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.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
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.
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