if I had a reason. Really though, I couldn't see a reason. I knew we were some where in the back half of the pack. I was still dead focused on finishing the race, but I couldn't see what was to gain by trying to race these guys.
We traded places with these teams over and over. One of us would stop to lay in the water and cool off or one of us would pick up or drop the pace. Some teams pulled over for a nap. I couldn't blame them, it was hot and the river to Hochheim just goes on and on and on. We weren't using the GPS at this point, so we had no idea of the mileage we'd covered. That was fine with me and was actually part of the plan. With a GPS, it's too easy to lock onto mileage and start waiting for an end, even if you're having a good time. I wanted a bit of mystery, with only a watch and the time to give any clue of where you might be. At least then you can tell yourself that it's just a couple more hours to the check point...
Some where along this stretch we passed Brian, who was paddling an aluminum canoe, from the bow, by himself, with a big pile of rocks in the stern to trim the boat. His partner had dropped out at Gonzales and like most other Safari racers, Brian refused to let that stop him. He'd run the Safari in 2010 and agreed with us as to our assessment of the suckiness of this section. Brian thought we were about 10 miles from the check point. Now armed with a “must be correct” estimate of mileage, Matt picked up the pace, desperate to get to Hochheim.
I didn't like the increased pace. We were spending a lot of energy in the heat and were probably not moving all that much faster. Over that type of distance (especially in our slow as shit, heavy canoe) a slight increase in pace is better than a more intense pace that you can't hold, especially in the day time. Of course, it wasn't long before we started passing teams, one of which told us the mileage. The news was not good. We had hammered the pace for I don't remember how long and still had 10 miles to go. Matt was slightly pissed defeated...I though that was funny.
Shortly after this, Matt ran out of water and I passed him what was left of one of my jugs. We had both been trying hard to ration all day. Holy shit do those cooler jugs work! We couldn't even get the rest of the water, because it was still ice. That was almost unbelievable to us. I guess we've both spent too much time hiking or paddling with uninsulated hydration bladders that melt with 10 seconds. I knew we were both dehydrated, but again, nothing to do about it until we hit the check point...when ever the F**K that was going to be. And speaking of the check point, I swear that river was taking it's sweat ass time in getting there. It felt like we were swerving back and forth, towards, then away from the check point. Google Earth does not confirm this, but possibly some one has altered those satellite images.
Two weeks after leaving Gonzales (or maybe it was 10 hours?) we arrived at Hochheim, dehydrated and ready for sleep. We had jumped from 55th place to 49th place. As much as any thing else, this felt like a TWS rite of passage, not just surviving the stretch to Hochheim, but surviving and arriving there to proclaim to any one within earshot that yes, in fact, “this check point sucks!!!”. I probably looked lost and delirious, but I walked back and forth determined that there had to be some where suitable for sleep. There was not. Hochheim is just a steep, muddy slope under a bridge. A couple of teams pulled up and blasted off as we were standing there, but I didn't care, we were SUPPOSE to get some sleep. Screw it then, we told our crew that we'd pull over up the river and grab a nap. Another team's captain at the check point suggested that we just push on to Cheapside, “it's only 24 miles”. Hah! That sounded like an eternity at this point. No way we'd make it that long...right?
Or maybe we would. We pulled over on the bank about 5 minutes down river. We both climbed up and found reasonably flat spots to lie down. For what ever reason, neither of us could sleep. After 5 or 10 minutes we said F**k it and pushed on. Not long after, we both popped some caffeine and decided to just keep plugging along until we hit Cheapside. “It's only 5 hours” I said. At the time, that seemed perfectly easy for some reason. Funny thing though, as soon as the sun set, my brain *clicked* and I knew it was going to be an interesting night. I think I told Matt some thing along the lines of “I'm going to start saying some weird shit later, just ignore it”. I can't describe the feeling, but the sense that “things are going to get weird” was undeniable.
Fortunately for both of us, I didn't completely lose my mind that night, but shit most definitely got weird. The caffeine pill probably kept me charged for 2 hours or so (damn the caffeine tolerance of a coffee junky...). After that, I started hallucinating. I was never confused about what was going on. I knew I was hallucinating, I knew some of what I was seeing was not what it appeared to be, and I knew some of what I was seeing just wasn't there. I wasn't really worried about it, but steering the canoe was a hell of a lot more interesting all of the sudden. I had enough awareness of the situation to tell Matt that he'd have to tell me where the hell we were going.
OK, so maybe I lied about not being confused, because there were a few odd thoughts running through my head during those miles. For one, I couldn't tell what was in the bow of my canoe. Had I not already spent 40 hours paddling with Matt, you might have convinced me that there was some sort of amorphous, alien blob paddling bow. I don't wear my glasses when paddling, so squinting up towards the bow just made things more confusing, “yep, a brown blob with light radiating from him, definitely NOT shaped like a human, but he keeps burping and trying to communicate with me, so it MUST be Matt”. Even more odd was the thought that we were missing some one. Who it was or why we would have had a third person with us, I couldn't say. But, there had been some one else in the canoe, I was almost sure of that. Was it Ed? No, that's our team captain, he's at the check point. Well, who the hell was it then!? I know we had some one else with us, when and why did they get out of the canoe..? And who was it, damnit?
Even weirder still, I was now questioning whether I had even paddled with Matt today. I could distinctly remember paddling the Hochheim stretch with my brother. Yep, I could clearly remember navigating the little rapids and channels with my brother in the bow. Over and over we had discussed which channel would be deeper and whether we should steer left or right. When the hell did Matt replace him? That daytime stretch seemed like an eternity apart from what we were currently doing and where we were. At least I didn't voice any of these mental debates. I was feeling a little sick and was probably fairly quiet. Had I actually said any of this, Matt surely would have thought I was out of my mind.
In the midst of this, the free entertainment, I mean the hallucinations, continued. Often, it was as simple as seeing a stump that wasn't there or seeing a stump that WAS there, but not being sure exactly how far away it was. I had almost no spacial awareness, I couldn't have told you whether the stump was 50 yards away or 5 feet. During the day time, I'd see a sun bleached log on the distant bank and think it was a canoe. This was more severe at night. EVERY log on the bank was a canoe, at least until we were nearly right next to it. That thought alone had me seeing people on the banks and in the woods. The most convincing one was wearing a green headlamp and peeking out from behind the trees. Why was he hiding? Was this one real? When Matt looked in that direction I was sure that this one had to be real! After discussing this with Matt later on (NOT while it was happening) he told me there was a green reflector on one of the trees. I could have swore it was moving...
Steering was not getting any easier. Matt was telling me “left, right, 20 yards ahead”, but I was still hallucinating and having trouble focusing. At one point, we ran into a small patch of fog and I suddenly saw a gravel bar with a tent on it right in front of us. I jammed my paddle in the water to steer around it, then it vanished. Hmm. I could see more gravel bars and tents up ahead, were any of them real? My paddling and steering slowed as I had NO idea any more which objects were actually there.
Not long after this, we started on the “endless river” to Cheapside. We kept waiting for the check point and waiting and waiting. Google Earth does confirm this one, as the river in this area starts to snake back and forth. On top of that, you're sort of running parallel to the highway, so you hear traffic and assume it's the bridge, but it's not. It really felt like we were running through one hairpin turn after another, barely moving south at all. We when did hit a straight away it would look almost infinite. I'd squint into the darkness ahead, but couldn't tell what was at the end of the tunnel. Matt was starting to crack now. He REALLY wanted to get to the check point and couldn't understand why the hell it was taking so long. At one point, he suggested that we must have missed the check point...some how. Holy hell, I'm glad I wasn't out of my mind enough to agree with that assessment, that's how Safari legends are born. We'd turn around, paddle back up river, and if we were lucky, we'd bump into another team who'd set us straight. If we weren't lucky, we might pull over and wander off into the woods in search of civilization, before our sanity returned at day break...
“No way in HELL we passed that check point!” I knew that wasn't possible. A big bridge, with people, and lights, not a chance of missing that. “Did you see that tent back there though?” “No.” “Really!? I swear this one was real. It was a big tarp with chairs under it. Didn't see any people though...”
The weirdness continued as we were still running through tight, bending turns, then long, infinite straight aways. We were both looking forward to sleep at Cheapside. Matt only had about 15-20 minutes of sleep after the first night and I'd had zero sleep. Suddenly, the river made a couple of turns and we were running through rapids. Not rocky, frothy rapids, just fast flowing channels with sweeping turns. In the darkness and in my condition, it was happening way too fast. I reminded Matt to give me steering directions, but I was mostly just hanging on. We cleared a couple and then I thought I could actually see a slope ahead in the darkness. We got swept into a right turn and then sharply left. Just as we were swinging out of the left turn we slide into some thing, hard, probably a stump. The canoe tipped to one side and when it did, my paddle flew right out of my hands.
Funny, there was not a single thought in my head, I dove straight out of the canoe and grabbed the paddle. Shit! Now I'm getting swept down stream. I think Matt was much more shocked than I was. No big deal, I'm about to float on this gravel bar. Wait, I KNOW there was a gravel bar right there? Where the hell did it go!? Matt pulled over, but the water was deep and I was getting washed down stream too quickly, so he pushed off again and gave chase. I don't remember if I washed ashore or climbed back into the canoe. We ended up on a gravel bar, a little shocked, only to look up and see...the F***ING check point!!! You have to be shitting me!? I stayed dry all night only to get completely F***ING soaked RIGHT before a sleep break!? Son of a bitch...I wasn't happy. Of course, what are you gonna do? I climbed out, got naked, and put on the only dry set of clothes I had. I'd have to leave my paddling clothes out and hope they were reasonably dry in the morning.
Pulling up to Cheapside was not as joyous as I'd imagined, not under these conditions. My new clothes were dry, but my hair was wet and I was still slightly pissed. Lots of people were sleeping and it was quiet, so that was good. We told Ed that we hadn't slept and that we were going to knock out for two hours. The muscles in my shoulders were getting severely knotted, so I popped a muscle relaxer (left over from a tweaked back muscle two weeks before the race) and shoveled down a Dinti Moore. Ed lead us up the hill next to the car. I brought the emergency blanket and my inflatable seat cushion. It really wasn't a bad spot on the cliff over looking the river. I laid down, tossed around for 5 minutes or so, then was out cold. Unfortunately, this was the only real sleep I'd have the entire race.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Staples to Gonzales: Miles 16 - 85
Staples to Luling 90 is probably the most technical stretch of the course. Other sections come to mind as far as the amount of junk (submerged logs, downed trees) that litters the river, but none are as consistently narrow AND junky as this section. Oddly enough, I don't remember many details from this part of the day. Not far past the check point there's a downed tree that spans across the entire river, with a small gap that you have to shoot on the right, near the gravel bar. Fortunately, portaging across the gravel bar is not an option as the owners have installed a barbed wire fence that runs all the way to the water. Thank you for simplifying the decision. That was very kind. Of course, we did make the gap and it was probably as sloppy as every other time we've been through there. This clip is NOT from the Staples to Luling 90 stretch, if the “Mile 13” title is correct, which I assume it is. However, I feel that this gives a good idea of the kind of junk you navigate through on the Staples to Luling section.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR8cIDXOMFI
As I mentioned in the last post, we continued to trade positions with other back of the pack teams. There are no portages in this section, but many teams had crew meeting them at bridges along the way. We'd pass them as they were taking on water or talking with their crew. Eventually, some of them would pass us again. We stayed with our “cruise mode” pace, focused on the idea of conserving energy on day 1 and finding our groove on day 2. For the most part, we didn't mind being passed, but some teams seemed really determined to pass us, then not so determined to actually maintain a pace once they had passed us. What can you do? You sand bag it on day 1 and that's what you get...I guess. I'm not sure what the mileage is on these next two clips...but we're in them, so I'll do a bit more self promoting. Skip to the 4:30 mark of the first clip and you'll see us in a few seconds. Skip to the 8:45 mark of the second clip. You'll notice in both clips that I'm either eating or digging around for food. Haha. You'll hear more on this later. These clips do give a good idea of the pack we were riding in on day 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3AFmCLDSNw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3AFmCLDSNw&feature=related
There were some “entertaining” mishaps and near misses on this section. One sweeper was almost completely choked with logs. After sweeping out near the bank, I failed to see the slot on the right and tried to steer us left, where we ran straight into the junk. After climbing out, dragging over the crap, climbing back in, and bitching at each other, we had a quick conversation about steering. Matt was annoyed that I missed the turn. I was annoyed that I was expected to do all of the steering. We agreed that there's no way I was going to see every thing from back there in the stern, with Matt right in the center of my vision. Matt would have to be the spotter in the bow. We were never able to completely commit to this method, but it did work well through out the rest of the race and was our only option on night 2, when I started hallucinating from lack of sleep.
Another interesting mishap involved, not surprisingly, a sweeper with a large stump. This sweeper was very shallow with a stump sticking six feet out of the water at a 45 degree angle. Unfortunately, the stump was directly in the line of flow, just past the shallows. If we cleared that one in training, it was just barely. We weren't so lucky this time. Instead of fighting across the inside, we were swept out towards the log. I ruddered on the right and brought the bow around enough to clear. In the next second or two, it became obvious that I would not make it. The stern was going to swing under the stump and there wasn't enough room for me to duck or lean back. Option 1: get knocked out of the boat by the stump. Option 2: flop out of that boat, like a kook. I chose option 2, diving over the side of the canoe...like a kook. Not the most skilled way to approach the situation, but we lost nothing in the process. Matt heard me hit the water, turned around and asked “what happened?”. I climbed back into the canoe and recounted my harrowing escape from almost certain death. Just then, a guy in a solo boat paddled past us (having taken the inside line) and said “thanks for the line”. Yea...you're welcome.
A key feature I should mention from this section of the course are the hordes of beer swilling, river lounging vacationers. The family crowds on private property aren't much of an issue, unless they're all sitting right in the middle of the river, which they apparently do on occasion. Rather, the campgrounds are where you find the most entertainment or frustration, depending on your point of view. Enough people to span the entire river. Of course, every one will be crammed into a small area directly adjacent to the camp ground access, because wading away from this area would waste valuable energy and would place you further away from those 6 cases of beer. It's surprising that people can be so oblivious to any thing and every thing around them. What's even more surprising is that they can be so oblivious to any thing and every thing going on around their children, who are invariably playing right in the channel that 100 canoes are attempting to navigate. Fortunately, this was not quite as bad as Memorial Weekend, when we had to get out of the canoe a couple of times to avoid running over unattended children.
Aside from the crowds, we still had plenty of sweepers to negotiate. Much of this went as expected, sloppy, but no disasters. We still had boats around to follow through these sections: crunch, smack, “OK, don't take the route they just took”. Hearing some of these composite boats grind out in shallow channels, we were (for the first time) glad to be in an aluminum. More than once we saw a solo boat get “wrapped” going through a sweeper. As I said before, we had a serious lack of course training. However, we had been through this section a couple of times in training. This paid off. We remembered several of the “problem spots” and either knew how to navigate them or that we should just hop out and drag through the shallows. One particular spot, not long before the check point, was a downed tree that was just above the surface, across the entire river. I'm not sure if there was a “skilled” way to navigate this. In March, we tried to run up and over the lowest spot, missed, swung the canoe into it sideways, and had to crawl on top and heave the canoe over. On Memorial weekend, we still got wet, but we made our way a bit more cleanly over the shallower spot. Knowing that we were nearing the check point, we waited for this spot and didn't see it. Possibly, some one with a 6 man canoe got a little happy with a chain saw before the race...
Not long before Luling 90 a group of boats, including Debbie and Amy, caught up to us. On our Memorial weekend run, Debbie and Amy launched at the same time as us. They had plenty of course practice, but were really worried about making the first cut off. We were both happy to see them there, as they were now guaranteed to make it. At our easy pace, we'd cleared the cut off with an hour to spare. Not as fast as we would have liked, but we hadn't expended much energy either. We pulled up to check point 2 amid a crowd of swimmers and race crews. A little further down stream we found our crew, who had picked out a great location away from the traffic. Once again, we pulled onto shore just long enough to toss out our drinking jugs and pick up one ½ gallon each. Zedler Dam was only 6 miles away and we'd have to stop here any way to mount our light, take care of a few small things, and portage. This is a clip of check point 2 at Luling 90.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpPETDf_Ajk
The 6 miles to Zedler Dam are mostly uneventful. There's a bit of current and junk for the first couple of miles, then the river widens and slows as you get closer to the dam. Faster teams set “Palmetto before dark” as a goal. We would be pulling into Zedler Dam just before dark, meaning we'd have to run the next 14 mile stretch to Palmetto in the dark. Neither of us had ever seen this section before. I was a little concerned and had actually been collecting info from other racers who had seen the section. Some of it I already knew and some of it was extra details. There are a couple of junk filled sweepers just past Zedler, miles and miles of more junk filled river, Ottine Rapids, Ottine Dam, and Palmetto Bridge. Nothing to do at this point, we'd see it all soon enough.
As we were approaching Zedler we passed a table on river left with, what I'm assuming were TWS officials? Matt yelled up and asked how many boats had come through. “A lot.” OK, I guess we have been paddling slowly. “What place are we in?” “71st.” Apparently, we were pretty far back in the pack. I didn't bother me too much, I knew we'd been sand bagging all day and we were never really going to be “in the race” any way. Still...I planed on running straight through the night and and all the way through the next day.
Pulling up to the dam, volunteers were trying to direct us to portage directly over. We wanted to drag up on the bank instead and take care of some things. We should have listened to them, it would have saved time to portage directly over the dam, then take care of every thing on the gravel bar across the river. Another mental note for next year. I remember seeing Nancy pull up as we were stopped. We wouldn't see her again for the rest of the race.
This was the first in a series of lengthy portages for us. We mounted the flashlight, took care of some body maintenance, then dragged the canoe up the hill, around the concrete slab, and down the rocky bank. I don't remember why, but Matt ended up in the water on this portage. I think he waded in to pull the canoe out, then stepped off into deep water. I paddled across to the gravel bar as Matt swam after. I thought it was pretty funny, Matt didn't. Our crew met us on the gravel bar to swap water jugs and to get instructions for the next check point. I remember telling them to get some sleep at Palmetto...I think they just drank more beer instead. This is a good view of Zedler Dam, with some of the faster teams portaging.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPqawZUrNtU&feature=related
We bumped into a 3 man boat (who we'd been next to at check in) after leaving the dam. They were fully set for night travel...sort of. These guys had what I'm assuming was rope lighting rigged all the way around the inside of their canoe and they had some dance music pumping out of the speakers. We would trade places with these guys for a while and, as with pretty much every boat from day 1, we'd never see them again.
We'd heard about a nasty sweeper not far past Zedler. It didn't take us long to find it. Actually, it wasn't much of a sweeper, just a left turn clogged with junk. During the daylight, we might have seen where we were going and been able to squeeze through on the right. Going left, we ran right into it. People were up on the bank some where in the darkness trying to direct us to go right. Of course, we couldn't see them or where they were pointing and it was too late any way. Nothing to do but climb out and drag over. This would be a big theme for our first night of the Safari and would set off several hours of bitching, by me. I was cursing that river and could not wait to hit the Guad. There was nothing demoralizing or discouraging about it, I'd just had enough of being in a bow heavy aluminum canoe and running aground on every bit of any thing. I was ready to get the hell off of the San Marcos and on to the Guad, where we could finally paddle.
Aside from the typical San Marcos junk, the main obstacles on this section were Ottine Rapids and Ottine Dam. If I'm correct here, Ottine Rapids are the remnants of an old dam. As I said, we'd never seen this section and we didn't know that teams were portaging here because of the low water. Approaching in the darkness, we heard the loud roar from the rapids and back paddled to stop the canoe and try to get a look at what we were about to hit. The rapids are a sort of tall, rocky slope, so we could only really see the top and where we would enter. Well, pick a spot and go. That's what we did and other than running aground (imagine that...) on the way down, we didn't have any major issues.
Two miles of beautiful, pitch black, log filled river and we were at Ottine Dam. Fortunately (and I really mean that) the TWS has lights, portage signs, and volunteers set up at every dam, because they can really sneak up on you, especially in the dark. Case in point, on a San Marcos training run Matt asked “what's that up there?”. Being a smart ass I said “water”. About 5 seconds later I noticed we were almost on top of Cummins Dam. “Oh, good call, Matt...”.
Next to the log jam, Ottine Dam was the biggest pain in the ass. After pulling the canoe ashore, you drag up the tall, steep, sandy bank and get your first view of the 1 mile trail that you have to portage. OK, so it's not really 1 mile (not even close), but it felt like it that night. We really struggled on that portage, though we did survive, and probably didn't not take much time. Actually, I can guarantee it took less time to portage than it did to wait for the two boats in front of us launch down that steep bank. To be fair, it was a tricky spot to launch and we likely weren't so quick with it ourselves.
I can't tell you much about the next couple of miles to Palmetto. It was dark and we weren't feeling so “thrilled to be there” after the portage. Honestly, it was one of those times when you're REALLY just ready to get to the check point, pick up your water, and hit the reset button. Before long, we came around a corner and there was the low bridge at Palmetto State Park, packed full of race crews waiting for their paddlers. After yelling out our boat number, we jumped out and just barely managed to squeeze our canoe under the bridge, to avoid portaging over, which neither of us wanted to do. Our crew was on the bridge, so I tied us off on the other side so we could empty trash, get new water jugs, and prepare for the rest of the night.
This was another slow transition for us. Well, in comparison, we probably didn't lose too much time at Palmetto. Mostly, I was getting anxious seeing a couple of canoes pull out before us. This is the first check point where teams start pulling over for sleep. On the way to Palmetto, we paddled near another aluminum canoe, although they were paddling with double blades. One of the guys asked us if we were planning on sleeping, because they were stopping at Palmetto. I assumed they were a little unsure of the plan and were debating on whether other teams were doing this. From what I gathered, a lot of the back of the pack teams do stop for sleep at Palmetto. You can see a bit of this in the race results. We were in 73rd place at Staples. We had only moved up to 70th place by Luling 90. By the time we left Palmetto, we had jumped up to 63rd place, most likely due to passing teams as they were sleeping at Palmetto.
Still, after seeing other teams leaving I was ready to run. Matt finished what he was doing, we got a couple of tips from the check point official about what was directly downstream, and we set off. Maybe we should have picked up a few more tips, because on the first turn we stuck to the outside and ran right into a dead end channel. I wasn't happy and I took the opportunity, once again, to curse this damn river and wish I was on the Guad already. Curses aside, we backed up and took the correct route. Not long after, we ran aground on more junk...son of a b****!!!
It was 25 miles to the next check point at Gonzales and I can only remember pieces of it here and there. For a while, the river was much the same as the previous section: dark, narrow, and clogged with junk. I started getting really tired at this point and tried paddling for a while with my eyes closed to relax. Me and Matt both popped a Vivarin, Matt got more of a boost than I did, shouldn't have had that iced coffee in the afternoon. As the night progressed, I started getting cold and sick. Neither was a huge surprise. After paddling all day in 90-100 degree weather it's not uncommon for paddlers to get cold on the river as the temps “cool” off. Similarly, I'm not exactly the first person in the history of the Safari to get sick. I knew that if I just sipped some water and ate some thing fatty (fritos and sausage) it would pass sooner or later. Being cold was a bigger problem that I needed to deal with, so we took the opportunity to pull over on a gravel bar and stretch. While we were stopped, I changed into some pants and popped a pepto pill.
We lost a bit of time on the gravel bar, but it seemed as though we made it up before too long as we started passing one sleeping team after another. I don't think we ever considered stopping for sleep. Our all-niter on the Brazos gave us confidence that we could push through the first night and re-charge when the sun came up. The closer we got to dawn the better I felt. I wasn't cold or nauseous any more and I was slowly waking up as it got lighter. We continued to pass sleeping teams all the way through dawn until we hit that last stretch before the Guad.
I suppose Matt's Vivarin wore off. He started falling asleep, paddling really slowly, and missing the water on almost every stroke. It might have been funny (OK...it was) had I not been so anxious to get to the Guad and Gonzales. I could see there was no point in pushing on like this, so I told him to lay out in the bow and get some sleep. We'd made a deal after all: help me steer the boat on day 1, be a mule on portages, get us off the San Marcos, and I'll push through the next day with out sleep. Matt held up his end, time for me to do some work.
Paddling solo wasn't much of a problem. Short, quick, light strokes, don't waste energy trying to move the canoe fast. I was probably moving at 60-70% of our tandem speed, so you're not sacrificing too much speed for 15-20 minutes of sleep. A couple of the sleeping teams passed us in this time. The Novice team asked if we had slept. I think they'd stopped for 1 hour. A C2 passed and laughed at Matt's snoring...it was loud. When Matt woke up, he didn't believe me.
Soon, we were on the Guadalupe. The current was still very slow, due to the dam in Gonzales, but the river was now much wider. A few miles of easy paddling and we were approaching Gonzales Dam. Neither of us had been here before, so we weren't sure of the portage. There's a steep hill on the left and a steep bank on the right. Another team was on the left, so we pulled up and asked them which way to go. They said the left was the longer, safer portage, or some thing to that effect. We decided to go right, muscle the canoe up the bank, and take the shorter route. Mean while, one of the remote control chopper cams was flying overhead. It was kind of funny at the time.
I don't remember having too much trouble with the bank or the short portage trail...but I doubt they were easy. At the end of the trail, you have another one of those funky, rocky slopes to negotiate, similar to Zedler Dam. We had to wait on a couple of teams here and once again, I had to slow myself down a bit and remember that not every one was portaging an aluminum canoe with reckless abandon like we were. Fortunately, in a few minutes, we were back in the water and on our way. Not long after that, we were at the check point. This was an exciting landmark for me for a few reasons. The course would be significantly different from this point forward: wider, less junk (mostly), and longer sections of flat out paddling. This next section (Gonzales to Hochheim) was notorious for it's ability to induce mind numbing boredom. I knew this and was very focused on maintaining my drive and momentum. I tend to get bored on long training runs and I didn't want that attitude to affect the race. Finally, once you leave Gonzales, statistically, you have a much higher chance of finishing the race. Some teams quit at Hochheim and some teams DNF further down the course, but many teams that DNF pull out at Gonzales.
I tried to move as quickly as possible, knowing there were other teams on the gravel bar and still other sleeping some where near by. We got fresh water jugs, Matt took care of a few things, and I took a quick dip. We learned that two canoes had set out with only 1 paddler. I'm not sure if it was injury or the reality of 2-3 more days on the river that caused those guys to pull out. The check point official that told us this also reminded us that quiting is mental, not physical. Just keep paddling. We intended to. We set out from Gonzales in 55th place, with a 36-38 mile stretch of river ahead of us. There are no bridges or access points for crew...you're in it all the way until Hochheim. It was almost 9:00 AM. We'd be paddling right through the heat of the day. I wouldn't realize it until we were well past the check point, but we'd just made our first major mistake. We had left the check point with only 1 gallon of water each. We had completely forgot to bring the extra gallon that we would certainly need. I was VERY worried that we might have made a big enough mistake to cost us a finish...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR8cIDXOMFI
As I mentioned in the last post, we continued to trade positions with other back of the pack teams. There are no portages in this section, but many teams had crew meeting them at bridges along the way. We'd pass them as they were taking on water or talking with their crew. Eventually, some of them would pass us again. We stayed with our “cruise mode” pace, focused on the idea of conserving energy on day 1 and finding our groove on day 2. For the most part, we didn't mind being passed, but some teams seemed really determined to pass us, then not so determined to actually maintain a pace once they had passed us. What can you do? You sand bag it on day 1 and that's what you get...I guess. I'm not sure what the mileage is on these next two clips...but we're in them, so I'll do a bit more self promoting. Skip to the 4:30 mark of the first clip and you'll see us in a few seconds. Skip to the 8:45 mark of the second clip. You'll notice in both clips that I'm either eating or digging around for food. Haha. You'll hear more on this later. These clips do give a good idea of the pack we were riding in on day 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3AFmCLDSNw&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3AFmCLDSNw&feature=related
There were some “entertaining” mishaps and near misses on this section. One sweeper was almost completely choked with logs. After sweeping out near the bank, I failed to see the slot on the right and tried to steer us left, where we ran straight into the junk. After climbing out, dragging over the crap, climbing back in, and bitching at each other, we had a quick conversation about steering. Matt was annoyed that I missed the turn. I was annoyed that I was expected to do all of the steering. We agreed that there's no way I was going to see every thing from back there in the stern, with Matt right in the center of my vision. Matt would have to be the spotter in the bow. We were never able to completely commit to this method, but it did work well through out the rest of the race and was our only option on night 2, when I started hallucinating from lack of sleep.
Another interesting mishap involved, not surprisingly, a sweeper with a large stump. This sweeper was very shallow with a stump sticking six feet out of the water at a 45 degree angle. Unfortunately, the stump was directly in the line of flow, just past the shallows. If we cleared that one in training, it was just barely. We weren't so lucky this time. Instead of fighting across the inside, we were swept out towards the log. I ruddered on the right and brought the bow around enough to clear. In the next second or two, it became obvious that I would not make it. The stern was going to swing under the stump and there wasn't enough room for me to duck or lean back. Option 1: get knocked out of the boat by the stump. Option 2: flop out of that boat, like a kook. I chose option 2, diving over the side of the canoe...like a kook. Not the most skilled way to approach the situation, but we lost nothing in the process. Matt heard me hit the water, turned around and asked “what happened?”. I climbed back into the canoe and recounted my harrowing escape from almost certain death. Just then, a guy in a solo boat paddled past us (having taken the inside line) and said “thanks for the line”. Yea...you're welcome.
A key feature I should mention from this section of the course are the hordes of beer swilling, river lounging vacationers. The family crowds on private property aren't much of an issue, unless they're all sitting right in the middle of the river, which they apparently do on occasion. Rather, the campgrounds are where you find the most entertainment or frustration, depending on your point of view. Enough people to span the entire river. Of course, every one will be crammed into a small area directly adjacent to the camp ground access, because wading away from this area would waste valuable energy and would place you further away from those 6 cases of beer. It's surprising that people can be so oblivious to any thing and every thing around them. What's even more surprising is that they can be so oblivious to any thing and every thing going on around their children, who are invariably playing right in the channel that 100 canoes are attempting to navigate. Fortunately, this was not quite as bad as Memorial Weekend, when we had to get out of the canoe a couple of times to avoid running over unattended children.
Aside from the crowds, we still had plenty of sweepers to negotiate. Much of this went as expected, sloppy, but no disasters. We still had boats around to follow through these sections: crunch, smack, “OK, don't take the route they just took”. Hearing some of these composite boats grind out in shallow channels, we were (for the first time) glad to be in an aluminum. More than once we saw a solo boat get “wrapped” going through a sweeper. As I said before, we had a serious lack of course training. However, we had been through this section a couple of times in training. This paid off. We remembered several of the “problem spots” and either knew how to navigate them or that we should just hop out and drag through the shallows. One particular spot, not long before the check point, was a downed tree that was just above the surface, across the entire river. I'm not sure if there was a “skilled” way to navigate this. In March, we tried to run up and over the lowest spot, missed, swung the canoe into it sideways, and had to crawl on top and heave the canoe over. On Memorial weekend, we still got wet, but we made our way a bit more cleanly over the shallower spot. Knowing that we were nearing the check point, we waited for this spot and didn't see it. Possibly, some one with a 6 man canoe got a little happy with a chain saw before the race...
Not long before Luling 90 a group of boats, including Debbie and Amy, caught up to us. On our Memorial weekend run, Debbie and Amy launched at the same time as us. They had plenty of course practice, but were really worried about making the first cut off. We were both happy to see them there, as they were now guaranteed to make it. At our easy pace, we'd cleared the cut off with an hour to spare. Not as fast as we would have liked, but we hadn't expended much energy either. We pulled up to check point 2 amid a crowd of swimmers and race crews. A little further down stream we found our crew, who had picked out a great location away from the traffic. Once again, we pulled onto shore just long enough to toss out our drinking jugs and pick up one ½ gallon each. Zedler Dam was only 6 miles away and we'd have to stop here any way to mount our light, take care of a few small things, and portage. This is a clip of check point 2 at Luling 90.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpPETDf_Ajk
The 6 miles to Zedler Dam are mostly uneventful. There's a bit of current and junk for the first couple of miles, then the river widens and slows as you get closer to the dam. Faster teams set “Palmetto before dark” as a goal. We would be pulling into Zedler Dam just before dark, meaning we'd have to run the next 14 mile stretch to Palmetto in the dark. Neither of us had ever seen this section before. I was a little concerned and had actually been collecting info from other racers who had seen the section. Some of it I already knew and some of it was extra details. There are a couple of junk filled sweepers just past Zedler, miles and miles of more junk filled river, Ottine Rapids, Ottine Dam, and Palmetto Bridge. Nothing to do at this point, we'd see it all soon enough.
As we were approaching Zedler we passed a table on river left with, what I'm assuming were TWS officials? Matt yelled up and asked how many boats had come through. “A lot.” OK, I guess we have been paddling slowly. “What place are we in?” “71st.” Apparently, we were pretty far back in the pack. I didn't bother me too much, I knew we'd been sand bagging all day and we were never really going to be “in the race” any way. Still...I planed on running straight through the night and and all the way through the next day.
Pulling up to the dam, volunteers were trying to direct us to portage directly over. We wanted to drag up on the bank instead and take care of some things. We should have listened to them, it would have saved time to portage directly over the dam, then take care of every thing on the gravel bar across the river. Another mental note for next year. I remember seeing Nancy pull up as we were stopped. We wouldn't see her again for the rest of the race.
This was the first in a series of lengthy portages for us. We mounted the flashlight, took care of some body maintenance, then dragged the canoe up the hill, around the concrete slab, and down the rocky bank. I don't remember why, but Matt ended up in the water on this portage. I think he waded in to pull the canoe out, then stepped off into deep water. I paddled across to the gravel bar as Matt swam after. I thought it was pretty funny, Matt didn't. Our crew met us on the gravel bar to swap water jugs and to get instructions for the next check point. I remember telling them to get some sleep at Palmetto...I think they just drank more beer instead. This is a good view of Zedler Dam, with some of the faster teams portaging.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPqawZUrNtU&feature=related
We bumped into a 3 man boat (who we'd been next to at check in) after leaving the dam. They were fully set for night travel...sort of. These guys had what I'm assuming was rope lighting rigged all the way around the inside of their canoe and they had some dance music pumping out of the speakers. We would trade places with these guys for a while and, as with pretty much every boat from day 1, we'd never see them again.
We'd heard about a nasty sweeper not far past Zedler. It didn't take us long to find it. Actually, it wasn't much of a sweeper, just a left turn clogged with junk. During the daylight, we might have seen where we were going and been able to squeeze through on the right. Going left, we ran right into it. People were up on the bank some where in the darkness trying to direct us to go right. Of course, we couldn't see them or where they were pointing and it was too late any way. Nothing to do but climb out and drag over. This would be a big theme for our first night of the Safari and would set off several hours of bitching, by me. I was cursing that river and could not wait to hit the Guad. There was nothing demoralizing or discouraging about it, I'd just had enough of being in a bow heavy aluminum canoe and running aground on every bit of any thing. I was ready to get the hell off of the San Marcos and on to the Guad, where we could finally paddle.
Aside from the typical San Marcos junk, the main obstacles on this section were Ottine Rapids and Ottine Dam. If I'm correct here, Ottine Rapids are the remnants of an old dam. As I said, we'd never seen this section and we didn't know that teams were portaging here because of the low water. Approaching in the darkness, we heard the loud roar from the rapids and back paddled to stop the canoe and try to get a look at what we were about to hit. The rapids are a sort of tall, rocky slope, so we could only really see the top and where we would enter. Well, pick a spot and go. That's what we did and other than running aground (imagine that...) on the way down, we didn't have any major issues.
Two miles of beautiful, pitch black, log filled river and we were at Ottine Dam. Fortunately (and I really mean that) the TWS has lights, portage signs, and volunteers set up at every dam, because they can really sneak up on you, especially in the dark. Case in point, on a San Marcos training run Matt asked “what's that up there?”. Being a smart ass I said “water”. About 5 seconds later I noticed we were almost on top of Cummins Dam. “Oh, good call, Matt...”.
Next to the log jam, Ottine Dam was the biggest pain in the ass. After pulling the canoe ashore, you drag up the tall, steep, sandy bank and get your first view of the 1 mile trail that you have to portage. OK, so it's not really 1 mile (not even close), but it felt like it that night. We really struggled on that portage, though we did survive, and probably didn't not take much time. Actually, I can guarantee it took less time to portage than it did to wait for the two boats in front of us launch down that steep bank. To be fair, it was a tricky spot to launch and we likely weren't so quick with it ourselves.
I can't tell you much about the next couple of miles to Palmetto. It was dark and we weren't feeling so “thrilled to be there” after the portage. Honestly, it was one of those times when you're REALLY just ready to get to the check point, pick up your water, and hit the reset button. Before long, we came around a corner and there was the low bridge at Palmetto State Park, packed full of race crews waiting for their paddlers. After yelling out our boat number, we jumped out and just barely managed to squeeze our canoe under the bridge, to avoid portaging over, which neither of us wanted to do. Our crew was on the bridge, so I tied us off on the other side so we could empty trash, get new water jugs, and prepare for the rest of the night.
This was another slow transition for us. Well, in comparison, we probably didn't lose too much time at Palmetto. Mostly, I was getting anxious seeing a couple of canoes pull out before us. This is the first check point where teams start pulling over for sleep. On the way to Palmetto, we paddled near another aluminum canoe, although they were paddling with double blades. One of the guys asked us if we were planning on sleeping, because they were stopping at Palmetto. I assumed they were a little unsure of the plan and were debating on whether other teams were doing this. From what I gathered, a lot of the back of the pack teams do stop for sleep at Palmetto. You can see a bit of this in the race results. We were in 73rd place at Staples. We had only moved up to 70th place by Luling 90. By the time we left Palmetto, we had jumped up to 63rd place, most likely due to passing teams as they were sleeping at Palmetto.
Still, after seeing other teams leaving I was ready to run. Matt finished what he was doing, we got a couple of tips from the check point official about what was directly downstream, and we set off. Maybe we should have picked up a few more tips, because on the first turn we stuck to the outside and ran right into a dead end channel. I wasn't happy and I took the opportunity, once again, to curse this damn river and wish I was on the Guad already. Curses aside, we backed up and took the correct route. Not long after, we ran aground on more junk...son of a b****!!!
It was 25 miles to the next check point at Gonzales and I can only remember pieces of it here and there. For a while, the river was much the same as the previous section: dark, narrow, and clogged with junk. I started getting really tired at this point and tried paddling for a while with my eyes closed to relax. Me and Matt both popped a Vivarin, Matt got more of a boost than I did, shouldn't have had that iced coffee in the afternoon. As the night progressed, I started getting cold and sick. Neither was a huge surprise. After paddling all day in 90-100 degree weather it's not uncommon for paddlers to get cold on the river as the temps “cool” off. Similarly, I'm not exactly the first person in the history of the Safari to get sick. I knew that if I just sipped some water and ate some thing fatty (fritos and sausage) it would pass sooner or later. Being cold was a bigger problem that I needed to deal with, so we took the opportunity to pull over on a gravel bar and stretch. While we were stopped, I changed into some pants and popped a pepto pill.
We lost a bit of time on the gravel bar, but it seemed as though we made it up before too long as we started passing one sleeping team after another. I don't think we ever considered stopping for sleep. Our all-niter on the Brazos gave us confidence that we could push through the first night and re-charge when the sun came up. The closer we got to dawn the better I felt. I wasn't cold or nauseous any more and I was slowly waking up as it got lighter. We continued to pass sleeping teams all the way through dawn until we hit that last stretch before the Guad.
I suppose Matt's Vivarin wore off. He started falling asleep, paddling really slowly, and missing the water on almost every stroke. It might have been funny (OK...it was) had I not been so anxious to get to the Guad and Gonzales. I could see there was no point in pushing on like this, so I told him to lay out in the bow and get some sleep. We'd made a deal after all: help me steer the boat on day 1, be a mule on portages, get us off the San Marcos, and I'll push through the next day with out sleep. Matt held up his end, time for me to do some work.
Paddling solo wasn't much of a problem. Short, quick, light strokes, don't waste energy trying to move the canoe fast. I was probably moving at 60-70% of our tandem speed, so you're not sacrificing too much speed for 15-20 minutes of sleep. A couple of the sleeping teams passed us in this time. The Novice team asked if we had slept. I think they'd stopped for 1 hour. A C2 passed and laughed at Matt's snoring...it was loud. When Matt woke up, he didn't believe me.
Soon, we were on the Guadalupe. The current was still very slow, due to the dam in Gonzales, but the river was now much wider. A few miles of easy paddling and we were approaching Gonzales Dam. Neither of us had been here before, so we weren't sure of the portage. There's a steep hill on the left and a steep bank on the right. Another team was on the left, so we pulled up and asked them which way to go. They said the left was the longer, safer portage, or some thing to that effect. We decided to go right, muscle the canoe up the bank, and take the shorter route. Mean while, one of the remote control chopper cams was flying overhead. It was kind of funny at the time.
I don't remember having too much trouble with the bank or the short portage trail...but I doubt they were easy. At the end of the trail, you have another one of those funky, rocky slopes to negotiate, similar to Zedler Dam. We had to wait on a couple of teams here and once again, I had to slow myself down a bit and remember that not every one was portaging an aluminum canoe with reckless abandon like we were. Fortunately, in a few minutes, we were back in the water and on our way. Not long after that, we were at the check point. This was an exciting landmark for me for a few reasons. The course would be significantly different from this point forward: wider, less junk (mostly), and longer sections of flat out paddling. This next section (Gonzales to Hochheim) was notorious for it's ability to induce mind numbing boredom. I knew this and was very focused on maintaining my drive and momentum. I tend to get bored on long training runs and I didn't want that attitude to affect the race. Finally, once you leave Gonzales, statistically, you have a much higher chance of finishing the race. Some teams quit at Hochheim and some teams DNF further down the course, but many teams that DNF pull out at Gonzales.
I tried to move as quickly as possible, knowing there were other teams on the gravel bar and still other sleeping some where near by. We got fresh water jugs, Matt took care of a few things, and I took a quick dip. We learned that two canoes had set out with only 1 paddler. I'm not sure if it was injury or the reality of 2-3 more days on the river that caused those guys to pull out. The check point official that told us this also reminded us that quiting is mental, not physical. Just keep paddling. We intended to. We set out from Gonzales in 55th place, with a 36-38 mile stretch of river ahead of us. There are no bridges or access points for crew...you're in it all the way until Hochheim. It was almost 9:00 AM. We'd be paddling right through the heat of the day. I wouldn't realize it until we were well past the check point, but we'd just made our first major mistake. We had left the check point with only 1 gallon of water each. We had completely forgot to bring the extra gallon that we would certainly need. I was VERY worried that we might have made a big enough mistake to cost us a finish...
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Start to Staples: Miles 0-16
Saturday: 8:00 AM, Aquarena Springs. Well, probably close to 8:00 am. I don't remember to be honest. I can say that we were cutting it much closer than I'd hoped. After getting every one up and moving, eating breakfast, and making a stop at the store, time had really flown by. Aquarena Springs was in full swing by the time we arrived. Almost every one looked either nervous, amped, or a combination of the two. I wanted to be neither of the two. I was now anxious about making it to the starting line before the gun went off, but I wasn't feeling nervous or anxious about the race. There was no pressure on us to win or perform. We were in it to survive and barring any major disasters on Saturday, the survival game wouldn't really start until day 2 and 3. Today, we needed to stay calm and stick to the plan, which was to keep a slow pace on the water, be careful, and hit every portage at full speed. Sounds a bit odd that we'd paddle slow and go full throttle on portages, but I had it in my head that we needed to be conservative with our pace. This strategy would play out with mixed results.
Back at the boat, I quickly changed, lubed up, and threw on some Bob Marley to stay calm while I sorted the gear and canoe. The hour before start time really is a blur. I have no idea what we did to chew up that much time, but it passed quickly. Before I knew it, we were screwing with little bits of rigging and listening to the call of “30 minutes until start”, “15 minutes until start”. I started getting anxious at this point and bitching at Matt to finish what ever he was doing. Most of the boats were already in the water, lined up at their starting positions. We pulled out the dragging straps and dragged the canoe (because it was HEAVY) over to the steps. I felt like people were taking way too long to launch in front of us and I was wishing that we would have showed up sooner. Eventually though, we did get the canoe in the water with enough time to get into the vicinity of our starting position (this was MUCH less organized than expected), hear one of Tom's stories (I don't remember the story, I just remember laughing), hear some one's grand daughter sing the national anthem, and hear Tom's prayer. The 1 minute before the starting siren was silent.
If you look at the bottom of the screen at the 0:26 mark, you can barely see us. Matt is in the bow, wearing a white cap and I'm in the stern, wearing a white cap with a white shroud and a dark blue compression top.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXjJZ8rXlio
The start was exciting, but not as chaotic as you might imagine. The big boats had been positioned all the way over on the right to avoid accidents. These boats and many of the other competitive boats sprint right from the start in an effort to out run the traffic to the first portage, which is about a quarter mile from the starting line. Most of the other teams, like us, quickly drift to the middle and back of the pack. I remember telling Matt to “slow down” and “take it easy” a couple of times. We were already on the left, where we wanted to be. The first portage has a few different routes. There's a concrete spillway on the far right, an “island” in the middle, a rock “waterfall” on the left, and an apartment complex and grassy bank on the far left. We did a little bit of scouting on our last San Marcos run and decided that we'd portage on the far left. It was a longer portage, but we'd heard there would be less traffic here, and with the dragging straps, we felt like we could cover the distance fairly quickly.
As you approach the damn, the lake widens out to the left, with a big patch of vegetation right in the middle. We ran right through the middle and promptly slowed down. I looked to my left and saw a clear channel along the outside with several kayaks heading towards the same spot we were. I yelled for Matt to sprint, so we could hopefully beat them to the portage. It worked. We hit the bank, jumped out, and pulled the canoe up. Shortly after this, there's a waist high concrete wall. We jostled a bit with a couple boats as we tried to heave our tank of a canoe over the wall. As soon as we dropped it on the other side, we pulled out the dragging straps and ran. It was maybe 20 yards through the lawn before our put in. If you look to the bank at the 3:20 mark, you can see us sliding the canoe into the water. I teased Matt about how long he took to get into the canoe in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18xB5jssbMc
The next quarter mile after this is interesting, as you wind your way through the Texas State campus. It's a narrow channel, with a rock bottom, concrete walls, and heavy traffic. We bumped around here and got jammed into the wall at one point. Beyond this, a low walking bridge that we squeezed under on the left side, and Rio Vista Falls. The old Rio Vista dam was torn down and turned into a white water park. There are three drops there, with the first being the tallest. This is yet another portage with multiple routes. Few boats try to run the first drop, most capsize or, at the least, take on water. The big boats portage this first drop, then run the next two. Still other boats portage down to the second or third drop. We pulled up well ahead of the first drop, at the stairs. After heaving the canoe up the steps, we pulled out the dragging straps again and started to run. We were going all the way past the three drops to put in further downstream. This is a huge spectator spot and it's sort of funny watching them dive out of the way as you come barreling through, dragging a big pile of aluminum. This video will give you some idea of the portage. Several kayaks are running the first drop. I don't believe we're in this clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPo4ojs4ymc
I was happy with our portage, until we got to the end. We weren't the only ones with this idea, obviously, and others were less concerned about a speedy portage...so you get to wait in line. You'll here this over and over from me on day 1, but mid-back of the pack paddlers are SLOW on portages. Some just don't seem to give a shit, some are just taking their time, and others seem to have no clue what they're doing. It's baffling to watch. Yes, this is a very long race, but efficiency counts. Every minute out of your boat is a minute you're NOT moving downstream. Some of these same teams would catch back up to us after a portage and work to pass us. So, they're wasting time on portages, being passed, then having to paddle faster to catch back up. Yes, great way to conserve energy...
After Rio Vista, there's a narrow, twisting, almost tropical looking stretch to Thompson Island. If you've never seen the spot and are going off of course descriptions, it's confusing. We ran it in training and then looked on google earth and through the course descriptions again. There are two main routes to take here: the right channel starts with a spillway that has to be portaged, the left channel runs further down, to a concrete walkway, where you take out, drag across, then down a hill and into a ditch that runs into the main river channel. There's a bit of traffic and craziness here, but our portage went smoothly. Although, we did almost knock a photographer over...sorry. This video shows you the portage at the 2:22 mark.
www.youtube.com//watch?v=zdtGxw7fNfA
Things start to calm down a little at this point. There were 3-4 miles before Cummins Dam, one of the largest dams on the San Marcos. I don't remember much from this stretch. We settled into our pace and looked at the clock to get an idea of our average speed. Since we were planning on running day 1 at a relaxed pace, I was VERY conscious of the 8:00 PM cut off at mile 40 in Luling. This allows 11 hours to cover the distance and an average pace of 3.6 mph. That's a slow day 1 pace, by any standards, but we didn't want to risk it any more than we had to.
Not long before the dam is a wide, straight stretch of river. A woman in a solo canoe pulled up next to us and I asked her what the mileage was to the dam. She didn't know, but me and Matt started chatting with her any way. Courtney was trying to be only the second woman ever to finish the Safari in a C1, which is a solo marathon racing canoe. These boats are narrow, fast, and very challenging to maneuver in any thing but calm water. She had a tough task ahead of her. Courtney had run the Safari a couple of times before in low water conditions, so we asked her a few questions about that. Time passed quickly and before we knew it, we were nearing the dam. I had a quick look behind us and saw a group of boats approaching, so we picked up our speed a bit to make sure we hit the dam before they did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4XrRtsGqa8
Again, there are multiple portage routes over the dam, based on boat length and how comfortable you are with the idea of destroying your boat. We had only practiced the most popular route which was, of course, full of traffic by the time we got there. We did anticipate this and had a back up plan to portage around the dam, and down the stairs. As we pulled up, I unclipped the back pack and put it on. We hopped out, dragged the canoe around the traffic, and heaved it up onto the concrete wall. Other paddlers who had already lowered their canoes were trying to squeeze past us, down the stairs, so we let them go before dragging our pile of aluminum down. Once at the bottom, we pulled out the dragging straps and set off at a run, across the gravel bar.
After Cummins, your focus is now on the rapids. First, some smaller rapids and Old Mill, then the infamous Cottonseed Rapids. Just before this, we passed the San Marcos River Retreat, Tom Goyne's campsite. Tom had reserved 20 SPOT trackers to give to the front runner teams. When some of these teams turned him down, he opened up the units for any one who could contact him fast enough. I emailed him immediately. Tom was standing in the river as we passed, his words of advice were “keep on it guys, until you make that cut off”. Matt said, “the cut off is 9 PM, right”. Every one laughed. Tom had been lobbying hard to have the cut off pushed back to 9 PM, to give the back of the pack paddlers a chance to make it in these low water years. His effort was not successful. As we paddled off Tom said, “I tried”.
Half way through this video is Old Mill Rapids. Hard to get an idea of the place from that angle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZsuMXjQLLo
I knew Old Mill would be a mess. First, at these water levels, you run into a shallow, rocky section, where you have to make a sharp, 90 degree left turn. I knew what kind of chaos we were going to see after this and what would happen when we made the left turn, so I suggested we go straight and hop out. Matt didn't like the idea, we went left. Just as in training, we ran aground trying to squeeze through the channel. I don't remember what happened here, just that it was messy and angry. Seems like one of us ended up in the water. Beyond this, you'd usually make a wide right turn, then a ridiculously sharp left turn along a flat chunk of concrete. This is what you see in the video. As anticipated though, this sharp left turn was clogged with canoes that failed to maneuver. We went straight, to portage over a concrete wall. As we were doing this, I saw an open channel to the left we could have taken. A spectator was telling us to go that way. “Too late”, I said.
I wasn't happy after stumbling through those rapids, but you get over it. Next up was Cottonseed. Here's a short Cottonseed video from this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NPrfvO7cZ4
What you won't see in these videos is the entrance to Cottonseed. Your paddling along a straight section, when you see a concrete wall up ahead and a sharp left turn. That's when you know you're there. After making the left turn, the current picks up, you see a line of rocks up ahead, and a sharp right turn. You're already in it at that point, but you know that once you pass through those rocks and make the 90 degree right turn, you're REALLY in it. We had only run Cottonseed once in training. We stayed to the right while going through the entrance rocks. Being bow heavy, we hung up and had to step a foot out to push off. After making the right turn, we caught the eddy (the circulating water on the inside of a turn will allow you to stop or, at the least, slow down and escape the current flow) on river right and lined up the run. We made it through that run, but not cleanly. We hung up running through the middle, had to get out, dislodge, climb back in, then we hung in another rock. I knew that would be a bad idea during the Safari, with a potential horde of barely controlled aluminum boats coming up behind us. Our race plan was to catch the eddy on river right, jump out, and walk the boat through the shallow channel on the right. Safe, conservative, and we wouldn't lose much time.
As we were approaching Cottonseed, an aluminum canoe pulled up next to us. They were working a bit to try a pass us. I looked behind and didn't see a single boat, so we slowed and gave them some distance. You don't want to paddle into the rapids next to another boat. We ran through the entrance on the right and hung up, as expected. We pushed off, made the sharp right turn, and saw the aluminum canoe wrapped right in the middle of the rapids. Keep clicking “next” and you'll see the sequence of events. We're in the background of the 3rd and 4th shots.
http://www.pbase.com/lebthree/image/135521186
Our run went smoothly...well, almost. We hopped out of the canoe and Matt started running it through the shallows. Trying to follow, I stepped into a couple of hole and bashed/cut my legs up. The one on my shin was the worse. People were watching, so no “SON OF A B*TCH!!!”. I just groaned and kept running. When we got down river, I saw a big, bleeding knot on my leg and some cuts down by my ankles. The knot was the most worrying. I hoped it wouldn't swell too much and cause my leg to freeze up. Nothing to do but wait until later and slap on some disinfectant.
Not long after Cottonseed you pull up to Martindale Dam. We had two portages planned here: Martindale Dam, then Martindale bridge, about an 1/8th mile downstream. The bridge can be run, but playing it conservative, we planned on portaging. Here's the dam portage. We took a route off screen, dragging up onto the bank, then down the concrete slope on the side. Again, I put the back pack on, we pulled out the dragging straps and ran. Seems like I remember passing a boat on this portage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssCOvOgT420
With the bridge portage coming up, I actually just kept the back pack on and paddled. I felt weird paddling with a 25-30 lb pack on...probably looked weird, haha. Other teams were portaging the bridge ahead of us. Once again, teams that had passed us on the river. This was a little tougher, having to drag up and over the bridge, but still a short portage. We're not in this video, but you can see other boats portaging and paddling the bridge, with mixed results. There's a bit of kookiness in this video, if you watch the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98geIRDEb1U
The only thing worth mentioning from the remaining stretch to Staples Dam, was the surprise visit from our crew. I had convince Matt to run the first 16 miles of the race with only one ½ gallon jug of water each. Matt drinks like a horse and ran out of water quickly. Just when I was preparing to hear about it for the next hour or two, we see our crew up ahead on a gravel. I gave them a thick print out of driving directions to every potential re-fueling stop, but we'd only told them to meet us at check points. They'd made a great call by showing up at this spot with water. After our initial surprise, we grabbed a jug of water as we glided past and told them we'd see them at Staples shortly.
The next few miles through Staples Lake are deep, calm, and slow. Aside from portages, we hadn't stopped yet. As I said, we were paddling at a lazy cruise. Every boat in this part of the pack would pass us on the river. But, because we weren't stopping, we'd pass them again at bridges as they re-fueled or wasted time with their crew. As we neared Staples, another aluminum passed us. Watching them paddle was painful. I'm not sure why we didn't sprint to beat them to the portage. Weird to think about it, because we could have easily out sprint them. I guess the easy cruise approach had sunk in and I was in energy conservation mode.
There was, of course, a line at Staples. With so little San Marcos time in training, we'd only practiced the most common Novice portage: down the stairs. I thought we'd have to pay for that one. Nothing to do here but wait. One of the aluminums decided to drain their canoe in the middle of the line. As we waited patiently for all of this, a Novice boat tried to push past us. Don't do that. I'm sure me and Matt were thinking the same thing. We slide down the stairs, yelled at our crew to meet us a little further downstream on the gravel bar, and paddled on. This video is from 2010. 3:00 minutes in, you'll see teams portaging the dam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WccsxnOehVE
This is the first point where our difference in race philosophy would clash. We had a 24 mile stretch ahead of us, through the junkiest, and most difficult section of the course, with a cut off to beat. After running onto the gravel bar to swap water jugs, Matt started climbing out of the canoe, I argued to push off and press on. Ultimately, we pushed off and pressed on. But, already, we weren't in agreement on this aspect of the race plan.
Back at the boat, I quickly changed, lubed up, and threw on some Bob Marley to stay calm while I sorted the gear and canoe. The hour before start time really is a blur. I have no idea what we did to chew up that much time, but it passed quickly. Before I knew it, we were screwing with little bits of rigging and listening to the call of “30 minutes until start”, “15 minutes until start”. I started getting anxious at this point and bitching at Matt to finish what ever he was doing. Most of the boats were already in the water, lined up at their starting positions. We pulled out the dragging straps and dragged the canoe (because it was HEAVY) over to the steps. I felt like people were taking way too long to launch in front of us and I was wishing that we would have showed up sooner. Eventually though, we did get the canoe in the water with enough time to get into the vicinity of our starting position (this was MUCH less organized than expected), hear one of Tom's stories (I don't remember the story, I just remember laughing), hear some one's grand daughter sing the national anthem, and hear Tom's prayer. The 1 minute before the starting siren was silent.
If you look at the bottom of the screen at the 0:26 mark, you can barely see us. Matt is in the bow, wearing a white cap and I'm in the stern, wearing a white cap with a white shroud and a dark blue compression top.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXjJZ8rXlio
The start was exciting, but not as chaotic as you might imagine. The big boats had been positioned all the way over on the right to avoid accidents. These boats and many of the other competitive boats sprint right from the start in an effort to out run the traffic to the first portage, which is about a quarter mile from the starting line. Most of the other teams, like us, quickly drift to the middle and back of the pack. I remember telling Matt to “slow down” and “take it easy” a couple of times. We were already on the left, where we wanted to be. The first portage has a few different routes. There's a concrete spillway on the far right, an “island” in the middle, a rock “waterfall” on the left, and an apartment complex and grassy bank on the far left. We did a little bit of scouting on our last San Marcos run and decided that we'd portage on the far left. It was a longer portage, but we'd heard there would be less traffic here, and with the dragging straps, we felt like we could cover the distance fairly quickly.
As you approach the damn, the lake widens out to the left, with a big patch of vegetation right in the middle. We ran right through the middle and promptly slowed down. I looked to my left and saw a clear channel along the outside with several kayaks heading towards the same spot we were. I yelled for Matt to sprint, so we could hopefully beat them to the portage. It worked. We hit the bank, jumped out, and pulled the canoe up. Shortly after this, there's a waist high concrete wall. We jostled a bit with a couple boats as we tried to heave our tank of a canoe over the wall. As soon as we dropped it on the other side, we pulled out the dragging straps and ran. It was maybe 20 yards through the lawn before our put in. If you look to the bank at the 3:20 mark, you can see us sliding the canoe into the water. I teased Matt about how long he took to get into the canoe in this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18xB5jssbMc
The next quarter mile after this is interesting, as you wind your way through the Texas State campus. It's a narrow channel, with a rock bottom, concrete walls, and heavy traffic. We bumped around here and got jammed into the wall at one point. Beyond this, a low walking bridge that we squeezed under on the left side, and Rio Vista Falls. The old Rio Vista dam was torn down and turned into a white water park. There are three drops there, with the first being the tallest. This is yet another portage with multiple routes. Few boats try to run the first drop, most capsize or, at the least, take on water. The big boats portage this first drop, then run the next two. Still other boats portage down to the second or third drop. We pulled up well ahead of the first drop, at the stairs. After heaving the canoe up the steps, we pulled out the dragging straps again and started to run. We were going all the way past the three drops to put in further downstream. This is a huge spectator spot and it's sort of funny watching them dive out of the way as you come barreling through, dragging a big pile of aluminum. This video will give you some idea of the portage. Several kayaks are running the first drop. I don't believe we're in this clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPo4ojs4ymc
I was happy with our portage, until we got to the end. We weren't the only ones with this idea, obviously, and others were less concerned about a speedy portage...so you get to wait in line. You'll here this over and over from me on day 1, but mid-back of the pack paddlers are SLOW on portages. Some just don't seem to give a shit, some are just taking their time, and others seem to have no clue what they're doing. It's baffling to watch. Yes, this is a very long race, but efficiency counts. Every minute out of your boat is a minute you're NOT moving downstream. Some of these same teams would catch back up to us after a portage and work to pass us. So, they're wasting time on portages, being passed, then having to paddle faster to catch back up. Yes, great way to conserve energy...
After Rio Vista, there's a narrow, twisting, almost tropical looking stretch to Thompson Island. If you've never seen the spot and are going off of course descriptions, it's confusing. We ran it in training and then looked on google earth and through the course descriptions again. There are two main routes to take here: the right channel starts with a spillway that has to be portaged, the left channel runs further down, to a concrete walkway, where you take out, drag across, then down a hill and into a ditch that runs into the main river channel. There's a bit of traffic and craziness here, but our portage went smoothly. Although, we did almost knock a photographer over...sorry. This video shows you the portage at the 2:22 mark.
www.youtube.com//watch?v=zdtGxw7fNfA
Things start to calm down a little at this point. There were 3-4 miles before Cummins Dam, one of the largest dams on the San Marcos. I don't remember much from this stretch. We settled into our pace and looked at the clock to get an idea of our average speed. Since we were planning on running day 1 at a relaxed pace, I was VERY conscious of the 8:00 PM cut off at mile 40 in Luling. This allows 11 hours to cover the distance and an average pace of 3.6 mph. That's a slow day 1 pace, by any standards, but we didn't want to risk it any more than we had to.
Not long before the dam is a wide, straight stretch of river. A woman in a solo canoe pulled up next to us and I asked her what the mileage was to the dam. She didn't know, but me and Matt started chatting with her any way. Courtney was trying to be only the second woman ever to finish the Safari in a C1, which is a solo marathon racing canoe. These boats are narrow, fast, and very challenging to maneuver in any thing but calm water. She had a tough task ahead of her. Courtney had run the Safari a couple of times before in low water conditions, so we asked her a few questions about that. Time passed quickly and before we knew it, we were nearing the dam. I had a quick look behind us and saw a group of boats approaching, so we picked up our speed a bit to make sure we hit the dam before they did.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4XrRtsGqa8
Again, there are multiple portage routes over the dam, based on boat length and how comfortable you are with the idea of destroying your boat. We had only practiced the most popular route which was, of course, full of traffic by the time we got there. We did anticipate this and had a back up plan to portage around the dam, and down the stairs. As we pulled up, I unclipped the back pack and put it on. We hopped out, dragged the canoe around the traffic, and heaved it up onto the concrete wall. Other paddlers who had already lowered their canoes were trying to squeeze past us, down the stairs, so we let them go before dragging our pile of aluminum down. Once at the bottom, we pulled out the dragging straps and set off at a run, across the gravel bar.
After Cummins, your focus is now on the rapids. First, some smaller rapids and Old Mill, then the infamous Cottonseed Rapids. Just before this, we passed the San Marcos River Retreat, Tom Goyne's campsite. Tom had reserved 20 SPOT trackers to give to the front runner teams. When some of these teams turned him down, he opened up the units for any one who could contact him fast enough. I emailed him immediately. Tom was standing in the river as we passed, his words of advice were “keep on it guys, until you make that cut off”. Matt said, “the cut off is 9 PM, right”. Every one laughed. Tom had been lobbying hard to have the cut off pushed back to 9 PM, to give the back of the pack paddlers a chance to make it in these low water years. His effort was not successful. As we paddled off Tom said, “I tried”.
Half way through this video is Old Mill Rapids. Hard to get an idea of the place from that angle.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZsuMXjQLLo
I knew Old Mill would be a mess. First, at these water levels, you run into a shallow, rocky section, where you have to make a sharp, 90 degree left turn. I knew what kind of chaos we were going to see after this and what would happen when we made the left turn, so I suggested we go straight and hop out. Matt didn't like the idea, we went left. Just as in training, we ran aground trying to squeeze through the channel. I don't remember what happened here, just that it was messy and angry. Seems like one of us ended up in the water. Beyond this, you'd usually make a wide right turn, then a ridiculously sharp left turn along a flat chunk of concrete. This is what you see in the video. As anticipated though, this sharp left turn was clogged with canoes that failed to maneuver. We went straight, to portage over a concrete wall. As we were doing this, I saw an open channel to the left we could have taken. A spectator was telling us to go that way. “Too late”, I said.
I wasn't happy after stumbling through those rapids, but you get over it. Next up was Cottonseed. Here's a short Cottonseed video from this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NPrfvO7cZ4
What you won't see in these videos is the entrance to Cottonseed. Your paddling along a straight section, when you see a concrete wall up ahead and a sharp left turn. That's when you know you're there. After making the left turn, the current picks up, you see a line of rocks up ahead, and a sharp right turn. You're already in it at that point, but you know that once you pass through those rocks and make the 90 degree right turn, you're REALLY in it. We had only run Cottonseed once in training. We stayed to the right while going through the entrance rocks. Being bow heavy, we hung up and had to step a foot out to push off. After making the right turn, we caught the eddy (the circulating water on the inside of a turn will allow you to stop or, at the least, slow down and escape the current flow) on river right and lined up the run. We made it through that run, but not cleanly. We hung up running through the middle, had to get out, dislodge, climb back in, then we hung in another rock. I knew that would be a bad idea during the Safari, with a potential horde of barely controlled aluminum boats coming up behind us. Our race plan was to catch the eddy on river right, jump out, and walk the boat through the shallow channel on the right. Safe, conservative, and we wouldn't lose much time.
As we were approaching Cottonseed, an aluminum canoe pulled up next to us. They were working a bit to try a pass us. I looked behind and didn't see a single boat, so we slowed and gave them some distance. You don't want to paddle into the rapids next to another boat. We ran through the entrance on the right and hung up, as expected. We pushed off, made the sharp right turn, and saw the aluminum canoe wrapped right in the middle of the rapids. Keep clicking “next” and you'll see the sequence of events. We're in the background of the 3rd and 4th shots.
http://www.pbase.com/lebthree/image/135521186
Our run went smoothly...well, almost. We hopped out of the canoe and Matt started running it through the shallows. Trying to follow, I stepped into a couple of hole and bashed/cut my legs up. The one on my shin was the worse. People were watching, so no “SON OF A B*TCH!!!”. I just groaned and kept running. When we got down river, I saw a big, bleeding knot on my leg and some cuts down by my ankles. The knot was the most worrying. I hoped it wouldn't swell too much and cause my leg to freeze up. Nothing to do but wait until later and slap on some disinfectant.
Not long after Cottonseed you pull up to Martindale Dam. We had two portages planned here: Martindale Dam, then Martindale bridge, about an 1/8th mile downstream. The bridge can be run, but playing it conservative, we planned on portaging. Here's the dam portage. We took a route off screen, dragging up onto the bank, then down the concrete slope on the side. Again, I put the back pack on, we pulled out the dragging straps and ran. Seems like I remember passing a boat on this portage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssCOvOgT420
With the bridge portage coming up, I actually just kept the back pack on and paddled. I felt weird paddling with a 25-30 lb pack on...probably looked weird, haha. Other teams were portaging the bridge ahead of us. Once again, teams that had passed us on the river. This was a little tougher, having to drag up and over the bridge, but still a short portage. We're not in this video, but you can see other boats portaging and paddling the bridge, with mixed results. There's a bit of kookiness in this video, if you watch the whole thing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98geIRDEb1U
The only thing worth mentioning from the remaining stretch to Staples Dam, was the surprise visit from our crew. I had convince Matt to run the first 16 miles of the race with only one ½ gallon jug of water each. Matt drinks like a horse and ran out of water quickly. Just when I was preparing to hear about it for the next hour or two, we see our crew up ahead on a gravel. I gave them a thick print out of driving directions to every potential re-fueling stop, but we'd only told them to meet us at check points. They'd made a great call by showing up at this spot with water. After our initial surprise, we grabbed a jug of water as we glided past and told them we'd see them at Staples shortly.
The next few miles through Staples Lake are deep, calm, and slow. Aside from portages, we hadn't stopped yet. As I said, we were paddling at a lazy cruise. Every boat in this part of the pack would pass us on the river. But, because we weren't stopping, we'd pass them again at bridges as they re-fueled or wasted time with their crew. As we neared Staples, another aluminum passed us. Watching them paddle was painful. I'm not sure why we didn't sprint to beat them to the portage. Weird to think about it, because we could have easily out sprint them. I guess the easy cruise approach had sunk in and I was in energy conservation mode.
There was, of course, a line at Staples. With so little San Marcos time in training, we'd only practiced the most common Novice portage: down the stairs. I thought we'd have to pay for that one. Nothing to do here but wait. One of the aluminums decided to drain their canoe in the middle of the line. As we waited patiently for all of this, a Novice boat tried to push past us. Don't do that. I'm sure me and Matt were thinking the same thing. We slide down the stairs, yelled at our crew to meet us a little further downstream on the gravel bar, and paddled on. This video is from 2010. 3:00 minutes in, you'll see teams portaging the dam.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WccsxnOehVE
This is the first point where our difference in race philosophy would clash. We had a 24 mile stretch ahead of us, through the junkiest, and most difficult section of the course, with a cut off to beat. After running onto the gravel bar to swap water jugs, Matt started climbing out of the canoe, I argued to push off and press on. Ultimately, we pushed off and pressed on. But, already, we weren't in agreement on this aspect of the race plan.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The 2011 Texas Water Safari - Check In
Friday, 2:30 PM. We pulled in to Aquarena Springs later than we'd originally hoped...of course. The main area for check in was packed, so we parked next to the big tent and began unloading. Matt needed to grab our SPOT tracker from Tom Goynes and make a supply run for a few small things that we had neglected, while I needed to unload the gear and make a list of every single item for the check in officials. This took a while. Once all of our food packets were unloaded, it made for an impressive spread. Several people stopped to gawk, admire, or comment. I realized the obvious, we had too much food. Being our first go at the Safari thing, I preferred to have too much, rather than not enough. I felt like we needed to plan for a 90-100 hour finish, even if we were likely to get off the river before that.
Our food was portioned into big ziploc bags and labeled based on the section of river that we planned on eating the food: Eric Mile 0-60. If I had extra food at mile 60, for example, I'd throw the bag out as trash, unless there was some thing in there I still wanted. All of the ziploc bags were stored in a big dry sack back pack. Most of the race, this would be clipped to the canoe. On long or tough portages, the plan was to unclip the bag and put it on my back to get those 25-30 lbs out of the boat.
Once I was satisfied with the list, I grabbed a check in official. Unfortunately, we didn't make it very far. Turns out, we actually did need a snake bite kit, not just some disinfectant and tape. Matt had one, but forgot it at home. Yes, snake bite kits are bull shit, but they are required for some oddball reason. Just as I was about to call Matt, they pulled up. Back to the store for those guys. After tooling around with the boat for a while, Matt arrives with the snake bite kit and we grab another check in official. Yet again, we don't make it very far. Our flares are hand held flares, not aerial flares. SHIT! Back to the store for Matt. This time, I went through the rest of the list with the official to get it out of the way.
On to the safety briefing. Mostly expected: rules, course description, portages, big logjam down south. I paid special attention to the part about the big logjam, but didn't hear any who info. We'd just have to see it for ourselves. Eventually, Matt makes it back and clears up the flare issue with the official. FINALLY. Almost every one cleared out after the safety briefing. The place went from amped up and bustling, to lonely and slightly depressing. Only us unprepared fools are left to make final adjustments to our boats.
With all of the check in craziness, we didn't get the time to wonder around and mingle with the crowd, which is some thing we were looking forward to. I made a couple of long hikes to the bathroom, passing through the main check in area, and scoping things out along the way. There's a pretty awesome variety of boats running the TWS. Every thing from little, plastic kayaks and 17 foot aluminum canoes to 40+ foot, 6-man, kevlar canoes. If you're serious about competing for a class win, you're only concern is the boats and teams in your class. Being in the Novice class, we were matched up with 22 other teams in aluminum canoes. Of course, we weren't exactly gunning for a class win. Nothing in our training had lead me to believe that we were a fast team. Quite the opposite actually. We'd realized that we were not well matched up and that we were paddling a slow (even by aluminum standards) canoe. Our main goal was to finish and, hopefully, at least be in the front half of our class.
Next to us at check in was Nancy, who was attempting to be the first person to finish the Safari in a PRS (a plastic surfski). This boat has done well in shorter distance races, but most probably consider it too uncomfortable for ultra distance. Nancy seemed confident. We chatted with her a bit and really hoped she'd survive. Plastic boats are not light, even a ski, so for a woman to race the TWS in low water with all the portages would certainly be a challenge.
After check in, we went out for our “last meal”, then called it an early night at the hotel. The plan was to get up at 5 am, track down a Cracker Barrel, stuff our faces, then make it back to Aquarena Springs with plenty of time to prepare for the 9 am race start. As always, we would find a way to show up with just enough time to rush...
Our food was portioned into big ziploc bags and labeled based on the section of river that we planned on eating the food: Eric Mile 0-60. If I had extra food at mile 60, for example, I'd throw the bag out as trash, unless there was some thing in there I still wanted. All of the ziploc bags were stored in a big dry sack back pack. Most of the race, this would be clipped to the canoe. On long or tough portages, the plan was to unclip the bag and put it on my back to get those 25-30 lbs out of the boat.
Once I was satisfied with the list, I grabbed a check in official. Unfortunately, we didn't make it very far. Turns out, we actually did need a snake bite kit, not just some disinfectant and tape. Matt had one, but forgot it at home. Yes, snake bite kits are bull shit, but they are required for some oddball reason. Just as I was about to call Matt, they pulled up. Back to the store for those guys. After tooling around with the boat for a while, Matt arrives with the snake bite kit and we grab another check in official. Yet again, we don't make it very far. Our flares are hand held flares, not aerial flares. SHIT! Back to the store for Matt. This time, I went through the rest of the list with the official to get it out of the way.
On to the safety briefing. Mostly expected: rules, course description, portages, big logjam down south. I paid special attention to the part about the big logjam, but didn't hear any who info. We'd just have to see it for ourselves. Eventually, Matt makes it back and clears up the flare issue with the official. FINALLY. Almost every one cleared out after the safety briefing. The place went from amped up and bustling, to lonely and slightly depressing. Only us unprepared fools are left to make final adjustments to our boats.
With all of the check in craziness, we didn't get the time to wonder around and mingle with the crowd, which is some thing we were looking forward to. I made a couple of long hikes to the bathroom, passing through the main check in area, and scoping things out along the way. There's a pretty awesome variety of boats running the TWS. Every thing from little, plastic kayaks and 17 foot aluminum canoes to 40+ foot, 6-man, kevlar canoes. If you're serious about competing for a class win, you're only concern is the boats and teams in your class. Being in the Novice class, we were matched up with 22 other teams in aluminum canoes. Of course, we weren't exactly gunning for a class win. Nothing in our training had lead me to believe that we were a fast team. Quite the opposite actually. We'd realized that we were not well matched up and that we were paddling a slow (even by aluminum standards) canoe. Our main goal was to finish and, hopefully, at least be in the front half of our class.
Next to us at check in was Nancy, who was attempting to be the first person to finish the Safari in a PRS (a plastic surfski). This boat has done well in shorter distance races, but most probably consider it too uncomfortable for ultra distance. Nancy seemed confident. We chatted with her a bit and really hoped she'd survive. Plastic boats are not light, even a ski, so for a woman to race the TWS in low water with all the portages would certainly be a challenge.
After check in, we went out for our “last meal”, then called it an early night at the hotel. The plan was to get up at 5 am, track down a Cracker Barrel, stuff our faces, then make it back to Aquarena Springs with plenty of time to prepare for the 9 am race start. As always, we would find a way to show up with just enough time to rush...
Sunday, June 19, 2011
2011 Texas Water Safari
Getting started is the hardest part. It shouldn't be. The Texas Water Safari started when we pulled up at check in, 2:30 PM on Friday. That's a reasonable starting point for a story. But, after 83 hours on the river and an experience this big, it's very hard to focus in on the beginning. Trying to remember the experience is like trying to watch a movie in fast forward. There's flashes of bits and pieces here and there. It's difficult to grab onto any thing. My mood and energy levels have been up and down since we finished the race. At times, you're high from the experience and the thought of doing it again next year. Other times, you're a bit bored and maybe depressed, because it's over. Not just the race, but the whole life you live leading up to the Safari, which is driven by training and preparation and obsession and the need to cram all of this into your “regular” life and responsibilities.
It's fair to say that the Safari is a traumatic experience. What you subject your body and mind to during the course of the race, just to finish, is significant. Simply put, you're asking yourself to paddle, nearly non-stop, for 262 miles, with minimal sleep and what ever food/hydration you can manage along the way. Paddling becomes your reality. When you wake up, you paddle 70-90 miles. That's your goal. That's your job for the day. Checkpoints help to break up the monotony and to give you a re-charge. Even if you're not sleeping, there's still some thing about finishing a section, being cheered in and out of the checkpoint, seeing your crew, that wipes the slate clean and allows you to focus on the new task: paddle to the next checkpoint.
Make no mistake about it though, this race is relentless. There are few, if any, “breaks”. Nearly every section is demanding, either technically or because of the distance you have to cover or because of the time of day. When a section isn't demanding, fatigue and boredom start catching up to you and it's a battle to stay awake and in a productive mode. THIS RACE IS RELENTLESS. You don't say “The World's Toughest Boat Race” with out having some substance to back up the claim. As though they still needed to prove the point, the race ends with a 6 mile bay crossing. That's 6 miles of potentially rough, windy bay AFTER paddling 250-260 miles of river in a boat that's more than likely not very sea worthy. People DNF (did not finish) in the bay. It happened this year. That's just brutal. You'll hear more on this later.
Overall, this was an absolutely amazing experience. I mean that with 100% sincerity. I'm sure it's difficult for most to understand, because you can only imagine the pain and suffering. There's nothing worth while that you will ever do in your life that won't involve some amount of pain and suffering. Great stories don't come from happy, comfortable times, they come from pain, suffering, and overcoming significant personal challenges. If you're as new and as inexperienced as we are, you're going to tear yourself down to the core at some point during this race. What you find there and how you respond is up to you. I was just about fed up with the whole experience on Tuesday. Almost too tired to stay awake or paddle. By the time we paddled into the bay and hit those headwinds, I felt like I might as well just quit. Why not? We had already survived the river. Then, I started responding. I know how to get us across this bay. I know where we need to go and what we need to do to make consistent forward progress. After that, it was just 3 hours of pumping away until we hit the steps. After walking up those steps and falling down (I intended to sit down), I realized how hard I had stayed on it for the last 3 hours and especially the last 1.5 hours. I may not have been satisfied with the overall pace and effort level of the race, but I was sure as hell satisfied with the ending.
103 boats started the race. 78 boats finished. At least 1 boat DNF'd in the bay. We finished in 83 hours, 4th in the Novice Class (out of 23 starters and 17 finishers), and 41st overall. I didn't know we were 4th Novice until I got home and checked the unofficial results. On day 2 I realized that, for a number of reasons, we would be stuck running a slow race. When ever a Novice team would get serious about passing us or staying ahead of us, I'd joke with Matt saying “yea, let's hammer ourselves to battle out that 6th place Novice finish”. I thought we were some where in the middle of the class. Our main goal was just to finish this race and trim as much time off of our finish as possible. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place Novice boats were far ahead of us. They hit a pace on day 1 and stayed with it.
Excuses, excuses, excuses...but our canoe was SLOW. Haha. In all seriousness, it really was. This was not a total surprise. Every one told us this before the race (Erin and Roy, you guys were right) and I'd seen it myself any time we tried to run fast in training. Had money not been an issue, we might have switched to an Alumacraft Voyager, which is pretty much the standard for aluminum canoe racing. We didn't. I have no doubt we would have been significantly faster in this race, although, I still don't think we would have competed for 2nd or 3rd. We were a seriously mis-matched team and aside from my annoying, antsy, impatience, no one else seemed to have a “this is a race” type of urgency. At some point I'll sit down and calculate the amount of wasted check point time, because it certainly is useful information. Needless to say, it was WAY TOO MUCH. 10-15 minutes doesn't seem like much, but over the course of 262 miles and how ever many checkpoints there are, it adds up. It would be realistic to say that we wasted 2-3 hours at checkpoints. Sleeping is not wasted time. Body maintenance is not wasted time. Canoe maintenance is not wasted time. Every thing else is wasted time and results in a less efficient race. This is important to learn from for future races.
I suppose this is a start. At the least, it's a really crappy summary of the experience. Next post, I'll dig into the real story, starting with check in and what we learned about showing up prepared so you don't have to make 50 trips to the store and hang around as one of the last stragglers, still tweaking on your boat. No idea how many posts this whole thing will take. We'll just have to see how good my memory is...
It's fair to say that the Safari is a traumatic experience. What you subject your body and mind to during the course of the race, just to finish, is significant. Simply put, you're asking yourself to paddle, nearly non-stop, for 262 miles, with minimal sleep and what ever food/hydration you can manage along the way. Paddling becomes your reality. When you wake up, you paddle 70-90 miles. That's your goal. That's your job for the day. Checkpoints help to break up the monotony and to give you a re-charge. Even if you're not sleeping, there's still some thing about finishing a section, being cheered in and out of the checkpoint, seeing your crew, that wipes the slate clean and allows you to focus on the new task: paddle to the next checkpoint.
Make no mistake about it though, this race is relentless. There are few, if any, “breaks”. Nearly every section is demanding, either technically or because of the distance you have to cover or because of the time of day. When a section isn't demanding, fatigue and boredom start catching up to you and it's a battle to stay awake and in a productive mode. THIS RACE IS RELENTLESS. You don't say “The World's Toughest Boat Race” with out having some substance to back up the claim. As though they still needed to prove the point, the race ends with a 6 mile bay crossing. That's 6 miles of potentially rough, windy bay AFTER paddling 250-260 miles of river in a boat that's more than likely not very sea worthy. People DNF (did not finish) in the bay. It happened this year. That's just brutal. You'll hear more on this later.
Overall, this was an absolutely amazing experience. I mean that with 100% sincerity. I'm sure it's difficult for most to understand, because you can only imagine the pain and suffering. There's nothing worth while that you will ever do in your life that won't involve some amount of pain and suffering. Great stories don't come from happy, comfortable times, they come from pain, suffering, and overcoming significant personal challenges. If you're as new and as inexperienced as we are, you're going to tear yourself down to the core at some point during this race. What you find there and how you respond is up to you. I was just about fed up with the whole experience on Tuesday. Almost too tired to stay awake or paddle. By the time we paddled into the bay and hit those headwinds, I felt like I might as well just quit. Why not? We had already survived the river. Then, I started responding. I know how to get us across this bay. I know where we need to go and what we need to do to make consistent forward progress. After that, it was just 3 hours of pumping away until we hit the steps. After walking up those steps and falling down (I intended to sit down), I realized how hard I had stayed on it for the last 3 hours and especially the last 1.5 hours. I may not have been satisfied with the overall pace and effort level of the race, but I was sure as hell satisfied with the ending.
103 boats started the race. 78 boats finished. At least 1 boat DNF'd in the bay. We finished in 83 hours, 4th in the Novice Class (out of 23 starters and 17 finishers), and 41st overall. I didn't know we were 4th Novice until I got home and checked the unofficial results. On day 2 I realized that, for a number of reasons, we would be stuck running a slow race. When ever a Novice team would get serious about passing us or staying ahead of us, I'd joke with Matt saying “yea, let's hammer ourselves to battle out that 6th place Novice finish”. I thought we were some where in the middle of the class. Our main goal was just to finish this race and trim as much time off of our finish as possible. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place Novice boats were far ahead of us. They hit a pace on day 1 and stayed with it.
Excuses, excuses, excuses...but our canoe was SLOW. Haha. In all seriousness, it really was. This was not a total surprise. Every one told us this before the race (Erin and Roy, you guys were right) and I'd seen it myself any time we tried to run fast in training. Had money not been an issue, we might have switched to an Alumacraft Voyager, which is pretty much the standard for aluminum canoe racing. We didn't. I have no doubt we would have been significantly faster in this race, although, I still don't think we would have competed for 2nd or 3rd. We were a seriously mis-matched team and aside from my annoying, antsy, impatience, no one else seemed to have a “this is a race” type of urgency. At some point I'll sit down and calculate the amount of wasted check point time, because it certainly is useful information. Needless to say, it was WAY TOO MUCH. 10-15 minutes doesn't seem like much, but over the course of 262 miles and how ever many checkpoints there are, it adds up. It would be realistic to say that we wasted 2-3 hours at checkpoints. Sleeping is not wasted time. Body maintenance is not wasted time. Canoe maintenance is not wasted time. Every thing else is wasted time and results in a less efficient race. This is important to learn from for future races.
I suppose this is a start. At the least, it's a really crappy summary of the experience. Next post, I'll dig into the real story, starting with check in and what we learned about showing up prepared so you don't have to make 50 trips to the store and hang around as one of the last stragglers, still tweaking on your boat. No idea how many posts this whole thing will take. We'll just have to see how good my memory is...
Friday, June 10, 2011
The Last Post...
...until the Safari is over. Considering the low water, heat, and our general lack of experience, I should have plenty to write about after this race.
Memorial weekend was spent in Wimberley with, unfortunately, only one paddle on the San Marcos. The plan was to launch early at City Park (about 0.5 miles from the starting line), paddle up river to the Spring Lake dam, scout the portage, then turn around and run 46 miles down river to Zedler Dam. We've both seen the majority of this stretch before, but we REALLY needed to run the first 16 miles in the canoe to scout and practice portage routes. Our second priority was to run the first 40 miles of the course (to Luling 90) to get an idea of where we'd be in relation to the cut off time at that check point, which is 11 hours.
Time-wise, we did OK. Subtracting our “scouting” time, we made it to Luling 90 in 9:15. On a better day, with some intensity, we could have easily gone faster. This was not a “better” day. I won't go into all of our issues, because there's no reason to at this point, but needless to say, I've had my last run with liquid food. I've used Boost and Spiz in the past with mixed results (usually screwing up my stomach). I really wanted to run the first 40 miles of the race on a liquid diet, to save time and keep us moving. I thought I give it a try on this run...bad idea.
The first few hours of the paddle were not bad. We scouted portages, decided which route we'd prefer to run on race day and which routes we could run if necessary. No major snags while portaging, unless you count the instance when I tweaked my back. While portaging Thompson's Island I got a little too excited about jerking the boat out of the water and pulled a muscle in my lower back. Not good. It didn't bother me too much through the rest of the paddle, but I've been feeling it since then.
The rapids were not as bad as they could have been. Well, none of them were clean runs, mostly due to the low water and running aground before we could ever make it all the way through. We'll be conservative there on race day, since there will likely be a traffic jam and mass destruction all around us. Even the Staples to Luling 90 stretch (which is choked with stumps, shallows, and logs) was not too bad. We stayed out of the sweepers and basically bailed out of the boat any time thing looked sketchy or beyond what we could manage. Of course, some of this was a bit rough, but not terrible.
The holiday weekend crowd didn't make things any easier. I was amazed at their ability to span the entire river, leaving only a 6 inch gap in the channel to try to squeeze or monstrous, aluminum canoe between either A) the oblivious unattended children or B) oblivious beer swilling hippopotamus. Although, I can't say this was with out warning. About 1 mile upstream you start to hear either loud country music or loud tejano music...so you know what's coming. The drunken comments are entertaining the first time, but after hearing “stroke, stroke, stroke” or “paddle faster” or “that looks like work” for the 15th time, it's like “yea, I heard that 6 miles ago you unoriginal bastards”.
A bigger issue was my stomach. After 3 or 4 hours of Boost, my stomach had enough. No puking, but I sure as hell wasn't drinking any more. I started munching on the little bit of jerky that I'd brought..until the bag got soaked while we were emptying water out of the canoe...SHIT! To make things worse, Matt had gone through his two ½ gallons of water and started on the 1 gallon jug, which of course got spilled while emptying the canoe. Hmm, looks like the 40 mile mark is our stopping point today.
Also, I'd some how fallen behind on electrolytes. I guess I hadn't added enough to the Boost to account for the warm weather and tougher pace that I was trying to hold early on. By the time we got to Luling, we both felt like shit. Not very encouraging, considering we'd only paddled 40 miles of a 262 mile race course. I was having some serious doubts after this paddle. As usual though, you get over it fast. I got back to the cabin, ate as much food as I could get a hold of, drank plenty of water and got a little rest. I recovered quickly and realized what our mistakes were. In addition to the hydration and nutrition issues, we need to stay at a more conservative pace early on. We simply don't have the fitness, experience, or skill to fight these low water levels in this boat. Better to slow down a bit and conserve energy for the long haul.
Final Rigging and Preparation 6:00 AM Friday Morning...SHIT!!!
Yes, I forgot to finish this post. We're heading to San Marcos for check in soon and I realize that, damnit, I haven't finished my last post. So, this is getting wrapped up quickly. I was working out in the bay Wed and Thurs and completely forgot about this.
Basically, we're hauling the canoe, all of our gear, and our crew up to San Marcos today. We'll unload, make a list of every single thing in the canoe, then grab an official for inspection. At 4:00 we have the mandatory safety briefing. Not much to expect there “there's about 2 inches of water left on the river and a huge log jam down south”. Yep, we know, this will be brutal. Friday night will be our last bit of luxury, the Best Western in San Marcos. After that, it's 3-4 days in the wild. When I get back, for better or for worse, I'll post up with a recap of the race. I can't guarantee when I'll get to what I can only assume will be an extremely lengthy race report...but I'll get there eventually.
Memorial weekend was spent in Wimberley with, unfortunately, only one paddle on the San Marcos. The plan was to launch early at City Park (about 0.5 miles from the starting line), paddle up river to the Spring Lake dam, scout the portage, then turn around and run 46 miles down river to Zedler Dam. We've both seen the majority of this stretch before, but we REALLY needed to run the first 16 miles in the canoe to scout and practice portage routes. Our second priority was to run the first 40 miles of the course (to Luling 90) to get an idea of where we'd be in relation to the cut off time at that check point, which is 11 hours.
Time-wise, we did OK. Subtracting our “scouting” time, we made it to Luling 90 in 9:15. On a better day, with some intensity, we could have easily gone faster. This was not a “better” day. I won't go into all of our issues, because there's no reason to at this point, but needless to say, I've had my last run with liquid food. I've used Boost and Spiz in the past with mixed results (usually screwing up my stomach). I really wanted to run the first 40 miles of the race on a liquid diet, to save time and keep us moving. I thought I give it a try on this run...bad idea.
The first few hours of the paddle were not bad. We scouted portages, decided which route we'd prefer to run on race day and which routes we could run if necessary. No major snags while portaging, unless you count the instance when I tweaked my back. While portaging Thompson's Island I got a little too excited about jerking the boat out of the water and pulled a muscle in my lower back. Not good. It didn't bother me too much through the rest of the paddle, but I've been feeling it since then.
The rapids were not as bad as they could have been. Well, none of them were clean runs, mostly due to the low water and running aground before we could ever make it all the way through. We'll be conservative there on race day, since there will likely be a traffic jam and mass destruction all around us. Even the Staples to Luling 90 stretch (which is choked with stumps, shallows, and logs) was not too bad. We stayed out of the sweepers and basically bailed out of the boat any time thing looked sketchy or beyond what we could manage. Of course, some of this was a bit rough, but not terrible.
The holiday weekend crowd didn't make things any easier. I was amazed at their ability to span the entire river, leaving only a 6 inch gap in the channel to try to squeeze or monstrous, aluminum canoe between either A) the oblivious unattended children or B) oblivious beer swilling hippopotamus. Although, I can't say this was with out warning. About 1 mile upstream you start to hear either loud country music or loud tejano music...so you know what's coming. The drunken comments are entertaining the first time, but after hearing “stroke, stroke, stroke” or “paddle faster” or “that looks like work” for the 15th time, it's like “yea, I heard that 6 miles ago you unoriginal bastards”.
A bigger issue was my stomach. After 3 or 4 hours of Boost, my stomach had enough. No puking, but I sure as hell wasn't drinking any more. I started munching on the little bit of jerky that I'd brought..until the bag got soaked while we were emptying water out of the canoe...SHIT! To make things worse, Matt had gone through his two ½ gallons of water and started on the 1 gallon jug, which of course got spilled while emptying the canoe. Hmm, looks like the 40 mile mark is our stopping point today.
Also, I'd some how fallen behind on electrolytes. I guess I hadn't added enough to the Boost to account for the warm weather and tougher pace that I was trying to hold early on. By the time we got to Luling, we both felt like shit. Not very encouraging, considering we'd only paddled 40 miles of a 262 mile race course. I was having some serious doubts after this paddle. As usual though, you get over it fast. I got back to the cabin, ate as much food as I could get a hold of, drank plenty of water and got a little rest. I recovered quickly and realized what our mistakes were. In addition to the hydration and nutrition issues, we need to stay at a more conservative pace early on. We simply don't have the fitness, experience, or skill to fight these low water levels in this boat. Better to slow down a bit and conserve energy for the long haul.
Yes, I forgot to finish this post. We're heading to San Marcos for check in soon and I realize that, damnit, I haven't finished my last post. So, this is getting wrapped up quickly. I was working out in the bay Wed and Thurs and completely forgot about this.
Basically, we're hauling the canoe, all of our gear, and our crew up to San Marcos today. We'll unload, make a list of every single thing in the canoe, then grab an official for inspection. At 4:00 we have the mandatory safety briefing. Not much to expect there “there's about 2 inches of water left on the river and a huge log jam down south”. Yep, we know, this will be brutal. Friday night will be our last bit of luxury, the Best Western in San Marcos. After that, it's 3-4 days in the wild. When I get back, for better or for worse, I'll post up with a recap of the race. I can't guarantee when I'll get to what I can only assume will be an extremely lengthy race report...but I'll get there eventually.
Friday, May 27, 2011
55 Miles On The Brazos River
Our third weekend out from race day needed to be big. We had a couple of decent long runs so far in May, 7-8 hour paddles at a moderate pace, enough to keep me sore for a day or two. Now, we needed to squeeze in another good weekend before our Memorial weekend trip to Wimberley and the San Marcos River. Problem was, I'd just about had my fill of the local bayous. They're scenic enough and convenient, but the lack of current and that same slog of a pace gets old. Where to paddle then?
We already had some training paddles on the Brazos River, launching at highway 59, so this was my first idea. I didn't want to do the usual up river and back run, because even though it's more entertaining and a better work out than doing the same on a bayou, it's still not all that thrilling. This left only one option, down river on the Brazos. I quick scan on Google Earth shows that south of 59, the Brazos is surprisingly remote. Not many options for a take out. The “launch” at Brazos Bend State Park is a nice little sandy beach...with a huge, steep bank to climb (they've even installed a rope) and a quarter mile portage. Also, it's only 24 miles downstream. The next spot is a bridge crossing on FM 1462. Not bad, but only 30 miles in. After this, there was absolutely nothing. I'd crossed the river recently on my way south and noticed a nice spot along FM 2004. This was way too far. Not even sure what the mileage is on that one. The best option seemed to be highway 35. There was obviously no boat ramp there and I couldn't tell how tall the banks were, but it looked accessible. The mileage plotted out around 53.6, so I just assumed 55, knowing how this usually works.
Ok then, lets do this. I had two plans in mind here: launch late Friday night (probably midnight) and paddle through to about noon, or launch early Saturday morning and paddle through the day. As it turned out, Matt's son had a school function Friday evening and Saturday evening. Midnight it is. Our team captain, Ed the Italian Stallion Cafarella, would drop us off at the 59 launch and Matt's wife would scoop us up at 35, hopefully just 12 hours later.
Thursday, we hauled the canoe over to my dads place to catch up on some much needed rigging. We glued in big blocks of closed cell foam and hacked out (literally) holes to hold our new ½ gallon and 1 gallon drinking jugs, bike bottles, and pill bottles. We also installed some mesh bags to hold food packets for quick access and tied a 20 foot line on the stern. There's still a bit more to do, but the tank is slowly starting to look race ready.
Friday wasn't ideal for either of us. Matt didn't get much sleep Thursday night, then went to work, then picked the canoe up and went to his son's school function, then came home to prep for the paddle. I was up early and spent my work day helping to clean our warehouse. We've been putting that off for a long time and the place was a disaster zone. The cumulative crap and equipment from one research project after another was piled up and crammed in there and I'm pretty sure we were violating at least a few school fire codes. Of course, after our triumphant cleaning of the warehouse, we had to head straight over to the new Brickhouse Tavern on the island for some pints. Again, not the ideal prep day for a long paddle, though the 20 oz pints of Elissa on cask were worth it. By the time we got to the launch it was midnight and we both felt like sleeping. In other words, perfect Safari training.
I'd be lying if I said we weren't concerned about what we might run into at the launch site. It's a nice spot, but let's be real: it's public river access, under a bridge, at midnight, on Friday. This sounded like the most potentially dangerous part of the paddle. Fortunately, and to our surprise, the place was empty. We didn't waste much time loading the canoe and dragging it down that long, sandy bank. We knew how many miles were ahead of us and we were ready to get to it. Not to mention, there's just some thing different about paddling at night. More of an adventure, I guess.
As far behind as we were with rigging, our light set up was one item that didn't make the cut. We had Matt's light rig from the CR100, which is basically a couple of water proof Pelican flashlights and a mount. These lights are reasonably bright...assuming of course, that the batteries are fresh...they weren't. Also, we forgot to pick up new batteries on the way out. Lucky for us, light pollution from cities is ridiculous. You don't realize this until you're out some where at midnight that should be pitch black, but instead, it's so bright you don't even need those headlights.
Paddling at night is nice. No heat, no noise, no 30 mph coastal winds, just a nice, cool breeze. Stretches of river that might bore the hell out of you in the daylight are much more interesting and mysterious at night, especially with all of the wildlife. There's always gar out there, just waiting for you to zone out before they explode out of the water, right next to your paddle. Alligators, plenty of alligators on the lower Brazos, apparently. Matt had his head lamp on and was spotting them all night. I rarely noticed them. Also, what I can only assume were deer and hogs. Any time we paddled along a steep, wooded bank we heard them scrambling through the brush.
We cruised along pretty easily for the first three hours, enjoying the cool night and the easy pace. Some time after 3:00 am though, we were both ready to nod off. I knew I was dropping off fast, because I was starting to get a little jumpy every time I heard some thing. A gar exploded next to the canoe and I popped out of my seat. Thought I was use to those by now, haha. You're not physically tired after three hours of easy paddling, but mentally, you know you should be sleeping. I think Matt was the first to admit how tired he was, I agreed. We decided to hold off until 4:00 am, then mix up a couple of the Starbucks Instant Iced Coffees we brought. Matt was skeptical when we bought them. I wasn't too sure about it, but was interested to find some sort of coffee substitute for the race. I'm not a fan of instant coffee or iced coffee, but at 4:00 am on the river, these things are as good as it gets. Strong, tasty, and plenty of caffeine.
What a difference. We went from nap time to wide awake and having a blast. The last couple of hours before dawn peeled off quickly. We developed a better system for navigating through the stump field out there. The Brazos is fairly wide, but it's also really shallow right now. To stay in the current you usually have to hug the bank, where the deeper channel is. This is also where all of the trees and stumps accumulate. When ever we got near some thing, Matt would flip on his head lamp and call out the directions. We had no problems...well, except for that mine field of jagged metal. Matt flipped on his light and called for us to go right, all the way around. I wanted to steer through the middle, just for the hell of it. It wasn't until we closed in that we noticed that this wasn't wood. We made it through alright, but we ran over a submerged piece of metal. Once again, lucky we're in an aluminum tank. I expected some kind of damage, but no problem.
We passed Brazos Bend State Park right around dawn. This was easy to spot because of the wide, sand bar beach on the inside of the turn and the steep cliff on the outside. Just past this, the river straightens out and is surprisingly beautiful, very lush and very green. Plus, we were still pumped up on caffeine and still cruising in a bit of current, so we were having a good time. We each ate one of our Denti Moore's, paddled past FM1462, noticed the odd house or alligator here and there, and commented on how nice the river was. Seriously, the remoteness of this stretch must be the only reason more paddlers don't run here.
Still mostly cruising, we nailed the 40 mile mark under 9 hours. It was about this time that the paddle started shifting from “fun” to “grind”. Coffee buzz gone, day getting hotter, current gone, freakin headwind picking up, scenery gradually getting less interesting as we move south towards the coast, and 15 miles still to go. Time to put the long sleeve compression top and full length safari cap back on and get ready to grind. And grind it was. Aluminum canoes (well, ours at least) has no glide in flat water and hates headwinds. Earlier in paddle, one of us could keep the boat in the current and moving at a reasonable pace. Now, when one of us stopped quickly to eat, the canoe slowed noticeably. Our average mph dropped and dropped. We started calculating the time left. Not going to make it by noon, more likely 1:00 PM. This was also when I said, more than once, that I was glad there were no stretches on the race course this long. It doesn't sound like much, but running through a check point is enough to break up the monotony and give you at least a little bit of a charge.
I really don't remember much from this last stretch. At the least, we learned some thing about efficiency and that we need to be faster on our hourly food/bio breaks. This is a loooong race and efficiency is hugely important. If you waste 5 minutes every hour for 70-80 hours, that adds up to a significant difference. I don't think I bitched too much from boredom, but I probably did. Matt has less of an issue than me on these long, grindy stretches. That will be important on day 2 and 3 of the race.
As we got closer to the take out a potential problem came up. What is the take out going to look like? We know there's a bridge, with access, but no boat ramp. Looking around us, we noticed relatively steep banks on both sides, hmm...We would manage the boat up what ever bank was there, but it's not like our legs were fresh at this point. We stood up exactly once during the entire paddle. Near the beginning, we ran shallow and had to hop out to drag back into the channel. Since then, we stayed seated in the canoe. Fortunately, Matt got ahold of his wife, who was at the take out,which was supposedly not bad. Well, that's one less thing to worry about.
Now, we just had to get there. Even though I said from the start that it would probably be 55 miles, we kept hoping that the distance would come out short. It didn't. We paddled around one turn after another after another, always expecting to see the bridge. I bitched a little more about being bored. Finally, there was the damn bridge. Exactly 55 miles and 13 hours. Standing up was tough. Dragging the canoe up the bank (which was not bad at all) was tough. The paddle over all, not so bad.
Even though the end sucked, there were several positives from this paddle. We know that an easy pace is, well, easy. Neither of us felt drained or sore. Even the next day, we were both slightly stiff, but did not feel like we logged 55 miles. All of those shorter, faster paddles paid off. Also, we know our food/hydration rigging is reasonably efficient. We need to improve a little, but not bad. We know now that, with coffee, we can paddle through the night, past dawn. There's a question of whether we can do this in the race, but we do know that it's possible now. Ideally, we'd like to paddle 40 hours of the race before stopping to sleep. No guarantee there though. Staying in the canoe for many hours is not so bad. We'll need a stretch here and there, but shouldn't need to get out of the boat at every check point. Finally, we did well at night. It's cooler at night and more entertaining. We'll have to make use of this, when possible.
This weekend, we'll be out in Wimberley and we'll make a couple of runs on the San Marcos. Saturday will be our last long run of training, City Park to Zedler Dam, the first 46 miles of the race course. We'll get to scout the majority of the dam portages and we'll get to run through some of the more technical sections of river, hopefully displaying our superior steering abilities..haha. Also, we'll run all the way through the tightest cut off on the course, Luling 90 at mile 40. Our split times from this run should give us a better idea of how to pace ourselves on race day. Stay tuned...
We already had some training paddles on the Brazos River, launching at highway 59, so this was my first idea. I didn't want to do the usual up river and back run, because even though it's more entertaining and a better work out than doing the same on a bayou, it's still not all that thrilling. This left only one option, down river on the Brazos. I quick scan on Google Earth shows that south of 59, the Brazos is surprisingly remote. Not many options for a take out. The “launch” at Brazos Bend State Park is a nice little sandy beach...with a huge, steep bank to climb (they've even installed a rope) and a quarter mile portage. Also, it's only 24 miles downstream. The next spot is a bridge crossing on FM 1462. Not bad, but only 30 miles in. After this, there was absolutely nothing. I'd crossed the river recently on my way south and noticed a nice spot along FM 2004. This was way too far. Not even sure what the mileage is on that one. The best option seemed to be highway 35. There was obviously no boat ramp there and I couldn't tell how tall the banks were, but it looked accessible. The mileage plotted out around 53.6, so I just assumed 55, knowing how this usually works.
Ok then, lets do this. I had two plans in mind here: launch late Friday night (probably midnight) and paddle through to about noon, or launch early Saturday morning and paddle through the day. As it turned out, Matt's son had a school function Friday evening and Saturday evening. Midnight it is. Our team captain, Ed the Italian Stallion Cafarella, would drop us off at the 59 launch and Matt's wife would scoop us up at 35, hopefully just 12 hours later.
Thursday, we hauled the canoe over to my dads place to catch up on some much needed rigging. We glued in big blocks of closed cell foam and hacked out (literally) holes to hold our new ½ gallon and 1 gallon drinking jugs, bike bottles, and pill bottles. We also installed some mesh bags to hold food packets for quick access and tied a 20 foot line on the stern. There's still a bit more to do, but the tank is slowly starting to look race ready.
Friday wasn't ideal for either of us. Matt didn't get much sleep Thursday night, then went to work, then picked the canoe up and went to his son's school function, then came home to prep for the paddle. I was up early and spent my work day helping to clean our warehouse. We've been putting that off for a long time and the place was a disaster zone. The cumulative crap and equipment from one research project after another was piled up and crammed in there and I'm pretty sure we were violating at least a few school fire codes. Of course, after our triumphant cleaning of the warehouse, we had to head straight over to the new Brickhouse Tavern on the island for some pints. Again, not the ideal prep day for a long paddle, though the 20 oz pints of Elissa on cask were worth it. By the time we got to the launch it was midnight and we both felt like sleeping. In other words, perfect Safari training.
I'd be lying if I said we weren't concerned about what we might run into at the launch site. It's a nice spot, but let's be real: it's public river access, under a bridge, at midnight, on Friday. This sounded like the most potentially dangerous part of the paddle. Fortunately, and to our surprise, the place was empty. We didn't waste much time loading the canoe and dragging it down that long, sandy bank. We knew how many miles were ahead of us and we were ready to get to it. Not to mention, there's just some thing different about paddling at night. More of an adventure, I guess.
As far behind as we were with rigging, our light set up was one item that didn't make the cut. We had Matt's light rig from the CR100, which is basically a couple of water proof Pelican flashlights and a mount. These lights are reasonably bright...assuming of course, that the batteries are fresh...they weren't. Also, we forgot to pick up new batteries on the way out. Lucky for us, light pollution from cities is ridiculous. You don't realize this until you're out some where at midnight that should be pitch black, but instead, it's so bright you don't even need those headlights.
Paddling at night is nice. No heat, no noise, no 30 mph coastal winds, just a nice, cool breeze. Stretches of river that might bore the hell out of you in the daylight are much more interesting and mysterious at night, especially with all of the wildlife. There's always gar out there, just waiting for you to zone out before they explode out of the water, right next to your paddle. Alligators, plenty of alligators on the lower Brazos, apparently. Matt had his head lamp on and was spotting them all night. I rarely noticed them. Also, what I can only assume were deer and hogs. Any time we paddled along a steep, wooded bank we heard them scrambling through the brush.
We cruised along pretty easily for the first three hours, enjoying the cool night and the easy pace. Some time after 3:00 am though, we were both ready to nod off. I knew I was dropping off fast, because I was starting to get a little jumpy every time I heard some thing. A gar exploded next to the canoe and I popped out of my seat. Thought I was use to those by now, haha. You're not physically tired after three hours of easy paddling, but mentally, you know you should be sleeping. I think Matt was the first to admit how tired he was, I agreed. We decided to hold off until 4:00 am, then mix up a couple of the Starbucks Instant Iced Coffees we brought. Matt was skeptical when we bought them. I wasn't too sure about it, but was interested to find some sort of coffee substitute for the race. I'm not a fan of instant coffee or iced coffee, but at 4:00 am on the river, these things are as good as it gets. Strong, tasty, and plenty of caffeine.
What a difference. We went from nap time to wide awake and having a blast. The last couple of hours before dawn peeled off quickly. We developed a better system for navigating through the stump field out there. The Brazos is fairly wide, but it's also really shallow right now. To stay in the current you usually have to hug the bank, where the deeper channel is. This is also where all of the trees and stumps accumulate. When ever we got near some thing, Matt would flip on his head lamp and call out the directions. We had no problems...well, except for that mine field of jagged metal. Matt flipped on his light and called for us to go right, all the way around. I wanted to steer through the middle, just for the hell of it. It wasn't until we closed in that we noticed that this wasn't wood. We made it through alright, but we ran over a submerged piece of metal. Once again, lucky we're in an aluminum tank. I expected some kind of damage, but no problem.
We passed Brazos Bend State Park right around dawn. This was easy to spot because of the wide, sand bar beach on the inside of the turn and the steep cliff on the outside. Just past this, the river straightens out and is surprisingly beautiful, very lush and very green. Plus, we were still pumped up on caffeine and still cruising in a bit of current, so we were having a good time. We each ate one of our Denti Moore's, paddled past FM1462, noticed the odd house or alligator here and there, and commented on how nice the river was. Seriously, the remoteness of this stretch must be the only reason more paddlers don't run here.
Still mostly cruising, we nailed the 40 mile mark under 9 hours. It was about this time that the paddle started shifting from “fun” to “grind”. Coffee buzz gone, day getting hotter, current gone, freakin headwind picking up, scenery gradually getting less interesting as we move south towards the coast, and 15 miles still to go. Time to put the long sleeve compression top and full length safari cap back on and get ready to grind. And grind it was. Aluminum canoes (well, ours at least) has no glide in flat water and hates headwinds. Earlier in paddle, one of us could keep the boat in the current and moving at a reasonable pace. Now, when one of us stopped quickly to eat, the canoe slowed noticeably. Our average mph dropped and dropped. We started calculating the time left. Not going to make it by noon, more likely 1:00 PM. This was also when I said, more than once, that I was glad there were no stretches on the race course this long. It doesn't sound like much, but running through a check point is enough to break up the monotony and give you at least a little bit of a charge.
I really don't remember much from this last stretch. At the least, we learned some thing about efficiency and that we need to be faster on our hourly food/bio breaks. This is a loooong race and efficiency is hugely important. If you waste 5 minutes every hour for 70-80 hours, that adds up to a significant difference. I don't think I bitched too much from boredom, but I probably did. Matt has less of an issue than me on these long, grindy stretches. That will be important on day 2 and 3 of the race.
As we got closer to the take out a potential problem came up. What is the take out going to look like? We know there's a bridge, with access, but no boat ramp. Looking around us, we noticed relatively steep banks on both sides, hmm...We would manage the boat up what ever bank was there, but it's not like our legs were fresh at this point. We stood up exactly once during the entire paddle. Near the beginning, we ran shallow and had to hop out to drag back into the channel. Since then, we stayed seated in the canoe. Fortunately, Matt got ahold of his wife, who was at the take out,which was supposedly not bad. Well, that's one less thing to worry about.
Now, we just had to get there. Even though I said from the start that it would probably be 55 miles, we kept hoping that the distance would come out short. It didn't. We paddled around one turn after another after another, always expecting to see the bridge. I bitched a little more about being bored. Finally, there was the damn bridge. Exactly 55 miles and 13 hours. Standing up was tough. Dragging the canoe up the bank (which was not bad at all) was tough. The paddle over all, not so bad.
Even though the end sucked, there were several positives from this paddle. We know that an easy pace is, well, easy. Neither of us felt drained or sore. Even the next day, we were both slightly stiff, but did not feel like we logged 55 miles. All of those shorter, faster paddles paid off. Also, we know our food/hydration rigging is reasonably efficient. We need to improve a little, but not bad. We know now that, with coffee, we can paddle through the night, past dawn. There's a question of whether we can do this in the race, but we do know that it's possible now. Ideally, we'd like to paddle 40 hours of the race before stopping to sleep. No guarantee there though. Staying in the canoe for many hours is not so bad. We'll need a stretch here and there, but shouldn't need to get out of the boat at every check point. Finally, we did well at night. It's cooler at night and more entertaining. We'll have to make use of this, when possible.
This weekend, we'll be out in Wimberley and we'll make a couple of runs on the San Marcos. Saturday will be our last long run of training, City Park to Zedler Dam, the first 46 miles of the race course. We'll get to scout the majority of the dam portages and we'll get to run through some of the more technical sections of river, hopefully displaying our superior steering abilities..haha. Also, we'll run all the way through the tightest cut off on the course, Luling 90 at mile 40. Our split times from this run should give us a better idea of how to pace ourselves on race day. Stay tuned...
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