Today was the 32nd annual Great Race in Auburn, NY. The race consists of one person running, one person biking, and either two people in a canoe or one person in a kayak paddling. (I’m pretty sure they don’t have a category for single canoes.) The long course is 10 km running, 20 miles cycling, and (theoretically) 4 miles paddling. The short course, which I had no intention of doing, was only 5km running, 10 miles cycling, and 2 miles paddling. I had tried to put together a team with the Huggers Ski Club, but in spite of the fact that many of them are avid cyclists or runners, I couldn’t, so I put a notice on the Great Race’s message board and got together a team.
Putting together a team from the internet is like a blind date, but instead of wondering if the dinner is going to be awkward, you’re wondering if your team-mates are going to be either not a hell of a lot better than you or a hell of a lot worse. You don’t want to be the weak link on an otherwise strong team, nor do you want to be the only strong person on a weak team. But since it was my first race, and it was a blind-date team, I was really mostly telling myself not to care about team placing, and just worry about your own performance – I knew I was one of the better paddlers there and so I wouldn’t let down a good team, but you can’t know how the rest of your team is going to do.
We arrived there nice and early, but not too early. Dan and Steve B were there in the parking lot getting their boats down off their cars, so I knew I had come at a good time. Vicki was, and I can’t emphasize this enough, awesome throughout the day. She fetched things and got things together and helped me all over the place. I would have been a frazzled mess without her. First thing I did was pick up my team’s registration packet with t-shirts, numbers for everybody and for the boat and bike, the “ChampionChip” RFID doo-dads for getting split times, and other stuff. Then Vicki and I carried the boat down to the lake. The rest of the team had their boats in the “short course” area, but I just put my boat down near theirs instead of worrying about protocol. Some of the Baycreek people had brought a tent, and so we put some of our stuff down under it. Then it was time to try to meet up with my blind dates. The runner, Jeff, looked very much like a elite runner. About 5’6″, 115 pounds, no fat anywhere on his body carrying a bag of rice cakes. I managed to stop myself from pumping my fist and yelling “YEAH” when I saw him. The cyclist, Ken, looked less like an elite athlete – he was sort of half way between Jeff and Me in physique. Ok, maybe closer to Jeff. I think of myself as a regular guy who does athletics rather than an athlete, and I think that’s what Ken would probably describe himself as as well. Jeff and Ken had done this race together in the past, so that was cool.
Between the hand-off area and the lake there is a 600 to 800 foot run, and I wasn’t looking forward to that, so I arranged to have Jeff meet Ken at the end of his bike ride and run down to hand off the token, a little terry wrist-band, to me. That meant that Jeff had to take my ChampionChip, but we cleared it ahead of time with one of the officials. The upside of that is that I was spared a long run that would have hurt me knees, the downside is that it means I was down by the boats instead of seeing Jeff and Ken’s arrivals and departures. Maybe next year I will do it by the book and run down from the change-over area.
The conditions early in the morning were blustery, and the lake was no fun at all. I went out of a short warm-up paddle, and every wave that slammed into the boat from in front soaked me all over, and when I turned to run downwind every wave that came up behind picked my stern out of the water leaving my rudder high and dry, and my boat would turn to one side or the other. I came back saying “I’ll be lucky if I make it to the turn around without filling the boat, and if I do, I’ll be lucky if I can get home since I’ll have to spend all my time bracing and sweeping.” I was unhappy. But as race time got closer, the wind died down a bit and the waves got smaller.
Jeff had an awesomely fast run. I had set an alarm based on when I expected him to finish, but when I headed back up to the change over to see him arrive and Ken leave, Ken was already gone. Which was too bad, because I’d told him I’d take his backpack back to the tent, but evidently Jeff had to take care of that. Which probably didn’t make the change over the most fluid in the world – the change overs I did see looked more like a track relay race with both people still moving as the wrist band was handed over.
After making sure Jeff knew the plan, and the route back to my boat, and handing him my ChampionChip, I headed back to the boat area to wait. I watched the short course canoes and kayaks arrive, launch and leave, and it was pretty amazing to see so many canoes in the water at once – it was almost solid from the beach to the short course turn-around, and pretty solid on the way back too. Several people dumped either getting in their boats or soon afterwards, but the lake shore drops off slowly and they were all able to stand up and get back in.
After a while, some of the long course boaters started coming in. First a couple of C-2s, and then Dan, and then some more C-2s, and then the rest of the team and some other kayakers I know by sight if not always by name trickled in, and eventually Jeff came in. I was a long way behind the rest of my team, and I knew that I’d never catch them in 4 short miles. Then Jeff told me that they’d decided that everybody would only do the two mile short course (presumably because of the threatening thunderstorms – I didn’t stop to ask why). Damn, that means I’d have even less change to make up some time on people. As I launched, I heard Jim Mallory yelling encouragement, so he was obviously already back. Considering that a 2 mile race would only take him about 15 or 16 minutes in optimal conditions (and these were *not* optimal), I guess he started at least that number of minutes ahead of me.
I jumped in the water and got paddling. The waves were definitely not as bad as they had been on my practice paddle, as evidenced by the fact that I got several minutes into it before I remember to pull my half-skirt back to the cover the front of my cockpit. If I’d been out in the morning’s conditions in that situation, I would have been sitting in 4 inches of water inside the cockpit by that point. I was going pretty fast, and enjoying myself unlike in the morning practice. I passed a number of canoes, mostly of the slow recreational type. There were about 4 safety boats on the course, and every single one of them was helping one or two fast kevlar C-2 racing boats that had dumped. I tried to ask one of them if it was true about the long course being cancelled, but he didn’t know, and so I headed directly to the short course turning point instead of the more direct route to the long course. The safety boat at the turn around confirmed that yes, we’re all doing the short course. As I turned inside of a canoe that was going fairly wide at the buoy, I immediately started to have some of the control problems I’d noticed in the morning paddle – my boat would catch a wave and then turn sideways. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad, but I was still having problems going in a straight line every now and then, which could be embarrassing when you’re trying to sneak between two canoes and suddenly you’re nearly plowing into one of them. But I head a tiny little “slap” noise behind me from approximately where my rudder release cord sits, and realized that my rudder wasn’t down all the way. I lowered it all the way, and suddenly my control went from about 50% of the time to about 80% of the time. I could catch and surf some waves, and I felt a lot more confident and faster. I continued to pass people all the way to the finish.
In the finish chute, they had people standing waist deep in water handing you finish order tickets and then other people collecting things. I grabbed my finish order ticket, and then found myself heading towards a volunteer who wasn’t looking in my direction. I tried to turn but couldn’t, and so I just dumped on purpose rather than hit her. It was very refreshing. That’s when I discovered that the reason I couldn’t turn is that some “helpful” volunteer had grabbed my stern. Oh well, no harm done.
Overall, I had a good time. I kind of wish I’d been able to do the full 4 mile course, because then I would have had more chance to gain time on the people who started ahead of me. And I kind of wish Vicki or I had remembered a camera. And I want to re-iterate how awesome it was to have Vicki doing so much work helping me get ready before hand and getting me food and drink afterwards. I couldn’t have done it without her.