Breathe. Sing. Paddle. The 2007 Missouri River 340
Late in the summer of 2006, when the horn sounded for the inaugural Missouri River 340, the longest nonstop canoe and kayak race in the world, 20 intrepid paddlers, including myself, found us in the sweltering August heat trying to get from Kansas City to St. Charles in less than 100 hours. Five hundred feet downstream from the start, at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers, people began to realize the folly. The headline, DEATH ON THE BIG RIVER, must have flashed in front of the fellow in the 9-foot tupperware play boat as he was the first to abandon hope and go ashore. If he shouted “Bon Voyage” as he departed, it was never heard, and had it been heard, it would have likely been mistaken for words of encouragement instead of any portent of blisters, disappointment, and disaster. In my 16.5 foot plastic touring canoe, stocked with enough provisions to get me and Trex, a river dog and frequent pain-in-the ass, to Cairo, Illinois there was no time to think about the consequences of paying for the privilege of being thrown in a 340-mile long eddy during a heat wave. In spite of our inexperience, we remained stubborn, prayed mercy, and paddled at the rear. Ninety-seven hours and 269 miles later, still alive, but queasy from a 4-day binge of power bars, Gatorade, and humility, we exited river right. A month later I returned to the river with the same gear, the same dog, and much of the same attitude to paddle the remaining leg of the race course. It took another fifteen hours to get from Herman to what had been the finish line at Frontier Park. Add it all up and it’s half-a-day longer than the allotted time limit. Although the combined efforts restored some faith in my abilities and strengthened my resolve to race again, they did not result in a medal. Things would have to change if I was going to successfully complete the race in 2007.
And things did. Mainly, I had help this year. Completing the MR340 in 77 hours and 51 minutes was a group effort. There’s a lot in life that we can go at alone, but it really is a lot more productive if we work together to achieve goals. My support crew was comprised of field chief, Andrea Zanatta, an Americorp Assistant for the Blue River Watershed Association (BRWA), Kate Delehunt, BRWA education specialist and Missouri explorer, camper, and noise-maker, and BRWA Executive Director, Ginny Moore. From start to finish they met me at checkpoints, replenished my supplies, and renewed my spirit. They may have gotten a little more sleep than I did, but not by much. All of my energies were directed toward one goal - paddling the boat down river and completing the race within the time limit. My tent was set up and broken down for me each night. Unlike last year, this time I made no trips into town to find a restaurant. Or Gatorade. No dog walks necessary. Just get in the boat and paddle. My hats are off to those who have successfully completed this race without a support crew. It can be done, because people have done it each year, but it’s a lot more work. A lot more.
In 2007, there was a plan, more like a strategy and less like a whim, which was last year’s plan. It was better executed this year and the weather, with just a couple of exceptions, was mostly in the favor of racers. Trex, the inimitable Rare West Tibetan Mountain Dog, sat out this year’s race. There was a kayak instead of a canoe and a training regime. And there was help.
The kayak, a Current Designs Solstice GT, was purchased in February of this year. Not the best boat in the shop, but a fine, gently used, and affordable one. It’s a glass boat, meaning fiberglass, which makes it less brittle than a carbon fiber or Kevlar boat, but also heavier, bulkier, and slower. It’s really an expedition kayak and since I stand to spend more time on trips than in races I wanted something that could suit me for many years to come. Although the winners use bonafide racing boats of various styles, the majority of entrants in the MR340 race in some form of expedition canoes or kayaks.
I’d never actually been in a kayak until I sat in a number of them to try them on at the store. After I found one that fit, and one that I could afford, I had exactly 20 weeks to learn how to use it and made a vow to paddle every week before the start of the race.
The logistics of kayaking - the transport, staging, paddling, and breakdown involved each time - generally demanded at least a half day of my time for any given workout and time for me, like most of us, is a precious commodity. One a week, for 20 weeks, I drove to a different spot on the river and trained, generally paddling first upstream for 2-3 hours and then back again to the car. This was mostly done on the Kansas River, in part because it’s close, and also because we had a wet spring in the Midwest, with a couple of rounds of flooding and for much of the spring, the river levels on the Kansas River were approximately what they were during last year’s race on the Missouri.
When you paddle upriver, you have to hug the bank to stay out of the main current, which means that you tend to see more birds and wildlife and it also means that you can’t stop paddling. It’s easy to get lazy when going downstream, you can just float for awhile, but going upstream you really have no choice but to constantly paddle. A two-hour paddling workout is a pretty hefty effort for me. Upstream was a strength workout, downstream was a speed workout. A few times I did start out by going downstream and usually lived to regret it. Once, I escorted a visiting canoeist (he was going from KC to the Arch) out of town and got about 7 miles downstream before turning around only to be smacked around by a strong headwind, a rising river stage, and 3 hours of regret.
Others may have done 3-a-weeks in their boats, but for me, the rest of my workouts had to be comprised of walking, cycling, and calisthenics. If I were a better, younger, athlete, like Katie Pfefferkorn or Joe “the-dark-horse” Mann, then such a short training period might pay greater dividends. Katie finished 2nd this year in the women’s solo division; beaten only by Erin “One Woman, Focused and Driven” Magee, who’s made a career out of endurance paddling races. Joe, who bought his kayak about the same time I purchased mine, finished 7th in the men’s solo division. They want this race more than I do, they are better athletes, and most importantly they train more and with greater intensity and purpose. It’s not that I don’t also dream of the podium, everyone has their Walter Mitty moments, but my priority was to finish the race and to neither die nor do permanent damage to my body in the process.
If you don’t listen to your body and if you get careless on the river you can do permanent damage to yourself in this race. The race logo is skull and crossbones so there are ample opportunities to get hurt. First there’s the muscle, ligament, and tendon damage that can be induced by repeated paddling. West Hansen, who’s been first to cross the finish line both years, says he always loses several fingernails after a race like this. How? He pulls so hard on the paddle, that he cuts the circulation off in his fingers and he eventually loses a nail. Perhaps I’m soft, or don’t pull nearly as hard on the paddle, because, except for the 5 or 6 hours of slight arm tingling and shoulder numbness encountered each day, I only suffered a few blisters on my palm. Chuck McHenry, who tried to take a short-cut through a chute (there are only 2 possible short-cuts during the race; he took one and got burned), got stuck behind a log jam, and had to portage over rip-rap in the middle of the night. He subsequently fell and broke a rib. It slowed him, but did not stop him from finishing 4th in the men’s solo. You really have to dig hard to finish this race and if you want to place, then you have to do a lot more than that. You have to train like hell, you have to be focused and driven, and you have to take some risks. It doesn’t hurt to be a little nutty, but you can’t be reckless unless you have a death wish. If you continue to race during a heavy fog, it’s possible to get run over by a barge. The only people to have successfully done this during the 2007 race were from California. Their kayak ended up in pieces but they were snagged by deck hands, pulled to safety, and into MR340 lore.
Heat exhaustion or heat stroke might be the most likely way to hurt your self in this race. One of the best pieces of advice encountered before the race was how much fluid to ingest during endurance races. Given my size and the expected temperatures, I would need to take in anywhere from 750 to 1,000 milliliters per hour. But how many hours would it take me to complete the race? That part I wasn’t sure about since in 2006 I didn’t finish.
Three weeks before the MR340, I raced in the Gritty Fitty, a 50-mile race on the Kansas River to test myself and to get some practice using a support crew. My goal in the Gritty Fitty was to paddle non-stop for 10 straight hours at 5 miles an hour, the assumption being that this was the pace needed to successfully complete the MR340 - not win (they go much faster), just finish. Divide 340 miles by 5 miles per hour and the result is 68 hours of BOAT TIME. This means that if you want to finish the race within the allotted time frame, you must spend almost 3 full days in a boat paddling like crazy.
It actually took me 10 and half hours, albeit all of it in a driving rain and a slight headwind, to make the 50 miles from Lawrence to Kansas City. That works out to 4.9 miles an hour and if you’re generous and round up you can get to 5 mph. But could I do that over and over again? The MR340, is essentially the equivalent of seven 50-mile back-to-back races with only a few hours of recovery time between each one. It was still iffy, but at least now it seemed within the realm of possibility. Problem. If it took me two days to recover from the 10 hours of the Gritty Fitty, then how could I expect to paddle, not float - but paddle - for 68 hours with almost no sleep? The more I looked at the figures the more nervous it made me. On a positive note, the transitions with the support crew went like clock work during the Gritty Fitty, in part, because Andrea Z. is one of the most patient and positive people on the planet. At each pre-arranged stopping point, she was waiting in the rain, and provided much needed words of encouragement. “You’re doing great! Almost there. You’re going to make it. Great job!” This really helped.
Once I had an idea, realistic or not, of my boat time, then I could estimate the amount of fluids needed. Because the race is held in the hottest part of the Missouri summer and to err on the side of safety, I assumed that I might need to drink as much as a liter per hour. Sixty-eight hours of paddling would mean 68 liters of fluids, almost 20 gallons. Wow! And water is heavy. Five gallons of water weighs 42 pounds, more than many racing canoes, and every ounce of energy needs to be used to utmost efficiency. This is where a support crew is really needed, to reduce the amount of provisions and weight that you need to carry.
My wilderness experience tells me to prepare for the worst which is why for back-up, I stowed 2 dry bags in the hatches. One bag contained enough supplies and water to keep me moving should I miss my field crew at a checkpoint. The other bag contained emergency provisions: spare flashlights, beacon, space blanket, jacket, shirt, shorts, plus a small hank of rope and trash bag for making a storm shelter. For water, I hung a 3.5-liter camelback behind the seat that I could access easily, and every 30 miles or so my support crew replaced the camelback with another full one, and replenished the feed bag - a small bag that contained a combination of sandwiches or power bars, some home-made granola and protein goo, and at least two bottles of electrolyte drinks. The bag was small enough to stow in the cockpit, in front of my feet when not in use, and secured with a rope. When I needed supplies, I just pulled the rope to retrieve the bag. The protein goo, a concoction of peanut butter, nutella, and maple syrup didn’t really work. The water content of the maple syrup didn’t mix well with the other ingredients and I ended up with a paste, more the consistency of dry caulk than astronaut food. It had to be packed into small plastic squeeze bottles (an item readily available now due to recent Transportation Security Administration dictates) and in order to extricate the paste from the tube, it needed to be left in the sun for an hour or so to soften and even with that, it was hard to squeeze the goo from the tube. Because of this, of the 4 tubes of protein goo I prepared, only about one-half of one tube was consumed during the race. My granola also wasn’t that great since I just pretty much threw whatever I could find in the kitchen, including salted peanuts and sunflower nuts, into the mix. To eat it, you really had to stop paddling, and unless you washed your hands in the river, it left nut-meat oil on the paddle shaft, which was a no-no. Mostly I ate the granola at night when I was more likely to loaf down river. To offset the horrible taste of the powdered, protein-enhanced, electrolyte drinks I consumed to stave off cramps, I prepared them with a combination of water and a mixture of blueberry, cranberry, grape, and apple juices. The resultant bluish-gray liquid, dubbed the ‘beverage designed to keep you from dying’, looked like it just might kill you but was drinkable and did keep my muscles from cramping.
On race day 2007, just before 8 am, 72 canoes and kayaks - likely more than ever in recorded history - assembled in the waters
just off Kaw Point. It’s sunny, but almost 10 degrees below normal for this time of year. Regardless of the beautiful summer
morning start, everyone knows that by the late afternoon, it will be hot. The national anthem is sung, the countdown begins,
10, 9, 8, 7,...., a black-powder rifle is shouldered, and then blam, with a puff of smoke, the gunners go right to the front
and begin to hammer home their points. It’s like they’re saying, ok, here’s what I got; let’s see how long you can keep up.
It is a race after all.
Slowly they disappear into the morning haze. I wasn’t sure who they were, but I knew that at least 10 of the 74 boats were very serious about this race. Some serious enough to not sleep again until they’d crossed the finish line. There are people who pee in their boats to save time, but no one has yet (at least to my knowledge) begun to carry a porta-potty. They’d have to at least pull over and take a crap between Kansas City and St. Charles.
In a long race like this, it takes some folks a few miles to find their grove. After 3 or 4 miles some boats began to pass me. I remember saying hi to Katie Pfefferkorn somewhere near the start, but soon after that she just took off down river. The next time I saw her, I was at Herman, mile-marker 270, and she was already done with the race and back at Herman relaxing with friends. For the first hour I just kind of kept my head down, tried to relax, and stay focused on my race mantra. Breathe. Sing. And paddle.
Breathe. My friend Deb tells me this when I’m anxious. Just breathe. It’s a Kundalini yoga technique. And a life technique. Just breathe. Breathe and you live. Don’t breathe and you die. So just go ahead and breathe in that morning air. That’s it. Salute the sun. And breathe. Try it now. Deep breath. Exhale. Another deep breath. Exhale slowly. And again. Ah, yes. See how easy? You feel better already. So don’t forget. Breathe.
Sing. When there is no music in my life I know that I’m in trouble. Songs tell you that life is more than just a breath a fresh air. They are what you live for, what you breathe for, what you long for. Songs can be anything. If you can see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, or feel it, then you can sing it. Gimme an A. Now a B. Ok, all together now. Sing.
Paddle. This one came from my daughter Sarah. If you want to get through life, just paddle. That’s how you get down river, how you get from one point in your life to the next. Paddle. Don’t whine, don’t stop, just paddle. Don’t have to paddle fast, you just have to keep paddling. If you stop paddling, then you’re either standing still, or you’re moving backwards. So put that blade in the water and pull.
Breathe, sing, and paddle. Over and over. Breathe, sing, and paddle. That’s all I needed to do to make it to St. Charles.
A little more than an hour into the race, just on the outskirts of Kansas City, there was an astonishing sight. As I approached the Hwy 291 bridge, I saw people on the banks of the river. At first I thought they were just out fishing, but as I rounded the bend I could see that the crowd stretched from above the bridge to the lower end of the park, a line of over a mile of race spectators. Amazing. Except for the rare river festival or fireworks display, there was never this many folks down on the river.
At Fort Osage, 30 miles into the race, I stopped for 5 minutes to meet Andrea, get a sandwich, and check on the water situation. I looked out on the river and there was a line of boats coming behind me and very soon contestants began to move past me. Several, including Dawn “Sandy Bottom” Stewart and her son Alan, I would never see again until after the race. It made me eager to get back on the river since it was, after all, a race. I learned from the Gritty Fitty that if you drink too much in a rain storm you’ll have to stop and pee frequently and if you stop 3 times to pee during a race, someone you want to beat will finish 5 minutes ahead of you. Remember? Paddle. It’s one of the keys.
It was at Fort Osage last year where I sealed my last place finish by napping under a shade tree for 4 hours. After that slumber, I paddled 235 miles without ever seeing another contestant. Not this year, not this time. I quickly got back on the river and made the first mandatory checkpoint, Lexington, with time to spare.
Like last year, after Lexington, the towns and ramps began to blur. Since I’d traveled portions of the river a number of times, I opted for simple maps and my memory to guide me, no GPS that required batteries. I did prepare a detailed spreadsheet that my support crew carried and that we frequently consulted. Listed on sheet were distances between each check point, cumulative distance traveled, distance to finish, cut-off times, and estimates of how long it would take me to get from one point to the next with concessions for slower speeds at night. It turned out to be a very good guide to follow, especially as I began to beat my expected arrival times. The knowledge that I was moving faster than planned really spurned me on and helped me to focus on minimizing my break, rest, and checkpoint times. Additionally, and as I began to tire and my brain functions got fuzzier and fuzzier it was a needed dose of reality. In the first 24 hours of the race I paddled over a hundred miles and was attempting to do a similar amount the second day - but with less than 2 hours of sleep. What’s the next checkpoint and how far? When will I be there? I had no idea. Have I passed Glasgow? Or is it the next stop? The sheet says the next stop is Booneville and it should take you 4 hours to get there, so let’s say 4 hours plus or minus 30 minutes. The time estimates turned out to be a pretty good guide and hopefully it gave my support personnel some free time along the way. You have to have a lot of patience to work in a support capacity in this race. It’s not easy. Racers are, by nature, probably not the most patient folks on the river. Plus, they smell really bad after 2 days in 90-plus degree heat and humidity with no bath and continuous exercise.
After the race, I looked at my notes and it said I’d stopped at Mokane Access. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what it looked like, or if I’d even stopped there, but Andrea had written down an arrival time so I must have been there. Only after seeing pictures did it come back to me. I had stopped there. After Andrea left to go set up tents at the next checkpoint, I’d gotten in the river and taken a bath in the eddy just upstream of the ramp. While I was in the river, a family who’d been out fishing came in. Dad jumped out of the boat and quickly brought down the trailer. In the meantime, the boy spilled coke and fishing tales all over the ramp, while his mom tried in vain to reign in his exuberance. The scene reminded me of why being on the river on a hot, summer day is fun. Soon they left for home and I emerged from the cloak of turbid water, naked, clean, and smiling.
By day 3, when you are so tired you’re nodding off at the helm like the adrenalin and canoe junkie that you are, head snapping back
just as you begin to fall over you’ve really begun to compromise your body’s ability to deal with stress and to make sound judgments.
The last 25 miles of the race I was caught by 3 paddlers that I passed while they were sleeping at New Haven. We had paddled together over
various stretches of the river and I knew them to be better paddlers. I’d slept 3 full hours the second night, but my attempts to sleep the
last night kept falling short. At Herman I crawled in the tent to try and catch 2 hours of bliss. Within minutes, a massive thunderstorm,
otherwise known as fully-loaded coal train, came hurtling past my tent, its downdraft flapping my rain-fly and threatening to uproot me. To
sleep, I began to try and count the clickety-clacks, 45, 46, 47....man that’s along train. And then, just as REM began to overtake my soggy
brain, replenishing it with much needed endorphin and a brief dose of sanity, another coal train, this one empty, hurtled past my tent going
in the opposites direction. Fifteen minutes of sleep at a time was all I could coax the last night. So down river I went, exhausted, and with
the knowledge that the night before someone had been run over by a barge during heavy fog. The fog was more likely to descend in the very early
morning hours where colder waters of the Osage River and warmer waters of the Missouri mixed together, so the farther down river I went between
midnight and 4 am, the better. I promised myself that should fog descend, I would get off the river immediately and wait it out. With luck,
I’d miss the fog, get ahead of some folks by working through the night, and my competitors would be fog bound when they awoke and when I was
nearing the finish line at St. Charles. It is a race after all. Where talent is lacking, sometimes shenanigans can suffice.
When I arrived at New Haven, the next ramp downstream of Herman, sometime after 2 am there were 5 or 6 boats on the ramp. Some boats I recognized and some I didn’t. There was the green plastic Old Town kayak, a huge boat when compared to mine. Gee, the guy paddling that thing must be an animal. I’d seen him the first evening and he was doing a good job staying up with a lot of people in much better boats. It wasn’t pretty though and it wasn’t clear that he’d be able to maintain that pace, but here he was. Ahead of me. There was also red, well-worn Kruger signed by many of the race participants in magic marker. Krugers are fine boats, and a well-worn Kruger means you’ve likely done some serious paddling, but sleep, fool, sleep, and you shall be vanquished. There was the beautiful, paint-barely-dry tandem built by the Les Bourgeois team. Nice, funny guys but still I wanted to beat them. One person beating two just made it twice as fun. And a few other boats. Yes. My chance at glory. Would this stealth maneuver be enough to propel me into the top 20? The top fifteen? I remember arriving at Glascow, seeing the banner that said, “ONLY 199 MORE MILES TO GO” and thinking, “is that supposed to cheer me up, or make we want to stop?” When they told me I was in the top fifteen racers to get to this point, I was back in the boat within an hour.
At New Haven I hit the bathrooms (yes, running water and paper towels, almost as good as a shower!) and then laid on my pfd on the ramp, well away from all the racers sleeping comfortably in the back of pickups or in tents. My support crew was staying in Herman for the night and the plans were for them to meet me in Washington in the early morning. The afternoon heat from the day before had left me ashen, woozy, and slightly nauseous - warning signs of pending heat exhaustion. The forecast for Friday afternoon was more heat and humidity and possible thunderstorms late in the day. All things I needed to avoid, so a night paddle seemed best despite the exhaustion and should put me at the finish line ahead of any storms.
A pfd is surprisingly comfortable if you stretch it out - there’s spot for your butt, your back, and your head. ZZZZZ. In what seemed liked minutes I woke up. 4 am. By this time the moon had set. I looked at the water. Was that fog settling or an insect hatch? It really didn’t matter, I’d been here 2 hours and it was time to go before being fogged-bound and the sleepers roused and got on the river.
Just after sunrise I see the last checkpoint before the finish, Washington, come into view. Tired, but now stoked with adrenaline, I begin to pick up the pace. Ahead I see the nun buoy marking the channel movement to the right. I angle for the marker still unsure as to whether or not to stay inside it, or move to the outside. The buoy is approaching fast. At the last minute I decide to rudder left and head to the inside and shave off several hundred feet. Several hundred feet in 340 miles isn’t a lot, but every ounce of energy saved is a good thing. Rudder left. Nothing. Boat continues on the same line, now directly at the buoy. Ok, let’s go right. Try to move the boat to the right. Again no response. My speed and the current are now taking me on direct line at the buoy. Yikes! Correction! Woosh! Fly past the buoy, inches from a direct hit, the back of boat brushing the wobbly buoy. Oh my Lord, what are you thinking? At that speed no telling what would have happened. It might have smashed your bow to pieces and thrown you in the river! Stop messing around! I get to Washington, my heart is pumping, the sun is coming up, and only 27 miles to go. I visit with volunteers at the ramp for a while. Ask about local restaurants for my coffee fix, realize that I spent all my money last night on dinner at Herman and opt for another catnap on the ramp instead.
Half an hour later, I text message the ground crew. Meet @ Weldon Sprgs w/ coffE, 10-11ish.. No sign of other boats coming in, I still feel reasonably well and I need to keep moving. TO THE FINISH LINE. At Weldon Springs I pull off to meet Andrea and Ginny. Cold water. And Coffee! Nectar of the brain-addled. Plus Ginny has brought bing cherries, an unexpected pleasure. Now we’re talking. Almost done here. Less than 20 miles to go. Just as I ready the boat to get back in the river, I see a kayak. Damn. I jump in the boat and paddle to meet him so that we can ride downstream together. Two boats are always faster than one. It’s Jason Schremp - we’ve paddled together for bits and pieces over the last few days. He’s a stronger paddler, although I don’t quite know why. This is something that perplexes me and I vow to try and learn more about it. Why some paddlers move their boat faster when their strokes don’t look that efficient. It’s kind of like watching runners in a marathon. Many styles. Some have form better than others, and sometimes those with best form don’t always seem to be the ones who go the fastest. We paddle together for awhile. He’s in better shape at this point than I. I’m barely hanging on here. Five hours sleep in 3 days is starting to bury me. He toys with me. Pulling out my energy over several miles and then about 10 miles out, once we see the first of 3 bridges near St. Charles. Off he goes. I don’t have the strength or interest to chase him.
What’s another boat at this point? How many have already finished? I have no idea. The fastest boats finished more than a day ago. At this point it doesn’t really matter when I finish, just as long as I finish and no else passes me. Just keep on trucking. You’re almost there. Just to be on the safe side I occasionally glance over my shoulder to see if someone is approaching. I tell myself it’s a bad policy to turn completely around and look, just stay focused on what is in front of you and paddle. Remember the mantra. Breathe. Sing. Paddle. Ok, just do that. Breathe. Sing. Paddle. I take a deep breath and then sound out each letter and sing it as I go. bbbbb...., RRRR...., eeeee, AAA, breeeeeathe. On and on. Two minutes pass. This is going to be a long 10 miles. The sun is getting higher in the sky. The humidity is creeping up. I’m sweating like crazy in my pfd.
Then on my left another boat appears. Damn! Where he’d come from. It’s John Flegg looking relaxed in his well-seasoned Kruger. We fall in next to each and shoot the breeze. He tells me about all the paddling he’s done over his life - the Great Lakes, ocean kayaking, the Everglades Challenge. Right away I know he’s better than I am. He’s tells me there’s another kayak not far behind. He left them when he sprinted for 2 miles to wake up. Who are these people that can sprint 2 miles to wake after paddling more than 100 miles a day for 3 days running? We paddle together for 5 miles or so. For awhile one moves in front of the other, then the reverse. I take fluids, he moves ahead. He takes carbs, then I move ahead. Perhaps, I think, he’s vulnerable. At last the Bridge of False Hope appears. Five miles from the finish.
What was it that Schremp said about the bridge approach? There’s a huge wing dike near the bridge so make sure you hang way river left. Or was it way river right? I can’t for the life of me recall and it was only a half-hour ago. Then the “Osage”, a safety boat piloted by Russ Payzant, appears and moves toward us. We exchange greetings. “You’re almost there” he calls out. He looks exhausted and I know he hasn’t sleep more than a few hours in the last 3 days. Once Flegg hears this, off he goes sprinting again. There’s no way to stay up with him. I feel myself getting overheated and say to myself, it would be pointless to finish this race only to suffer a heat stroke at the finish line. Thunderstorms are predicted for later in the afternoon and all indications are that conditions are building in that direction. I back off. Ok. So another boat will finish ahead of you. Big deal. You’re still going to make it. Almost there. Settle down. Relax. Around the bend and then 45 minutes to the finish.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I see another boat creeping up. Damn the luck. What the hell? Who is that? It’s Flegg’s friend, Bill Lanning, in a Seaward Quest X3. Soon he’s even with me and I’m struggling to keep up although I try not to show it. We paddle and chat. Again I discover someone who has years of experience and thousands of miles tripping about in a kayak. My mere thousand miles of paddling makes me a neophyte compared to some of the other racers. John Lutecki, Jr. (10th place men’s) put over 5000 miles into one trip. Collectively, I wonder, how many miles of lakes, streams, and oceans has this group seen from a self-propelled craft. Nearly a hundred participants this year, and if I’m average - which I feel like (finished 23rd out of 45 solo men) - then that’s a total of 100,000 miles. If the only way to see a river is to be on it, then the only way to feel a river is to be in a canoe or kayak on it.
I’m bonking hard. Lanning’s nails are black. Blisters cover the back of his hand. All of his fingers and his palms are covered in blisters and duct tape. Other than that, he looks pretty fresh. We go around a bend, and the last bridge appears on the horizon. Two miles to the finish. We stop talking. Then one mile. We begin to cross over and angle toward the casino that we know guards the upper end of Frontier Park. Just beyond that is the finish line.
The cadence begins to pick up. In the last 20 miles I’ve let 2 boats pass me so I have no interest in letting another racer beat me. No. Lanning sees this as opportunity to take one small victory in what up to this point, has only been a Herculean effort - 340 miles in slightly more than 3 days. Later, he would explain the sprint finish by saying, “I hope you didn’t mind that at the end. It is a race after all.”
Yes, a race it is. And I’m not going to let this elderly, duct-taped Canadian beat me to the finish line. Not after all that I’ve endured for
the last 3 days. No way. We are neck and neck for the last mile. For an instant he pulls ahead. And then I focus, dig harder, and inch ahead.
I’ve got him now, he’s going to fold. But he doesn’t. He keeps coming. Back and forth. We cross under the last bridge. 500 feet to go. We can
see the ramp. People are on it. Cheering. Lanning is beginning to move ahead slightly. And then damn. I can’t do it. He’s going to beat me.
Arrghh! That’s 3 boats in the last 10 miles. Lanning moves toward the left bank and 200 feet from the finish he misjudges the approach and
an eddy begins to slow him down. I see his mistake and begin to turn the paddles over faster. Yes, fool, make a mistake and you pay! I’ve
got you now. Lanning sees me gaining, corrects himself and sprints into the last ramp just ahead of me. Seventy seven hours and 51 minutes to
paddle 340 miles and in the end, it comes down to a sprint for pride.
But it’s more than that. It’s a funny thing this race. It’s not cheap, especially if you have a support crew. They must eat and sleep along the way as well. If they camp and pack food, they can cut some corners, but camping in Missouri in July is not optimal under the best of conditions. It’s hot and muggy and buggy. You use your vacation time and you don’t get any rest. Unless you win, once you finish, you get your photo taken with a medal, a race official, and a hand-lettered sign. And that’s pretty much it. It’s over. What now? At this point, you’re so sleep deprived that you can’t really enjoy the moment. It feels good to finish, but until you ground yourself with some dreams and a nights rest, it doesn’t make any sense.
So what then is the point? To push yourself? To restore you faith in yourself? In your abilities? It could be. It could be that you don’t really know why you want to do it, just that it seems like something you might be able to do, especially since you’ve got the time, the inkling, and a kayak. Why not try? What’s the worst thing that could happen? Ok, forget that. The second worst thing. You won’t be doing this race because you’re trying to kill yourself, you’ll be doing it so you won’t die.
The next morning I got up early and went back to the finish area. The next boats weren’t expected to arrive for several hours, so for once on this vacation, I had time to kill. I window-shopped the cobbled streets of Old Town St. Charles in search of coffee. At the end of several blocks of historic buildings (St. Charles was the first capitol of Missouri), I discovered a metal fabrication shop, doors flung open against the summer heat and the American Flag hanging from the rafters, and an old foundry, now converted to an art museum. I meandered across the street and into the park that ran along the river. Storms had blown up late yesterday afternoon and although the morning was a bit humid, the park - at the terminus of the Katy Trail - was full of joggers, dog-walkers, and cyclists. I sat on a park bench and watched the flowing, musical progression of Big River eddies punctuated by the occasional piece of driftwood and Great Blue Heron flyovers. Returning to the ramp, I walked through a Saturday farmer’s market, brimming with summer fruits: tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, and even peaches. A late spring frost had taken out most of Missouri’s peach harvest, but these were from across the river, in Illinois. They’d saved one third of the crop by building bonfires in the orchard for 3 nights running and I was grateful for their hard work and the sweet succulence of the harvest.
At the finish line, a small crowd had gathered to watch the last boats finish. When the last two racers came into view, an excited young boy blasted an air horn, which shook the sleepy crowd alive, and Mark Handley and Richard Lovell landed to cheers, claps, and more than a few teary eyes. They stepped from their kayaks, 3 hours before the deadline, nearly speechless and almost unable to stand. Marks’s daughter grabbed his elbow and helped him up the ramp. The race organizers, Scott Mansker and Russ Payzant, put their arms around each other, took a deep breath, then turned to the river and smiled.
To see more images from the 2007 Missouri River 340 Canoe and Kayak Race go to:
And things did. Mainly, I had help this year. Completing the MR340 in 77 hours and 51 minutes was a group effort. There’s a lot in life that we can go at alone, but it really is a lot more productive if we work together to achieve goals. My support crew was comprised of field chief, Andrea Zanatta, an Americorp Assistant for the Blue River Watershed Association (BRWA), Kate Delehunt, BRWA education specialist and Missouri explorer, camper, and noise-maker, and BRWA Executive Director, Ginny Moore. From start to finish they met me at checkpoints, replenished my supplies, and renewed my spirit. They may have gotten a little more sleep than I did, but not by much. All of my energies were directed toward one goal - paddling the boat down river and completing the race within the time limit. My tent was set up and broken down for me each night. Unlike last year, this time I made no trips into town to find a restaurant. Or Gatorade. No dog walks necessary. Just get in the boat and paddle. My hats are off to those who have successfully completed this race without a support crew. It can be done, because people have done it each year, but it’s a lot more work. A lot more.
In 2007, there was a plan, more like a strategy and less like a whim, which was last year’s plan. It was better executed this year and the weather, with just a couple of exceptions, was mostly in the favor of racers. Trex, the inimitable Rare West Tibetan Mountain Dog, sat out this year’s race. There was a kayak instead of a canoe and a training regime. And there was help.
The kayak, a Current Designs Solstice GT, was purchased in February of this year. Not the best boat in the shop, but a fine, gently used, and affordable one. It’s a glass boat, meaning fiberglass, which makes it less brittle than a carbon fiber or Kevlar boat, but also heavier, bulkier, and slower. It’s really an expedition kayak and since I stand to spend more time on trips than in races I wanted something that could suit me for many years to come. Although the winners use bonafide racing boats of various styles, the majority of entrants in the MR340 race in some form of expedition canoes or kayaks.
I’d never actually been in a kayak until I sat in a number of them to try them on at the store. After I found one that fit, and one that I could afford, I had exactly 20 weeks to learn how to use it and made a vow to paddle every week before the start of the race.
The logistics of kayaking - the transport, staging, paddling, and breakdown involved each time - generally demanded at least a half day of my time for any given workout and time for me, like most of us, is a precious commodity. One a week, for 20 weeks, I drove to a different spot on the river and trained, generally paddling first upstream for 2-3 hours and then back again to the car. This was mostly done on the Kansas River, in part because it’s close, and also because we had a wet spring in the Midwest, with a couple of rounds of flooding and for much of the spring, the river levels on the Kansas River were approximately what they were during last year’s race on the Missouri.
When you paddle upriver, you have to hug the bank to stay out of the main current, which means that you tend to see more birds and wildlife and it also means that you can’t stop paddling. It’s easy to get lazy when going downstream, you can just float for awhile, but going upstream you really have no choice but to constantly paddle. A two-hour paddling workout is a pretty hefty effort for me. Upstream was a strength workout, downstream was a speed workout. A few times I did start out by going downstream and usually lived to regret it. Once, I escorted a visiting canoeist (he was going from KC to the Arch) out of town and got about 7 miles downstream before turning around only to be smacked around by a strong headwind, a rising river stage, and 3 hours of regret.
Others may have done 3-a-weeks in their boats, but for me, the rest of my workouts had to be comprised of walking, cycling, and calisthenics. If I were a better, younger, athlete, like Katie Pfefferkorn or Joe “the-dark-horse” Mann, then such a short training period might pay greater dividends. Katie finished 2nd this year in the women’s solo division; beaten only by Erin “One Woman, Focused and Driven” Magee, who’s made a career out of endurance paddling races. Joe, who bought his kayak about the same time I purchased mine, finished 7th in the men’s solo division. They want this race more than I do, they are better athletes, and most importantly they train more and with greater intensity and purpose. It’s not that I don’t also dream of the podium, everyone has their Walter Mitty moments, but my priority was to finish the race and to neither die nor do permanent damage to my body in the process.
If you don’t listen to your body and if you get careless on the river you can do permanent damage to yourself in this race. The race logo is skull and crossbones so there are ample opportunities to get hurt. First there’s the muscle, ligament, and tendon damage that can be induced by repeated paddling. West Hansen, who’s been first to cross the finish line both years, says he always loses several fingernails after a race like this. How? He pulls so hard on the paddle, that he cuts the circulation off in his fingers and he eventually loses a nail. Perhaps I’m soft, or don’t pull nearly as hard on the paddle, because, except for the 5 or 6 hours of slight arm tingling and shoulder numbness encountered each day, I only suffered a few blisters on my palm. Chuck McHenry, who tried to take a short-cut through a chute (there are only 2 possible short-cuts during the race; he took one and got burned), got stuck behind a log jam, and had to portage over rip-rap in the middle of the night. He subsequently fell and broke a rib. It slowed him, but did not stop him from finishing 4th in the men’s solo. You really have to dig hard to finish this race and if you want to place, then you have to do a lot more than that. You have to train like hell, you have to be focused and driven, and you have to take some risks. It doesn’t hurt to be a little nutty, but you can’t be reckless unless you have a death wish. If you continue to race during a heavy fog, it’s possible to get run over by a barge. The only people to have successfully done this during the 2007 race were from California. Their kayak ended up in pieces but they were snagged by deck hands, pulled to safety, and into MR340 lore.
Heat exhaustion or heat stroke might be the most likely way to hurt your self in this race. One of the best pieces of advice encountered before the race was how much fluid to ingest during endurance races. Given my size and the expected temperatures, I would need to take in anywhere from 750 to 1,000 milliliters per hour. But how many hours would it take me to complete the race? That part I wasn’t sure about since in 2006 I didn’t finish.
Three weeks before the MR340, I raced in the Gritty Fitty, a 50-mile race on the Kansas River to test myself and to get some practice using a support crew. My goal in the Gritty Fitty was to paddle non-stop for 10 straight hours at 5 miles an hour, the assumption being that this was the pace needed to successfully complete the MR340 - not win (they go much faster), just finish. Divide 340 miles by 5 miles per hour and the result is 68 hours of BOAT TIME. This means that if you want to finish the race within the allotted time frame, you must spend almost 3 full days in a boat paddling like crazy.
It actually took me 10 and half hours, albeit all of it in a driving rain and a slight headwind, to make the 50 miles from Lawrence to Kansas City. That works out to 4.9 miles an hour and if you’re generous and round up you can get to 5 mph. But could I do that over and over again? The MR340, is essentially the equivalent of seven 50-mile back-to-back races with only a few hours of recovery time between each one. It was still iffy, but at least now it seemed within the realm of possibility. Problem. If it took me two days to recover from the 10 hours of the Gritty Fitty, then how could I expect to paddle, not float - but paddle - for 68 hours with almost no sleep? The more I looked at the figures the more nervous it made me. On a positive note, the transitions with the support crew went like clock work during the Gritty Fitty, in part, because Andrea Z. is one of the most patient and positive people on the planet. At each pre-arranged stopping point, she was waiting in the rain, and provided much needed words of encouragement. “You’re doing great! Almost there. You’re going to make it. Great job!” This really helped.
Once I had an idea, realistic or not, of my boat time, then I could estimate the amount of fluids needed. Because the race is held in the hottest part of the Missouri summer and to err on the side of safety, I assumed that I might need to drink as much as a liter per hour. Sixty-eight hours of paddling would mean 68 liters of fluids, almost 20 gallons. Wow! And water is heavy. Five gallons of water weighs 42 pounds, more than many racing canoes, and every ounce of energy needs to be used to utmost efficiency. This is where a support crew is really needed, to reduce the amount of provisions and weight that you need to carry.
My wilderness experience tells me to prepare for the worst which is why for back-up, I stowed 2 dry bags in the hatches. One bag contained enough supplies and water to keep me moving should I miss my field crew at a checkpoint. The other bag contained emergency provisions: spare flashlights, beacon, space blanket, jacket, shirt, shorts, plus a small hank of rope and trash bag for making a storm shelter. For water, I hung a 3.5-liter camelback behind the seat that I could access easily, and every 30 miles or so my support crew replaced the camelback with another full one, and replenished the feed bag - a small bag that contained a combination of sandwiches or power bars, some home-made granola and protein goo, and at least two bottles of electrolyte drinks. The bag was small enough to stow in the cockpit, in front of my feet when not in use, and secured with a rope. When I needed supplies, I just pulled the rope to retrieve the bag. The protein goo, a concoction of peanut butter, nutella, and maple syrup didn’t really work. The water content of the maple syrup didn’t mix well with the other ingredients and I ended up with a paste, more the consistency of dry caulk than astronaut food. It had to be packed into small plastic squeeze bottles (an item readily available now due to recent Transportation Security Administration dictates) and in order to extricate the paste from the tube, it needed to be left in the sun for an hour or so to soften and even with that, it was hard to squeeze the goo from the tube. Because of this, of the 4 tubes of protein goo I prepared, only about one-half of one tube was consumed during the race. My granola also wasn’t that great since I just pretty much threw whatever I could find in the kitchen, including salted peanuts and sunflower nuts, into the mix. To eat it, you really had to stop paddling, and unless you washed your hands in the river, it left nut-meat oil on the paddle shaft, which was a no-no. Mostly I ate the granola at night when I was more likely to loaf down river. To offset the horrible taste of the powdered, protein-enhanced, electrolyte drinks I consumed to stave off cramps, I prepared them with a combination of water and a mixture of blueberry, cranberry, grape, and apple juices. The resultant bluish-gray liquid, dubbed the ‘beverage designed to keep you from dying’, looked like it just might kill you but was drinkable and did keep my muscles from cramping.
On race day 2007, just before 8 am, 72 canoes and kayaks - likely more than ever in recorded history - assembled in the waters
just off Kaw Point. It’s sunny, but almost 10 degrees below normal for this time of year. Regardless of the beautiful summer
morning start, everyone knows that by the late afternoon, it will be hot. The national anthem is sung, the countdown begins,
10, 9, 8, 7,...., a black-powder rifle is shouldered, and then blam, with a puff of smoke, the gunners go right to the front
and begin to hammer home their points. It’s like they’re saying, ok, here’s what I got; let’s see how long you can keep up.
It is a race after all.Slowly they disappear into the morning haze. I wasn’t sure who they were, but I knew that at least 10 of the 74 boats were very serious about this race. Some serious enough to not sleep again until they’d crossed the finish line. There are people who pee in their boats to save time, but no one has yet (at least to my knowledge) begun to carry a porta-potty. They’d have to at least pull over and take a crap between Kansas City and St. Charles.
In a long race like this, it takes some folks a few miles to find their grove. After 3 or 4 miles some boats began to pass me. I remember saying hi to Katie Pfefferkorn somewhere near the start, but soon after that she just took off down river. The next time I saw her, I was at Herman, mile-marker 270, and she was already done with the race and back at Herman relaxing with friends. For the first hour I just kind of kept my head down, tried to relax, and stay focused on my race mantra. Breathe. Sing. And paddle.
Breathe. My friend Deb tells me this when I’m anxious. Just breathe. It’s a Kundalini yoga technique. And a life technique. Just breathe. Breathe and you live. Don’t breathe and you die. So just go ahead and breathe in that morning air. That’s it. Salute the sun. And breathe. Try it now. Deep breath. Exhale. Another deep breath. Exhale slowly. And again. Ah, yes. See how easy? You feel better already. So don’t forget. Breathe.
Sing. When there is no music in my life I know that I’m in trouble. Songs tell you that life is more than just a breath a fresh air. They are what you live for, what you breathe for, what you long for. Songs can be anything. If you can see it, hear it, taste it, smell it, or feel it, then you can sing it. Gimme an A. Now a B. Ok, all together now. Sing.
Paddle. This one came from my daughter Sarah. If you want to get through life, just paddle. That’s how you get down river, how you get from one point in your life to the next. Paddle. Don’t whine, don’t stop, just paddle. Don’t have to paddle fast, you just have to keep paddling. If you stop paddling, then you’re either standing still, or you’re moving backwards. So put that blade in the water and pull.
Breathe, sing, and paddle. Over and over. Breathe, sing, and paddle. That’s all I needed to do to make it to St. Charles.
A little more than an hour into the race, just on the outskirts of Kansas City, there was an astonishing sight. As I approached the Hwy 291 bridge, I saw people on the banks of the river. At first I thought they were just out fishing, but as I rounded the bend I could see that the crowd stretched from above the bridge to the lower end of the park, a line of over a mile of race spectators. Amazing. Except for the rare river festival or fireworks display, there was never this many folks down on the river.
At Fort Osage, 30 miles into the race, I stopped for 5 minutes to meet Andrea, get a sandwich, and check on the water situation. I looked out on the river and there was a line of boats coming behind me and very soon contestants began to move past me. Several, including Dawn “Sandy Bottom” Stewart and her son Alan, I would never see again until after the race. It made me eager to get back on the river since it was, after all, a race. I learned from the Gritty Fitty that if you drink too much in a rain storm you’ll have to stop and pee frequently and if you stop 3 times to pee during a race, someone you want to beat will finish 5 minutes ahead of you. Remember? Paddle. It’s one of the keys.
It was at Fort Osage last year where I sealed my last place finish by napping under a shade tree for 4 hours. After that slumber, I paddled 235 miles without ever seeing another contestant. Not this year, not this time. I quickly got back on the river and made the first mandatory checkpoint, Lexington, with time to spare.
Like last year, after Lexington, the towns and ramps began to blur. Since I’d traveled portions of the river a number of times, I opted for simple maps and my memory to guide me, no GPS that required batteries. I did prepare a detailed spreadsheet that my support crew carried and that we frequently consulted. Listed on sheet were distances between each check point, cumulative distance traveled, distance to finish, cut-off times, and estimates of how long it would take me to get from one point to the next with concessions for slower speeds at night. It turned out to be a very good guide to follow, especially as I began to beat my expected arrival times. The knowledge that I was moving faster than planned really spurned me on and helped me to focus on minimizing my break, rest, and checkpoint times. Additionally, and as I began to tire and my brain functions got fuzzier and fuzzier it was a needed dose of reality. In the first 24 hours of the race I paddled over a hundred miles and was attempting to do a similar amount the second day - but with less than 2 hours of sleep. What’s the next checkpoint and how far? When will I be there? I had no idea. Have I passed Glasgow? Or is it the next stop? The sheet says the next stop is Booneville and it should take you 4 hours to get there, so let’s say 4 hours plus or minus 30 minutes. The time estimates turned out to be a pretty good guide and hopefully it gave my support personnel some free time along the way. You have to have a lot of patience to work in a support capacity in this race. It’s not easy. Racers are, by nature, probably not the most patient folks on the river. Plus, they smell really bad after 2 days in 90-plus degree heat and humidity with no bath and continuous exercise.
After the race, I looked at my notes and it said I’d stopped at Mokane Access. For the life of me I couldn’t remember what it looked like, or if I’d even stopped there, but Andrea had written down an arrival time so I must have been there. Only after seeing pictures did it come back to me. I had stopped there. After Andrea left to go set up tents at the next checkpoint, I’d gotten in the river and taken a bath in the eddy just upstream of the ramp. While I was in the river, a family who’d been out fishing came in. Dad jumped out of the boat and quickly brought down the trailer. In the meantime, the boy spilled coke and fishing tales all over the ramp, while his mom tried in vain to reign in his exuberance. The scene reminded me of why being on the river on a hot, summer day is fun. Soon they left for home and I emerged from the cloak of turbid water, naked, clean, and smiling.
By day 3, when you are so tired you’re nodding off at the helm like the adrenalin and canoe junkie that you are, head snapping back
just as you begin to fall over you’ve really begun to compromise your body’s ability to deal with stress and to make sound judgments.
The last 25 miles of the race I was caught by 3 paddlers that I passed while they were sleeping at New Haven. We had paddled together over
various stretches of the river and I knew them to be better paddlers. I’d slept 3 full hours the second night, but my attempts to sleep the
last night kept falling short. At Herman I crawled in the tent to try and catch 2 hours of bliss. Within minutes, a massive thunderstorm,
otherwise known as fully-loaded coal train, came hurtling past my tent, its downdraft flapping my rain-fly and threatening to uproot me. To
sleep, I began to try and count the clickety-clacks, 45, 46, 47....man that’s along train. And then, just as REM began to overtake my soggy
brain, replenishing it with much needed endorphin and a brief dose of sanity, another coal train, this one empty, hurtled past my tent going
in the opposites direction. Fifteen minutes of sleep at a time was all I could coax the last night. So down river I went, exhausted, and with
the knowledge that the night before someone had been run over by a barge during heavy fog. The fog was more likely to descend in the very early
morning hours where colder waters of the Osage River and warmer waters of the Missouri mixed together, so the farther down river I went between
midnight and 4 am, the better. I promised myself that should fog descend, I would get off the river immediately and wait it out. With luck,
I’d miss the fog, get ahead of some folks by working through the night, and my competitors would be fog bound when they awoke and when I was
nearing the finish line at St. Charles. It is a race after all. Where talent is lacking, sometimes shenanigans can suffice.When I arrived at New Haven, the next ramp downstream of Herman, sometime after 2 am there were 5 or 6 boats on the ramp. Some boats I recognized and some I didn’t. There was the green plastic Old Town kayak, a huge boat when compared to mine. Gee, the guy paddling that thing must be an animal. I’d seen him the first evening and he was doing a good job staying up with a lot of people in much better boats. It wasn’t pretty though and it wasn’t clear that he’d be able to maintain that pace, but here he was. Ahead of me. There was also red, well-worn Kruger signed by many of the race participants in magic marker. Krugers are fine boats, and a well-worn Kruger means you’ve likely done some serious paddling, but sleep, fool, sleep, and you shall be vanquished. There was the beautiful, paint-barely-dry tandem built by the Les Bourgeois team. Nice, funny guys but still I wanted to beat them. One person beating two just made it twice as fun. And a few other boats. Yes. My chance at glory. Would this stealth maneuver be enough to propel me into the top 20? The top fifteen? I remember arriving at Glascow, seeing the banner that said, “ONLY 199 MORE MILES TO GO” and thinking, “is that supposed to cheer me up, or make we want to stop?” When they told me I was in the top fifteen racers to get to this point, I was back in the boat within an hour.
At New Haven I hit the bathrooms (yes, running water and paper towels, almost as good as a shower!) and then laid on my pfd on the ramp, well away from all the racers sleeping comfortably in the back of pickups or in tents. My support crew was staying in Herman for the night and the plans were for them to meet me in Washington in the early morning. The afternoon heat from the day before had left me ashen, woozy, and slightly nauseous - warning signs of pending heat exhaustion. The forecast for Friday afternoon was more heat and humidity and possible thunderstorms late in the day. All things I needed to avoid, so a night paddle seemed best despite the exhaustion and should put me at the finish line ahead of any storms.
A pfd is surprisingly comfortable if you stretch it out - there’s spot for your butt, your back, and your head. ZZZZZ. In what seemed liked minutes I woke up. 4 am. By this time the moon had set. I looked at the water. Was that fog settling or an insect hatch? It really didn’t matter, I’d been here 2 hours and it was time to go before being fogged-bound and the sleepers roused and got on the river.
Just after sunrise I see the last checkpoint before the finish, Washington, come into view. Tired, but now stoked with adrenaline, I begin to pick up the pace. Ahead I see the nun buoy marking the channel movement to the right. I angle for the marker still unsure as to whether or not to stay inside it, or move to the outside. The buoy is approaching fast. At the last minute I decide to rudder left and head to the inside and shave off several hundred feet. Several hundred feet in 340 miles isn’t a lot, but every ounce of energy saved is a good thing. Rudder left. Nothing. Boat continues on the same line, now directly at the buoy. Ok, let’s go right. Try to move the boat to the right. Again no response. My speed and the current are now taking me on direct line at the buoy. Yikes! Correction! Woosh! Fly past the buoy, inches from a direct hit, the back of boat brushing the wobbly buoy. Oh my Lord, what are you thinking? At that speed no telling what would have happened. It might have smashed your bow to pieces and thrown you in the river! Stop messing around! I get to Washington, my heart is pumping, the sun is coming up, and only 27 miles to go. I visit with volunteers at the ramp for a while. Ask about local restaurants for my coffee fix, realize that I spent all my money last night on dinner at Herman and opt for another catnap on the ramp instead.
Half an hour later, I text message the ground crew. Meet @ Weldon Sprgs w/ coffE, 10-11ish.. No sign of other boats coming in, I still feel reasonably well and I need to keep moving. TO THE FINISH LINE. At Weldon Springs I pull off to meet Andrea and Ginny. Cold water. And Coffee! Nectar of the brain-addled. Plus Ginny has brought bing cherries, an unexpected pleasure. Now we’re talking. Almost done here. Less than 20 miles to go. Just as I ready the boat to get back in the river, I see a kayak. Damn. I jump in the boat and paddle to meet him so that we can ride downstream together. Two boats are always faster than one. It’s Jason Schremp - we’ve paddled together for bits and pieces over the last few days. He’s a stronger paddler, although I don’t quite know why. This is something that perplexes me and I vow to try and learn more about it. Why some paddlers move their boat faster when their strokes don’t look that efficient. It’s kind of like watching runners in a marathon. Many styles. Some have form better than others, and sometimes those with best form don’t always seem to be the ones who go the fastest. We paddle together for awhile. He’s in better shape at this point than I. I’m barely hanging on here. Five hours sleep in 3 days is starting to bury me. He toys with me. Pulling out my energy over several miles and then about 10 miles out, once we see the first of 3 bridges near St. Charles. Off he goes. I don’t have the strength or interest to chase him.
What’s another boat at this point? How many have already finished? I have no idea. The fastest boats finished more than a day ago. At this point it doesn’t really matter when I finish, just as long as I finish and no else passes me. Just keep on trucking. You’re almost there. Just to be on the safe side I occasionally glance over my shoulder to see if someone is approaching. I tell myself it’s a bad policy to turn completely around and look, just stay focused on what is in front of you and paddle. Remember the mantra. Breathe. Sing. Paddle. Ok, just do that. Breathe. Sing. Paddle. I take a deep breath and then sound out each letter and sing it as I go. bbbbb...., RRRR...., eeeee, AAA, breeeeeathe. On and on. Two minutes pass. This is going to be a long 10 miles. The sun is getting higher in the sky. The humidity is creeping up. I’m sweating like crazy in my pfd.
Then on my left another boat appears. Damn! Where he’d come from. It’s John Flegg looking relaxed in his well-seasoned Kruger. We fall in next to each and shoot the breeze. He tells me about all the paddling he’s done over his life - the Great Lakes, ocean kayaking, the Everglades Challenge. Right away I know he’s better than I am. He’s tells me there’s another kayak not far behind. He left them when he sprinted for 2 miles to wake up. Who are these people that can sprint 2 miles to wake after paddling more than 100 miles a day for 3 days running? We paddle together for 5 miles or so. For awhile one moves in front of the other, then the reverse. I take fluids, he moves ahead. He takes carbs, then I move ahead. Perhaps, I think, he’s vulnerable. At last the Bridge of False Hope appears. Five miles from the finish.
What was it that Schremp said about the bridge approach? There’s a huge wing dike near the bridge so make sure you hang way river left. Or was it way river right? I can’t for the life of me recall and it was only a half-hour ago. Then the “Osage”, a safety boat piloted by Russ Payzant, appears and moves toward us. We exchange greetings. “You’re almost there” he calls out. He looks exhausted and I know he hasn’t sleep more than a few hours in the last 3 days. Once Flegg hears this, off he goes sprinting again. There’s no way to stay up with him. I feel myself getting overheated and say to myself, it would be pointless to finish this race only to suffer a heat stroke at the finish line. Thunderstorms are predicted for later in the afternoon and all indications are that conditions are building in that direction. I back off. Ok. So another boat will finish ahead of you. Big deal. You’re still going to make it. Almost there. Settle down. Relax. Around the bend and then 45 minutes to the finish.
Then out of the corner of my eye, I see another boat creeping up. Damn the luck. What the hell? Who is that? It’s Flegg’s friend, Bill Lanning, in a Seaward Quest X3. Soon he’s even with me and I’m struggling to keep up although I try not to show it. We paddle and chat. Again I discover someone who has years of experience and thousands of miles tripping about in a kayak. My mere thousand miles of paddling makes me a neophyte compared to some of the other racers. John Lutecki, Jr. (10th place men’s) put over 5000 miles into one trip. Collectively, I wonder, how many miles of lakes, streams, and oceans has this group seen from a self-propelled craft. Nearly a hundred participants this year, and if I’m average - which I feel like (finished 23rd out of 45 solo men) - then that’s a total of 100,000 miles. If the only way to see a river is to be on it, then the only way to feel a river is to be in a canoe or kayak on it.
I’m bonking hard. Lanning’s nails are black. Blisters cover the back of his hand. All of his fingers and his palms are covered in blisters and duct tape. Other than that, he looks pretty fresh. We go around a bend, and the last bridge appears on the horizon. Two miles to the finish. We stop talking. Then one mile. We begin to cross over and angle toward the casino that we know guards the upper end of Frontier Park. Just beyond that is the finish line.
The cadence begins to pick up. In the last 20 miles I’ve let 2 boats pass me so I have no interest in letting another racer beat me. No. Lanning sees this as opportunity to take one small victory in what up to this point, has only been a Herculean effort - 340 miles in slightly more than 3 days. Later, he would explain the sprint finish by saying, “I hope you didn’t mind that at the end. It is a race after all.”
Yes, a race it is. And I’m not going to let this elderly, duct-taped Canadian beat me to the finish line. Not after all that I’ve endured for
the last 3 days. No way. We are neck and neck for the last mile. For an instant he pulls ahead. And then I focus, dig harder, and inch ahead.
I’ve got him now, he’s going to fold. But he doesn’t. He keeps coming. Back and forth. We cross under the last bridge. 500 feet to go. We can
see the ramp. People are on it. Cheering. Lanning is beginning to move ahead slightly. And then damn. I can’t do it. He’s going to beat me.
Arrghh! That’s 3 boats in the last 10 miles. Lanning moves toward the left bank and 200 feet from the finish he misjudges the approach and
an eddy begins to slow him down. I see his mistake and begin to turn the paddles over faster. Yes, fool, make a mistake and you pay! I’ve
got you now. Lanning sees me gaining, corrects himself and sprints into the last ramp just ahead of me. Seventy seven hours and 51 minutes to
paddle 340 miles and in the end, it comes down to a sprint for pride.But it’s more than that. It’s a funny thing this race. It’s not cheap, especially if you have a support crew. They must eat and sleep along the way as well. If they camp and pack food, they can cut some corners, but camping in Missouri in July is not optimal under the best of conditions. It’s hot and muggy and buggy. You use your vacation time and you don’t get any rest. Unless you win, once you finish, you get your photo taken with a medal, a race official, and a hand-lettered sign. And that’s pretty much it. It’s over. What now? At this point, you’re so sleep deprived that you can’t really enjoy the moment. It feels good to finish, but until you ground yourself with some dreams and a nights rest, it doesn’t make any sense.
So what then is the point? To push yourself? To restore you faith in yourself? In your abilities? It could be. It could be that you don’t really know why you want to do it, just that it seems like something you might be able to do, especially since you’ve got the time, the inkling, and a kayak. Why not try? What’s the worst thing that could happen? Ok, forget that. The second worst thing. You won’t be doing this race because you’re trying to kill yourself, you’ll be doing it so you won’t die.
The next morning I got up early and went back to the finish area. The next boats weren’t expected to arrive for several hours, so for once on this vacation, I had time to kill. I window-shopped the cobbled streets of Old Town St. Charles in search of coffee. At the end of several blocks of historic buildings (St. Charles was the first capitol of Missouri), I discovered a metal fabrication shop, doors flung open against the summer heat and the American Flag hanging from the rafters, and an old foundry, now converted to an art museum. I meandered across the street and into the park that ran along the river. Storms had blown up late yesterday afternoon and although the morning was a bit humid, the park - at the terminus of the Katy Trail - was full of joggers, dog-walkers, and cyclists. I sat on a park bench and watched the flowing, musical progression of Big River eddies punctuated by the occasional piece of driftwood and Great Blue Heron flyovers. Returning to the ramp, I walked through a Saturday farmer’s market, brimming with summer fruits: tomatoes, watermelons, cantaloupes, and even peaches. A late spring frost had taken out most of Missouri’s peach harvest, but these were from across the river, in Illinois. They’d saved one third of the crop by building bonfires in the orchard for 3 nights running and I was grateful for their hard work and the sweet succulence of the harvest.
At the finish line, a small crowd had gathered to watch the last boats finish. When the last two racers came into view, an excited young boy blasted an air horn, which shook the sleepy crowd alive, and Mark Handley and Richard Lovell landed to cheers, claps, and more than a few teary eyes. They stepped from their kayaks, 3 hours before the deadline, nearly speechless and almost unable to stand. Marks’s daughter grabbed his elbow and helped him up the ramp. The race organizers, Scott Mansker and Russ Payzant, put their arms around each other, took a deep breath, then turned to the river and smiled.
To see more images from the 2007 Missouri River 340 Canoe and Kayak Race go to:
www.flickr.com and search on mr340.