As a new phenomenon, Ultra-marathon canoe racing has established itself here in the mid-west. Ok, it’s not a new thing, after all they’ve been doing it in Texas for more than forty years. But for us here, thanks to the Rivermiles team, it has taken hold over the last five years and seems to be gaining strength each year.
From the first MR340 in 2006, a race with fifteen entries, to the past couple of year’s races with hundreds of entrants this thing just keeps growing.
It’s not an event that is easy to watch as the ‘action’ is mostly on desolate sections of the river far from ramps or bridges or parks.
The friends and families of the participants see their racers dragging in after a hundred or two hundred or three hundred miles of competition and see the toll the effort is taking on their heroes. But if you aren’t out on the water”in over your head” so to speak, it’s impossible to understand what these competitors are actually enduring. Only the racers themselves and the race staff are privileged to have a front row seat to this event. Only these people really gain an understanding of what is being endured and what qualities are being developed and displayed by the entrants.
To paddle for forty or fifty or eighty hours is an astounding accomplishment regardless of where the racer places. To team up with another person or persons and maintain a working relationship throughout the race takes a level of respect for your teammate seldom seen in the every day world.
I am not privileged to call myself a military veteran. I have not “been there and done that”. And so I cannot say with authority that the dependence of these teammates on one another is like the military brotherhood of arms. But as a past racer and observer I can think of nothing else with the exception of military service that might tax the character and strength of the individual or team more than this type of racing.
It is not a particular type of person who enters this race. Some are athletes and competitors of the highest order. Some are adventurers. And some are simply curious, about the river or the race or themselves. The paddlers may come from Texas, expecting to escape the blazing heat of a southwest summer only to find themselves broiling in a boat in 95 degree heat with no shade for hours. Others may come from the frozen north possibly hoping to enjoy balmy breezes down a nice warm river. And then shiver through cold wet nights and battering headwinds and blinding fog.
But what is it like? For the man or woman on the water, there are as many different experiences as there are moments in the race. Only a few get the adrenaline rush of bouncing off a buoy, or bridge, or boat or barge. A few will dump and a few will suffer the indignation of assaults from flying carp. Everyone will get hot and cold and wet and chafed.
Picture yourself in the cockpit of a kayak, your legs are cramping and you’ve no room to flex, you are puking over the side. Well, mostly over the side. Your stomach is tied in a knot just like the one you felt when the Principal picked up his paddle (Ok, maybe you aren’t that old). You know you’re dehydrated and light headed but you don’t care. And you are aching in thousands of muscles. The experts say there are only about 640 muscles in your body, but right now you know they lie. The makeshift band aids won’t stay put on the blisters on your hands and your forearms are swollen and your butt feels like it’s been rammed by a freight train.
You see a bank marker that says the next ramp and therefore the next relief is 25 miles away. You can be there in ten hours if you just let the river carry you or you can dig in and be there in four if you ignore the pain. You have to force yourself to take a drink of water; you pick up the paddle and go back to work. That’s when you realize you have to pee.
An hour later you are puking over the side again, well some of it went over the side. You already understand that your nose has been burned out by the aroma of the bilge water and will never work again. You are maddeningly hungry and deathly sick at the thought of eating, all at the same time.
You do the math again, with luck in twenty or maybe thirty hours it’ll all be done. Then you’ll be able to throw this stupid boat on the bonfire at the finish line.
You’ve sacrificed your vacation and paid good money to experience this pain. You’ve worried about your family, your support team, running the Missouri back roads in the dead of night. And they have worried about you too, but you’ve been to tired to notice. You know that only a madman would allow all this to happen….. and then somewhere in the darkness, alone on the water, you realize you don’t want to be anywhere else. Maybe, you conclude, that only a madman would pass up the opportunity to attempt this race.
A hundred miles to go and you already know there will be no way to describe this whole experience to your co-workers when you return to the office. They’ll assume you have sunstroke or hypothermia or bugs in your ears (yes, that one maybe true) or all of the above. And you’ll know they can never comprehend this race, no matter how eloquent you are, unless they take up the paddle themselves.
Actually, not everyone gets sick or falls on the rocks or drops a boat on their ribs or splits their head open on a concrete table or sees the underside of a barge but all have happened. And more. And each year we seem to find new ways to muddy the waters.
So if you seek a real adventure here in the mid-west this just may be as good as it gets.
