Well, I paced myself a tiny bit better, and it wasn’t as windy and wavy out on the bay. So I managed to shave some time off. I’m not 100% sure exactly how much, because I think the time I was given last time was minutes and seconds because they were hand timing, but this time their computer worked and the times are in minutes and hundredths of seconds.
My friend Rob and two other members of the Huggers club showed up, and it was nice to have people in the same circumstance as me to talk to. Plus the real racers recognized me and were more friendly towards me this time.
I tried hard to pace myself, but as usual when I head into wind and waves I start paddling as fast as I can. I actually caught the guy who started ahead of me at the turn around, the older retired gentleman in the impossibly light open canoe I mentioned last week. But he pulled away steadily on the downwind leg and continued to pull away on the flat. He finished in 23.80. They didn’t get my split time, so I can’t tell exactly how much slower I was on the second half. That’s too bad because a split time would be good to show me how much better I’m getting at pacing.
Unfortunately this time I didn’t even win the “big heavy bald guy” category, because there was a real racer in a kevlar kayak who was about the same size as I’d be if I lost my beer gut, and somehow his 30 pound wisp of a kayak counted in the “touring kayak” class. He did it in 18.68. He even beat all but one of the people in the unlimited kayak class. But because he was a big heavy bald guy, I found it easy to find an excuse to strike up a conversation with him and that got me talking to more racers, and I could ask some technical questions.
Great fun. I just hope my elbow pain can stay at a low enough level that I can continue to race.