Today was the Erie Canal Regatta. It wasn’t as well attended as the other races this month, but after three weekends in a row, I think people have other calls on their time. I signed up for the 7.5 mile race. As well as me, there was Jim M, a colleague of my wife’s and the best local kayak racer, my coach Dan, Dan’s son Tom, Steve B, who I haven’t seen since 2010, two people in a canoe, and Chris, who was my only competition at the Armond Basset 5km race this summer.
[dciframe]http://connect.garmin.com:80/activity/embed/383379137,465,548,0,auto,border:1px solid blue;align:left;[/dciframe]
At the start, everybody went out hard. I was in my Think Legend which I’m still not stable in, and initially I had problems with the wakes, especially under the lift bridge where the concrete walls bounce them off and back at you. Half way through the village, however, Dan relaxed a bit and I caught him. Steve was riding Dan’s stern wake. I took a turn leading for about a kilometer and a bit, and then Dan signalled he was ready to take a turn. I’m afraid I was concentrating more on trying to find the right place on his wake because of the new-ish boat, and not noticing that my paddle stroke had gotten out of phase with his, and at about the 2km mark my paddle clashed with his, mine lifted his hand up and unbalanced him, and he fell in. In the confusion, Steve lost a paddle stroke or two asking Dan if he was all right, and so now I was on my own.
For the whole rest of the race, I tried to set my own pace, well aware of the presence of Steve practically breathing down my neck. I couldn’t actually see him except at the two turns, but every now and then I’d hear him shouting at somebody (like when Jim and Tom came in the other direction) or somebody shouting at him, and in between I was absolutely sure he was catching up and would soon be riding my wake and getting ready to pounce. This was especially true while navigating all the boat wakes – it was such a beautiful day, I swear every boat owner on the canal decided to go through that particular stretch of the canal at that particular time, mostly going in the wrong direction to be any help to me. And each boat wake cost me some time, sometimes because I actually had to stop paddling to brace, sometimes just because it would throw off my stroke a bit. I remember when Steve went through similar issues when he first got his V12, but that was back in 2009 and he is probably really used to it by now, so I figured he must be gaining on me.
As we approached the first turn, Tom and Jim were coming in the other direction, and very close behind them was a boat making a very large wake. I tried to warn them of the approaching boat so they wouldn’t be surprised by it, but I don’t know if they heard me. I could hear Steve very close behind me.
At the first turn, I found him about two boat lengths behind me and he did the turn better than I did, so if he wasn’t on my wake he was probably less than a boat length off it, so I hammered for a bit to try to shake him. Ok, looking back at the video, “hammered” is a bit of an overstatement. I went a tiny bit harder. I have no idea if it worked, because I was too unstable in the boat to look over my shoulder.
A bit later we passed Dan still coming down stream. He’d obviously lost a lot of time when he dumped, far more than you’d expect for a simple dump and jump back in. He tried to yell something but there was a freight train going through and I couldn’t hear anything. On the video I can hear the word “tangle”, which I discovered afterwards was because he’d gotten tangled up in his drinking hose when he remounted and had lost a lot of time trying to sort that out, and afterwards had decided he was never going to catch us. Steve yelled something to Dan, and again I couldn’t hear it, but I could tell that he was still close.
Further up the canal, I could hear little squeaks – at first I thought they were something on Steve’s boat rubbing, then I thought it was birds, and then I realized it was my hands against the bike tape on the grips of my paddle. I wasn’t sure if they were all mine, though. I still thought Steve was breathing down my neck.
As we came into Fairport, there was a steady stream of boats, mostly heading at us, but one or two going the same way as us. On the video, you can see me passing a packet boat that’s going the same way as us, and then dealing with multiple boats coming in the other direction. As we passed the start/finish line heading up to the second turn, I again got an indication that Steve was pretty close, but not as close as he’d been before. I must have pulled away in spite of the boat wakes and other problems.
At the turn at the top, I got another view of Steve. Now I could see that in spite of my lousy turn, I had at least 5 or 6 boat lengths on him. That’s good, because I was fading fast. My left arm was getting wet, which I’ve discovered is due to me “rushing my catch” (ie. pulling back on the paddle before it’s fully plunged into the water) on that side when I get tired. As we passed Dan’s place, which is about 1.5 km from the finish, Dan was sitting on his dock looking nonchalant, which surprised me. How did he get there so fast? He yelled something I didn’t quite catch about my technique, but I took the hint and tried to fix my catch. I also tried to put on a bit more speed, knowing that the end wasn’t that far away. My speed was surging up and down as I tried to squeeze out every ounce of speed, but then the exhaustion took over, and then I’d remember that Steve was probably not fading, and I’d try to pull out another effort.
In the end, I finished in 1:10:54, and Steve finished in 1:11:08. Not bad. I regret terribly Dan’s and my accident. It would have been a lot more fun if the three of us had managed to hang together for the whole race.
[dciframe]http://www.youtube.com/embed/nf-HUhvmIDY,420,315,0,auto,border:1px solid blue;align:left;[/dciframe]