Saturday, October 14, 2006I hope to get back to some semi-regular blogging again, starting with this Suwannee race. Linda and I drove up to White Springs, FL Friday afternoon, the day before the race, to avoid an early morning trip. We arrived at the Telford Hotel around 4:00 PM. It is an interesting brick and river rock 3-story hotel built in 1903. This was back in the days when White Springs was a popular tourist stopover for Northeasterners traveling by train, on their way further south into Florida.
The hotel was newly renovated, adding a sprinkler system, etc., but not adding much to the rooms, which had high ceilings, wood floors, chipped paint and period decorated with handmade quilts and antique furniture. We ate in the downstairs dining area, which had a nice buffet and menu.
We woke up to a partly cloudy, cool morning in the upper 40's, just perfect for a hard and long paddle. The starting line was just east out of town at the Hwy 41 bridge. The 25 participant 44-mile Challenge event racers started off in waves at 7:30 AM, while the 23-mile Marathon racers started in waves at 9:00 AM. There were 13 boats in the Marathon that took off in two waves, four minutes apart. The slower boats started first, while six of us took off at 9:04 AM.
Right off the bat, we found the water to be very shallow, as we slid over some sandbars and gravel spots. I took the lead right away and never looked back. It didn't take long and I started to overtake the group which started four minutes ahead of us. At about the two mile mark, I had overtaken all but one of the early starters, as we passed underneath the bridge coming into the west end of town, by the Telford and the Stephen Foster State Park. After that, there were very few signs of humanity, other than an occasional fish camp up on the ridge.
With so little water running down the river, we had little current to help push us along. In fact, I ended up having to quickly jump out of my kayak, start running and dragging it over sandbars and jumping back in, to continue paddling. I repeated this sequence about fifteen times. This added alot of time and severely reduced my pace in the early going. Some of my mile splits were over 13 minutes, such that I could not keep up a 5 mph pace through five miles. I finally was able to gain a little more speed and began to average over 5 mph at about the ten mile mark.
There were many twists and turns through the very interesting hole-pocked rock wall canyon. Occasionally, I would get to slide down a mild rapid. I paddled along with an otter playing out in front of one of the rapids for a few strokes. There were also all of the typical shore birds, including White Ibis, Great Blue Heron, Cormorant, Anhinga and Great White Egret. As I rounded a corner, a Cormorant was standing along the bank holding a fish almost as large as he was. He took off with the fish in his beak, trying to gain altitude, but had to drop it back into the river to maintain his flight.
In the second half of the race, I came across several groups of people camping and canoeing, as well as a group on horseback high up on the ridge. There were a couple of larger camps or parks with walkways down to the water, although all of their piers were high above the very low water level.
At about the 20 mile mark, I caught up with one of the racers from the Challenge race, who wasn't going to make the time deadline to continue, and would have to get out where our finish line was. I picked up the pace over the last three miles and was very happy to finally turn the last corner, to see the finish line at the Spirit of the Suwannee Park. As it turned out, I finished in 4:24, about 45 minutes ahead of 2nd place, with 3rd place another 20 minutes behind. The rest of my group trickled in over the next 2-3 hours.
I was not ready to be competitive over the longer course, but it would have been more fun to have a little competition, rather than just racing against the clock. The weather couldn't have been any better, as the afternoon was sunny and warm. I was even lucky enough to get a nice massage after finishing, which was greatly appreciated.
After hanging out in the sun for a few hours, we drove back to the hotel and waited for the others to come back, so we could have the awards ceremony and drink a few beers while relaxing our sore muscles and discussing the day's race.
