So if there’s one thing harder than racing hard in a pack against hard competitors for 8 miles, it’s getting up the next day to race another 13 miles. Two of my main competitors, Bob R and Chris L didn’t come back for day 2, but Dave W and Eric Y were here (even if they avoided the mixed pleasure of camping at the race site, which I think is one of the pluses of this race). JM was going to double with the inimitable Roger G in Roger’s V8 Double – not sure if that would make things better or worse for Eric, but such things will be decided well ahead of me on the water and probably won’t even get more than a glimpse in my race video. And after all, these days my video is the main focus of my race.
Pre-race activities were started off by an old fart who yelled at me for spending time on my iPad while waiting in line alone for the diner to open. Because why would I want to be reading stuff that I like from people I know and like when I could be talking to a rude stranger? And then in the diner he picked up a newspaper because while reading things lovingly created by your friends is rude, reading lies created by political entities determined to destroy democracy is not.
There are a lot fewer people racing on day 2. A lot fewer boats, not least because a lot of people who were in C-1s on the first day were doubled up in C-2s today. The other kayakers other than the ones I mentioned earlier were people who wouldn’t be a factor in my race so unfortunately I didn’t really take note of who they were. Sorry.
At the gun, I decided that there’s no point trying to outsmart Dave W so I should just paddle my own pace and see what happened. Eric and the double disappeared into the distance – I think I made a half hearted attempt to get on Eric’s stern wake but that lasted a few seconds. So I settled down to tow Dave for the foreseeable future.
I kept telling myself all the way down that my goal was a good average speed and to stop worrying about Dave, but of course I still thought about him lurking back there. But mostly I was concentrating on avoiding weeds – any time I had to cross a weed bed, I tried to keep my boat perfectly parallel to the current so my bow wouldn’t cross the weeds. And that actually seemed to mostly work.
Working my way through the c-2s, I liked to take a brief rest in the stern wake of one and then sprint ahead to the next. At one point there were two C-2s side by side but they kept coming together and nearly hitting each other, then parting. The first time, it looked like one of them was swerving to avoid a stump, but I’m not sure about the other times. Whatever, I wasn’t going to go up between them in spite of how cool a double wake is.
Later, about 500 meters from the turn buoy I was with two other C-2s and I didn’t want to try turning with them so I put in a dig and got ahead of them. But in doing so, I banged my rudder really hard on a rock. (The rudder made it through the race, but it’s going to need a bunch of epoxy to fix it now.) Rounding the turn I got a glimpse back and realized Dave wasn’t on my stern any more. He was about 30 seconds back, but riding the stern wake on one of the big stock C-2s, getting a good ride and primed to power ahead at some point and demolish me like he usually does.
I continued to not look back, just try to keep a good pace and not get any more weeds or hit any more rocks on the way back up. At the take out for the portage, I snuck another look back and could see some C-2s a minute or so back, and I wasn’t sure if Dave was in that group or not.
Without 3 rivals right around me, I don’t think I was quite as fast on the portage this time, but I’d also already done 15 kilometers of paddling so I was pretty tired. It felt good to stretch my legs a bit. As I dropped in at the end of the portage, I could see the c-2s had closed the gap a bit, but I still couldn’t tell if Dave was with them.
On the way upstream, I saw Eric in his way downstream and he said something about “them” being about 100 yards back. I don’t quite understand that, because a minute later I hit the turn and glanced back, and I couldn’t see anyone, canoe or kayak. I still was sure Dave was just biding his time to come smashing through.
I kept that sense of paranoia and impeding doom all the way through to the finish. I put in a nice strong finish sprint, which is unusual enough for me, but especially after 21 kilometers of racing. Turns out I needn’t bother, because Dave was actually about 3 minutes behind me. I guess sleeping in a real bed instead of a borrowed air mattress didn’t work out so great for him.
So like I said on day 1, I don’t know why I do this race, but I’m always glad I do.