Snow Row: Trial by Ice

The Snow Row inaugurates the New England racing season - a frigid baptism of sorts.  Originally scheduled for two weeks earlier, the event had been rescheduled due to a profound shortage of sled dogs in the Boston area.  A cold snap (colloquially known as "winter") had rendered the waters of Boston Harbor somewhat more solid than you'd prefer for a boat race.  A quick audit of the course on race day revealed a still impressive portfolio of non-liquid assets.  I suspect that the race committee had decided that hulking rowing craft with a half-dozen 12 foot long oars each didn't pose enough of a threat to those of us paddling gossamer slips of wafer-thin fiberglass, and had towed in some additional Titanic-class chunks of ice to augment our peril.

Calls of "Ramming speed!!!" echoed over the snowy waters during pre-race kayak attack drills.

The Snow Row course takes one on a 3.8 mile triangular tour of Hingham Bay, with vertices at the Windmill Point Boathouse in Hull, Sheep Island, and the Peddocks Island day marker.  Vortices are less predictably positioned, but the tidal current surging through Hull Gut has been known to swirl up some doozies.  Just ask me a couple of years ago.

A small but versatile cast of surfski characters showed up for the race.  We had Tim Dwyer (at his dapper best), Wesley (who sleeps in his PFD - just in case a race breaks out in the middle of the night), Bob Wright (resplendent in his new V10 Sport), Tim Hudyncia (snapping at the heels of this race like a crazed doberman), Matt Drayer (rubberized for our protection), Sean Milano (hands down the best conversationalist on the water), and new-guy Hank Thorburn (let's just say for now that he seems like a nice guy).  Then of course there was me (uh, allergic to pecans) and Mary Beth (remember to write something nice here), although MB was slumming it in a kayak.

I'm not sure exactly what was going on here, but I was fortunate enough to capture it on film.

After a quick captain's meeting, I grabbed my ski and headed out to see if I still remembered which end of the paddle to use.  More or less.  Temperatures hovered around freezing, with a light snow muffling the sounds of hurried last-minute preparations from the beach - positioning of heavier craft for their shore-launch starts, coxswains reviewing race strategy, and the fettering of counter-twisted oarlocks (I'm assuming).  The surfskis and other small boats bobbed off to the side as the first three waves stormed from the beach.  We lined up for our turn and were soon hurried off by the starter.

Wesley took the early lead, with Tim H on a starboard draft.  Since none of us had yet had the opportunity to tune his engines for racing this season, a typical slow start didn't put me at as much a disadvantage as usual.  I quickly caught up to Wesley and got on a stern draft, with Tim providing additional pulling help ahead on my right.  Knowing that if I got too comfortable in this cozy position, I'd grow complacent and never amount to anything (thereby fulfilling my parents' prophecy), I forced myself to swing wide to port to overtake Wesley.

I see this all the time, unfortunately.  People fail to safeguard their GoPros and ninjas make off with them.

I hadn't anticipated the additional navigational burdens that I'd be placed under as the ski leader.  Although the morning had started with fair visibility, Sheep Island was now shrouded in haze.  And once away from the shore, hard-to-spot patches of ice were becoming more prevalent.  I tried to stay close to  larger boats as I passed, figuring that the coxswains would use their higher vantage points to steer clear of obstacles (but not figuring that with their robust construction, they only had to avoid the largest of the ice sheets).  I managed to pick my way through the minefields with only one boat-shuddering collision, although I did have to execute a couple of speed-sucking Crazy Ivans.

A shallow bar extends from the south end of Sheep Island.  One of the larger boats had made unanticipated landfall a hundred feet ahead, and was convulsing hither-and-fro to free itself.  I aimed for her center thwart (as one does), in the assumption that the crew was competent enough to get her afloat before I arrived.  Given that this was almost certainly the same crew that had stranded themselves in the first place, I perhaps shouldn't have been so optimistic.  However, it worked out, as things always do (or never do - it's always one or the other).  With my shallow draft, I skipped easily over the bar and rounded Sheep Island.

Although I could see the day marker a mile or so in the distance, nobody seemed to be heading directly there.  Instead the boats ahead were strung out in a long curve that swung from right to left.  I ticked through the possible explanations.  Tidal flow?  Wrong direction.  Coriolis effect?  Also wrong direction.  I was pondering the likelihood of "magnetic anomaly" when it hit me.  Or, rather, I almost hit it.  A vast ice floe blocking our rhumb line.

I could see that stretches of open water had opened up within the frigid shelf.  In their ponderous boats, the rowers had no choice but to circumnavigate the obstacle, but in my more nimble vessel might I chart a path through the jagged labyrinth?  Doubtless the skis behind would follow.  I had haunting visions of leading my cohorts into a Shackletonian nightmare - trapped in the crushing ice pack, forced to survive on a diet of seals and/or fellow paddlers.  Ultimately, I decided to skirt the floe.  Those guys are just too stringy.

I arrived at the day marker in the company of the 4-person sliding seat boat that I had been sparring with for most of the race.  Back at Sheep Island I had decided that beating those gophers (rule #1, dehumanize the enemy) was paramount.  Evidently they had been more judicious in their energy expenditure, however, because after the turn they scurried ahead while I had to catch a quick nap.  When I awoke from my hibernation, they were practically out of sight.  Reasoning that "paramount" may have been overstating things, I concentrated instead on catching the slower craft ahead of me.

My arms were growing increasingly leaden.  At the turn, I had caught a glimpse of Wesley about a minute behind me.  Doubtless he was feeling fresh and helium armed, closing the distance between us with every stroke.  Fortunately, I was able to hopscotch forward through the ranks of bulky rowboats - gaining the briefest spark of energy from each imagined little victory.  If, in this process, I also managed to demoralize some rowers - to even the smallest degree - then I feel it was all worth it.

Nobody regales like Tim, but this day he had trouble wining over a dour Matt.

In this manner, I clawed my way to the finish, first in the ski division.  Wesley, Tim D, and Tim H all came in within the next couple of minutes, followed by Bob, Hank, and Sean.  Matt had unwisely elected to paddle in a thick wetsuit.  He spent the day in a violent struggle against the elasticity of the neoprene and, although he did battle through to finish the race, he clearly lost the war.  Afterwards we amused ourselves by moving his inert limbs to various positions and watching them snap back to wherever the wetsuit wanted them.  He was mostly unconscious anyway.

So, one race under our belts.  One exceptionally short race.  The Snow Row would barely constitute a warm-up for the upcoming Narrow River Race (on April 4).  Our sentence in that race will be 10 miles of hard labor, with a good segment of that through the shallowest water imaginable (seriously, it's more of  a thin film than a river).  If that sounds like fun, you deserve what's coming to you.

These are really going to help bulk up our trophy midden!

Check out this great drone footage of the race.

CRASH-Bs: Rowing Nowhere

Since the days of the Boston Tea Party, hardy souls may have gathered in February on the banks of the Charles to test themselves in rowing matches, but it wasn't until the invention of the kilometer, unitards, and the Concept2 rowing machine (henceforth, the erg) that things really got rolling.  The CRASH-B world indoor rowing championship is a 2K time trial at which some 2,100 competitors come together at Boston University's Agganis Arena to leave their marks.  Over the course of the grueling 9.9 furlong course, most will cram a year's worth of physical suffering into a tidy 6 to 9 minute package.  You're guided in this struggle by (1) a digital console that shows distance remaining, stroke rate, and current pace (in terms of a 500 meter split time), (2) an analog coxswain that shows people to be inherently sadistic, and (3) a rail that constrains your longitudinal motion.  The first two will mock you and lie to you, while the third... well, that's just tempered steel.

The 2K time trial is notoriously difficult - too long to be a sprint, too short to be an endurance event, and too dynamic for the use of supplemental oxygen.  This event separates the men from the boys, but it doesn't stop there.  It further separates the boys into a complex sub-ranking, ranging from Power Lad to Droopy Toddler.  Figuring the trial would once again spit me out somewhere near the end of that spectrum, I came prepared with a binky and a change of clothes.

When asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, George Mallory famously quipped "Because it's there."  Lacking any sensible response - how could there possibly be one? - I'd give the same reason for my participation in the CRASH-B's.  When reminded that Mallory's dessicated corpse was discovered 75 years later, somewhat short of "there", I'd probably grow hostile and refuse to answer any more of your stupid questions.  But after a few minutes, I'd sheepishly relent, because nobody else ever wants to talk to me.  From a tempestuous start, we'd forge a short-lived life-long friendship.

Let's go over the rules.  The horn goes off (there is no horn).  You row.  You're not allowed to deliberately spit on your competitors, but if  you're not inadvertently showering your neighboring rowers with some combination of bodily fluids (tears are my serum of choice), you're doing it wrong.  There will be a lot of yelling, but you won't know if it's coming from you or someone else.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, after a finite amount of time you will finish.  Finally, you will swear off ever rowing again.  Period.

This was to be my third year at the CRASH-B's.  I had pulled a 6:43.0 in my inaugural effort, improved to 6:31.4 as a sophomore, and was looking to break the 6.5 minute mark in 2015, and to perhaps also break into the top ten of my 40-49 age group.  That was going to take some serious training.  The gods were smiling on me, as a nagging kayak-related injury chased me off the water and onto my basement erg by September.  I still had a few working parts left, and I'd be damned if I wouldn't also grind those down by Christmas.

For the first few months, my focus was on building aerobic endurance through long and leisurely-paced sessions.  I tempered the tedium - while also improving my mind - by streaming endless hours of culturally sophisticated Netflix programming.  Turns out that Gopher's real name was Burl!  By December I was ready to trade in some of my slow rows for something a little more arduous - a couple of interval sessions a week.  Mary Beth decided to start training at this point too, leading to many drunken fisticuffs over who would get the erg that evening.

For the next six weeks or so, I was living the dream.  Maybe not the dream - after all, I wasn't yet best friends with Steve Buscemi and was spending a lot of time gasping for air - but life was pretty good.  My interval times were falling faster than Bill Cosby's ticket sales.  By January I was in better shape than I had been at the 2014 race, with 8 weeks of training still on the table!  I started dropping my CRASH-B goal.  6:28?  6:25?  6:23?!?  Narrative etiquette requires that I conclude this paragraph with a declarative statement of hyperbolic optimism. So...  Nothing could stop me!

At 7:42 on the evening of January 24th, the flywheel of my world came to a shuddering halt.  After nearly two months of steady improvement, I suffered an epic meltdown during an interval session.  It wasn't just that I ran up against a physical wall (that is, a metaphorical wall, physically), but that something snapped mentally (also metaphorically, I hope).  I lost the willpower to continue pushing through discomfort levels I had once laughed at (in a queasily maniacal way, granted).  I nominally completed my session that night, but my relationship with intervals - formerly tempestuous, but built on a foundation of mutual respect - had taken an ugly turn.  What I had hoped was a one-time anomaly repeated on me in the next work-out, and then the one after that.

I became haunted by the specter of looming intervals.  Taking a cue from Homeland Security, I initiated a color-coded "Dread Level" plan.  On days scheduled for easy workouts, I'd perhaps be at Dread Level: Yellow.  On interval days, however, the Red banner of doom would be waving over me from the moment I awoke.  I'd spend the day in nauseating contemplation of the forthcoming suffering and verbal abuse (Mary Beth had started piling on), and was seldom disappointed in my fears.  My interval performance was getting steadily worse.  My confidence was shot.  My cousin Toby kept calling to ask about borrowing more money.  That may have been unrelated.

Despite my struggles - or perhaps because of them - the morning of the CRASH-B's arrived.  I had peaked weeks too early, but nevertheless had a reasonable shot at bettering my 2014 time if I could keep the hounds of doubt at bay.  On the drive down to Boston, I reviewed my race plan with Mary Beth, who would once again be serving as my Sherpa - guiding me to my best possible time via the use of strategically applied insults and surreptitiously delivered "vitamin" shots.  Whereas last year I had developed a detailed stroke plan that made the invasion of Normandy look like a slapdash affair, this year I was keeping it simple: pull at 1:36.5 pace until rigor mortis set in.  Assuming I got to the finish line prior to my expiration date, that would put me at 6:26 flat.

A cox has free rein to apply whatever motivational leverage she feels will pry another tenth of a second out of your carcass.  However, in past trials I've heard a few over-the-shoulder phrases that I believe may have had the opposite effect.  So during our strategy pow-wow, I suggested Mary Beth might want to stay away from the following:

• "You're almost an eighth of the way there!"
• "Is that blood?"
• "Why, no... I'm not doing anything after the race."
• "The custodian says he'd like to clean up now."
• "I never noticed that mole before."
• "Noooo!!!"
• "Remember, your speed increases as the cube root of power exerted!"
• "Why can't you be more like your brother?"
• [Disappointed silence]
• "There's always last year."
• "Stroke!  Stroke!  Ooh, a nickel!!!"
• "You've just aged into a new category."

She said she'd do her best, but wouldn't make any promises.

We arrived at Agganis Arena (its summit barely peaking over the snowy wasteland that was once Boston) just in time to see the junior women's world record being shattered.  The air crackled with excitement - cheers echoing through the hall over the soft thunder of imploding rowers.  During warm-ups we ran into Indomitable Roger Gocking, who earlier in the day had himself toyed with breaking the lightweight men's world record for his age group.  Ultimately, he looked inward and decided that the journey was reward enough, leaving the record for another day.  Also, he erred slightly on his pacing and ran his fuel mixture a little lean.

A brief warm-up later, I discovered myself unexpectedly perched on my erg.  So soon... I had been in the Red all day, but as my last minutes ticked away, my level of apprehension over the coming torment reached unprecedented levels.  I was operating at Dread Level: Bile.  It seemed unimaginable that was a voluntary endeavor.  Looking around with wild eyes at my impeccably toned and spandexed competition, I desperately sought a reasonable excuse to bow out.  Death in the family?  Unfortunately, my relatives were all clinging selfishly to life.  Sudden-onset dysentery?  I didn't want to ruin everyone's day.  Robot uprising?  Even if I could arrange it in the next couple of minutes, our new overlords would probably sentence us to a punishment of endless 2K time trials anyway.  My three best options exhausted, I resigned myself to the inevitable.

In a trice, the start fell roughly upon us.  Sit Ready.  Attention.  Row.

At the beginning of last year's race, I had enthusiastically launched off the back of the sliding seat in an apparent effort to cripple myself.  Determined to avoid repeating this drama, I eased out from the dock as if ferrying a parasoled duchess across the Avon.  Perhaps we'd stop for some scones mid-river.  I was concentrating on not spilling a drop of tea when the salty oaths of my coxswain reminded me that while my cox was indeed a woman, she was no lady.  So much for the scones.  With no legal recourse, I responded to her verbal lashing and upped my pace...

... and entered into a wondrous zone of infinite possibilities.  The first 150 meters of a 2K is a magical utopia, where all is sweetness and rainbows, and friendly woodland critters caper about excitedly.  You're 4 years old again, and you cannot believe how fast you're running across the lawn.  Those scores of intervals that established your performance limits - those were the anomalies, while this is your true natural pace.  Deep within your mind, one last spark of rationality suggests that maybe that's the adrenaline talking, but, not wanting to have his glasses broken yet again, tries to play it off as a joke when stared down by his bullying, short-sighted brainmates. 

One of the advantages of doing a 2K is that  - for a span of a few minutes - you get to abdicate your normal mental responsibilities.  You're there to row, not to solve the Middle Eastern crisis, worry about work, or remember how to breathe.  That's what your coxswain is for (and I look forward to hearing what Mary Beth came up with regarding Israeli-Palestinian relations).  I emptied my mind and let MB take the wheel:  "Stroke.  Breath.  Stroke.  Heartbeat.  Stroke.  Multi-national accord.  Stroke."  It worked.  As the words flowed through me at an almost subconscious level, I eased back and settled at my target pace, although I do now have an inexplicable urge to paint the living room.

Since the erg monitor doesn't show pace to tenths of a second, I made a game of trying to alternate consistently between 1:36 and 1:37 to hit my target.  Four strokes at 1:36 then four strokes at 1:37.  Perhaps not the most exciting game ever, but any distraction from the growing build-up of lactic acid and irreversible lung damage was welcome.  As the meters slowly unrolled, I found that all those 1:36's weren't sitting that well with me.  Too bitter.  I threw in a few more 1:37's to sweeten the mix.  Delicious!  Following the unimpeachable logic of this slippery slope, by the 1000 meter mark I had completely flushed all of those foul 1:36's out of my system and was throwing in the occasional 1:38 for seasoning.

When talking about the halfway point of a race, it's important to distinguish between the halfway point as measured by an external observer and the halfway point as measured by someone traveling within the sliding confines of the erg itself.  For the former, the race is obviously evenly divided into two 1K halves.  For the racer, however, time and distance take on a taffy-like consistency.  Although  the world's preeminent physicists and confectioners have explored this phenomena, none have been able to explain how the halfway point can indefinitely recede as one continues to row.  A young Albert Einstein believed that the dilation of time had something to do with flywheels and reciprocating frames of reference, but ultimately abandoned this conundrum to work on simpler problems.

With the halfway point  just ahead, I muddled through to 1500 meters in the general vicinity of 1:37.  The final 500 meters of a 2K is a shadow realm, where all is sorrow and pain, and vicious woodland fiends tear at your soul.  Approaching this dark kingdom, I quickly triangulated a new course that would allow me to skirt the murky depths.  A heading of, say, 1:45 should do it.  I began my course correction when a malevolent snarl from behind froze my heart.  I had forgotten - this wasn't my vessel to captain.  "May the devil be damned!  We row through the Heart of Darkness!" roared my coxswain.  "Stroke!  Stroke!  Stroke!  Breathe tomorrow, worm!  Stroke!"  The leg irons tearing at my flesh, the deep reverberations of the drums numbing my spirit, the fetid stench of my fellow oarsmen overwhelming my senses... I had no choice but to comply.

We plunged ahead at 1:36, foam spraying from my turbulent mouth.  Time dilation in full force, I was able to truly savor the piquant agony of each hour-long stroke.  With 300 meters to go, my overtaxed muscles mutinied and staged a sit-down strike to demand better working conditions.  Sinew and grit would have to see me through for the remainder.  A hundred meters later, grit tendered its resignation (blind to the irony, apparently).  I was almost halfway home, but could only watch helplessly as the shadowy murk closed around me, sucking all hope from my spleen (modern medicine, bah).  I was destined to wander the darkness for all eternity.  Even my hallucinated beacon of hope, Mr. Flappers, couldn't save me this year.  All was lost.

Or was it?  Yes... all is lost.  But maybe not?  Irretrievably lost.  What if I... Look, I'm telling you.  It's lost.  You're lost.  Give it up.  Yeah, but... I can see that I'm going to have to spell this out for you.  You're exhausted.  Ever fiber of your being is hoarse from screaming in pain.  You don't even care about finishing anymore.  It.  Is.  Lost.  But doesn't the mere existence of this inner dialog indicate that I do indeed care about finishing?  That I have some fight left in me?  OK Descartes, then how do you explain the fact that you stopped rowing 15 seconds ago.  Well I... wait.  What?  That's right, sucker.  While we were arguing you finished!  Or did I?

I did.  Even the longest night comes to an end, and I had weathered through to dawn.  While tucking my tattered lungs back inside my body, I struggled to make sense of the jumble of swirling numbers on the console of my erg.  Only after blood flow had been restored to the non-essential organ in my head was I able to make sense of the display.  6.26.3.  Sweet tears of joy flowed down my cheeks.  Only to be replaced seconds later with bitter tears of frustration once Mary Beth had helpfully reminded me that Joe Glickman once pulled a 6:20.  You can bet that no-account show-off would have a good laugh at my expense that night!  Nevertheless, nobody can take away the fact that I had improved my personal best by 5 seconds.  At least not until the blood test results come in.

Mary Beth's heat was to start in less than twenty minutes, so shoving her aside, I rushed to find a secluded area for my vocal exercises.  It was with unfettered glee that I approached my reciprocal coxswain duties.  After locking down an 8:21.0 last year, Mary Beth was looking to cut that in half for 2015.  That seemed a bit optimistic, so we haggled a while before settling on something in the 8:15 range.  She'd aim to maintain a steady 2:03 pace throughout.

After a few minutes of practice strokes to get me in the drill sergeant frame of mind, Mary Beth settled in for the start.  Although she claimed to be nervous, she acted more like she was at Dread Level: Kitten.  I was still at a red-tinged Orange.  Then it was time.  Sit Ready.  Attention.  Row.  I started out of the gate strong, with Mary Beth at my heels.  After the first few moments of frenziedly barked instructions, I settled into a more sustainable rhythm.  I needed to remain within myself if I was going to make it.

Meanwhile, Mary Beth had wisely decided to stick with her inner coxswain rather than start at 130 strokes per minute as her outer coxswain was advising.  By the time I had calmed down and gotten back to the plan, she was a few hundred meters into the race.  At the halfway point (see above), Mary Beth was right on target at a 2:03 pace, but some cracks were starting to show in both her form and my voice.  Whereas last year she had gone out much too slow and then accelerated through the last 500 meters with the flywheel spewing dense clouds of smoke, this year she had gone out perhaps a shade too fast and was now struggling to maintain her momentum.

It was difficult to watch as Mary Beth waged a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckle fight with herself to maintain pace.  Not because of any empathy, but because I was still feeling a little light-headed and nauseous from my race.  I'm proud to say that Mary Beth and I both powered through adversity, retaining a sub-2:04 pace and my lunch, respectively.  With a time of 8:13.3, she had shaved 7.7 seconds off of her previous best time.

We stuck around to watch the Open class competitors in the final races of the day.  This wasn't a choice, but a necessity - neither of us could remember how our legs worked.  We were rewarded with a spectacular race by Cuban rower Angel Fournier Rodriguez, who staged a come-from-behind victory by dropping his pace to jaw-dropping 1:20 with 800 meters left in the race.  Finishing at 5:45.9, Señor Rodriguez had been generating an average of 550 watts.  I was only putting out 388 watts during my effort.  It's nice to know that there's some room for improvement in 2016.

Here are links for the full championship results, my group results, Mary Beth's group results, an animation of my heat, and an animation of Mary Beth's heat.

New England Surfski Downwind: Finishing Touches

The weather for the final race of the season went off-script, ad-libbing uncooperative winds and a light but steady rain.  Despite the gloomy day that lacked proper downwind conditions, 25 skis, a rowing shell, and 3 SUPs gathered at Long Sands Beach in Maine for one last grab at fame, glory, and riches.  Eric may have oversold the race in that regard (not a single reporter, for example, and an embarrassing lack of laurel wreathes), but nobody seemed too disappointed in the end.

While on the topic of disappointment, though... We discovered at the race that Borys and Beata won't be joining us next season.  Having put in their time in the minors (and in the winters), they're being called up to The Show.  They'll be moving to Hawaii in December.  Based on their extra-human abilities, I've questioned whether these two are native to our planet, but since they haven't once tried to enslave us or eat our faces, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Worst case - they came in peace.  Despite their dominant performances over the years, Beata and Borys have competed with humility and good humor.  They've also been relentlessly patient and helpful with slower paddlers (that is to say, all of us).  I'm excited for them in their new adventure, and anxious to see what they'll be able to accomplish with year-round training in the Pacific.  But I'm sure going to miss paddling with them.  I'd wager I'm not alone in that.

Our three-time champions.  And some homeless guy with a head wound who wandered into the shot.

Given that we weren't going to get much of a downwind regardless of which way we ran the course, the consensus was that we should save ourselves the shuttle and just run a loop course from Long Sands.  With that easy consensus out of the way, we commenced a vigorous debate over the substitute course.  Charts appeared and candidate routes were plotted.  Twigs, fingers, and what appeared to be a Dollar Tree discount card were recruited as crude measuring devices.  Alliances were formed and then broken with bitter tears.  Like an old-time political primary, we went through 34 ballots before a winning course was selected.  Fifteen minutes later, a powerful lobbying group convinced Eric to ignore the plebiscite (my high school nickname, oddly enough) and select a shorter course.  That's the way things work in both the halls of power and the shores of leisure.

We'd start out going around Nubble Light off the north end of Long Sands, then head south to a large can marking the entrance to York Harbor, then back for another nibble at Nubble, then back home to Long Sands.  The course would be between 4 and 23 miles, depending on who was making the measurement (if you had 9.1 miles in the pool, you're the winner!).  As the light rains and slight northerly winds continued, we lined up for an on-water start.  Eric called out the 2 minute warning, followed 10 seconds later by the 1 minute warning.  Several seconds after this, we were off.  My hopes that the entire race would follow Eric's accelerated pace were soon dashed as time stubbornly resumed its habitual cadence.  Maybe even slower than usual.

Andrius Zinkevichus and Jan Lupinski jumped out to an early lead.  My strategy was to let them get ahead at the start, then slowly ease myself back so far that I'd finish just ahead of them in next year's race.  We'll have to wait to see how that plays out.  Mario Blackburn, a newcomer from Quebec with a long history in marathon canoeing, settled into third place in his black V14, pulling Eric and me, with Bruce Deltorchio off to my right.  From time to time, I'd see other skis nose into my peripheral view but I found that if I pretended they weren't there, they'd eventually go away.  Mary Beth has tried that approach with me for years, with far less success.

"Bruce and the Nubble" - one of my favorite bed-time stories growing up.

Halfway to the Nubble, Borys decided to start using both paddle blades and slipped past Mario.  Eric jumped on his wash and also pulled away, but I couldn't match their power.  As we got closer to the lighthouse, Mario dropped off a bit, Matt Drayer panned himself into view, and Bruce advanced slightly ahead with a disturbingly relaxed stroke.  Up until that point, I had been wondering (patronizingly - sorry Bruce) how long he would be able to keep up.  I was now realizing that it would be more appropriate for him to be wondering that of me.

Coming around the back of the Nubble about 10 yards off shore, I spotted a rock awash up ahead and several feet to my left, called it out to warn others, then did my level best to smash into it.  At the last second I lost my nerve, tilted the ski on edge in an attempt to save my rudder, and skimmed over the shoal with only millimeters to spare.  Tim Dwyer, who had a good view of the terrifying incident, told me afterwards that he saw my whole life flash before his eyes, and that as a school psychologist, he'd be happy to offer his counseling services.  Immediately afterwards, always-helpful Matt rafted alongside to help stabilize my now-swamped boat.  What's that, Matt?  What kind of so-and-so swerves wildly in front of someone and then slows to a crawl?  OK, I will get out of your way, but I take some issue with your characterization of me as a "toothless hillbilly".

Many a vessel has ended its days on the Subnubble.

Up until this point, my race had been going according to plan (excepting the rock incident - I had initially outlined a right tilt avoidance maneuver).  Borys, Jan, Andrius, and Eric were already out of reach, but I had expected that they'd all beat me.  I was gunning for 5th place.  As we headed downwind towards the can at the mouth of York Harbor, I was running in a loose pack that consisted of Bruce, Tim, Matt, Beata, Joe Shaw, and Mike McDonough.  All I had to do was outlast these folks.

This was not to be.  Although I was physically sound and working hard, everything about my stroke felt wrong.  I had a bad case of spaghetti paddle - I couldn't deliver any power through my noodle, particularly on the left.  I became convinced that my feather angle was screwy, despite repeated pauses to verify that it wasn't.  Despite my best efforts, I could only watch helplessly as my herd abandoned its weakest member, heartlessly immune to my plaintive bleating.

About halfway to the can, Ken Cooper caught me.  The wolf was ostensibly in a V8 at the time, but all those Epics look alike.  I suspect that he spent the previous night transferring stickers.  Although he threatened to pull away completely, over the next mile I managed to stay within shouting distance (I know because I could still hear his snarling taunts from up ahead).  As we approached the can, I cobbled together a few runs and passed Ken just before the turn.  Coming around the can, it looked to be Borys, Jan, Andrius, Eric, Tim, Beata, Mike, Bruce, Joe, and Matt - with the last six paddlers grouped within about 15 lengths of one another.

Given that I had passed him before the Nubble, I was a bit confused to see Mario well ahead on an inside line after the turn.  A lot of us have a quiver of skis for different conditions, but Mario may be the first to notch up multiple boats in the same race.  With limited ocean experience, a mile into the course he found his V14 to be too unstable, so he returned to the start, swapped into his V10, and met up with the pack returning from the York can to log some additional open-water time.  A DNF, of course, but a DNF with style.

My stroke felt much better heading upwind.  With Ken on my draft, I was slowly cutting the distance to Matt and Mike (whose outside line seemed to be working against him).  I got to within 3 or 4 lengths of Mike, but that was it.  I didn't have enough in reserve to close the deal.  First Mike started to drift away, then Ken pulled around me and I was alone.  I told myself that once I rounded the Nubble, I'd throw down an incredible sprint to reel them back in over the final mile, but I practically got laughed out of the boat for giving voice to that delusion.  I can't say that my feelings weren't hurt, but I'm growing accustomed to such disrespect.

There's a small park at the tip of Cape Neddick from which tourists amass and stare dead-faced at Nubble Light.  As I rounded the Nubble to enter the final stretch back to Long Sands, I was greeted (such as it was) by these impassive sentinels.  I couldn't help but feel that they were judging my progress.  That for earlier racers they had cheered enthusiastically, but for me they were following their mothers' advice and not saying anything at all.  And also glaring.  I couldn't get through the Nubble Straight quickly enough.  Which, of course, proved their point.

The protected stretch to the finish was slightly more than a mile.  I started my delusional sprint, but it was soon apparent that I was actually losing ground to the paddlers up ahead.  I was soundly beaten, but I resolved to finish with a strong stroke and head held high.  A few minutes later, I decided that the strong stroke part of that resolve was really not that critical.  A proud bearing should be sufficient to convey my moral fortitude in the face of failure.  It didn't take much longer for me to abandon that rationalization.  It's hard to look dignified when you're moaning, hunched over from exhaustion, and throwing panicked looks over your shoulder to see if you can hold on long enough to keep from dropping another position.

Borys had closed out his New England career like he came into it - screaming and tightly swaddled in blankets.  And atop both the race and season charts.  Jan and Andrius, unfairly fit and just returned from their 3rd place K2 finish in the 45-49 age group at the world marathon championships, took the second and third spots.  Eric, Tim, Bruce, Beata, Joe, Mike, and Matt filled out the remaining top ten positions.  Ken finished 11th overall in his V8 to win the SS20+ division.

The top three finishers.  Without an accent, you're nothing in this sport.

Disappointed by finishing the season in such lackluster fashion, I sulked grumpily until the awards.  The fact that nobody seemed to notice makes me think that I may need to work a little on my everyday demeanor.  After the race awards, Borys and Beata were presented with their New England Surfski season championship cups for the third year running (having already walked off with the SurfskiRacing.com titles back at L2L).  They've been winning going away since they first started racing with us, so it's apt that they're now going away winning.

The end of season raffle, supported by Adventurous Joe Coffee and Epic, saw half the paddlers walk away with some type of goodie.  I managed to deftly weave my way through the prize field without hitting any gold mines.  Bill Kuklinski took home the biggest jackpot of the day - an old-style blue-tip V10 as indestructible as his spirit (although I fear Kirk will take that statement as a challenge).

Another open-water season is now in the books.  We're all one year closer to hanging up our paddles for good.  A younger generation is nipping at our heels.  Winter approaches.  See you next year!

Cape Cod Downwind: Turtles All the Way Down

The inaugural Cape Cod Downwind  race (the name of which has been something of a moving target, starting with "Buzzard Bay Race", briefly passing through "Sherwood's Fun Time Paddle Paddle Paddle Jamboree" before settling on - in my mind at least - the final moniker).  We'd be paddling from Stony Beach at Woods Hole to Megansett Beach, approximately 10 miles north in the cozy confines of Buzzards Bay.  Like the seasoned race director that he'll be 5 years from now after being pressured into continuing the race by the one-two punch of Wesley and Eric, Chris had expertly arranged a chase boat, toilet facilities, shuttles, cash prizes (I'm assuming - guess my check's in the mail), and a post-race shindig.  The consummate host, he'd also arranged to clear most of the tourists off the Cape, making for a much more relaxed outing.

The race coincided with perhaps the most beautiful day of the year - a lesson that perhaps Tim Dwyer should take to heart when planning next year's Double Beaver.  It was the kind of New England day that you want to bottle up so that come January, when your friend from Southern California calls up to tell you about his day at the beach, you can take a couple of hearty swigs (careful - it packs a punch) before defensively slurring out "I live (hiccup) in the besht playsh... in the world.  The besht!" and then passing out in a snowbank.  Hopefully, you saved a little of that sweet nectar because it still has to get you through February, March, and April.

The inviting waters of Stony Beach.

Like a high-end National Geographic tour package, Chris had assembled a crack team of oceanographers to provide paddlers (or "junior scientists", as he insisted on referring to us) with running commentary about the fascinating marine environment of the Cape.  With support from Rocky Geyer (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) and Tim Milligan (Bedford Institute of Oceanography), we were showered with facts about the complex ecosystem of Buzzards Bay.  While I think we all appreciated the knowledge and enthusiasm of our expert guides, by the time I had filled up my second notebook (who knew that the details of ocean acidification could be so, um, voluminous) I was running out of patience.  If I had to hear one more impassioned lecture on coastal sediment transport, someone was going to find themselves head down in a swash zone.

Every once in a while you'll hear about a high school physics class that builds a concrete boat to demonstrate Archimedes' principle of buoyancy.  Kirk Olsen evidently read about one of these and thought "Eureka!  Free boat!", because on Saturday he was paddling the heaviest ski known to man.  It didn't so much displace a volume of liquid equal to its mass as it just squashed the water molecules into submission.  Kirk spent the first half of the race accelerating this behemoth, then had to back-paddle for the remainder to prevent its momentum from plowing a second canal through the cape once it hit land.

Our mighty steeds, ready for battle.

After a successful shuttle launch from the finish, twenty paddlers lined up at Stony Beach with a 10 or 12 knot wind at our backs (based on whether or not you opted for the deluxe race package).  The shallow waters at the start had a spectacular turquoise hue reminiscent of the Caribbean.  If my name were Hugh, that's what I would insist everyone call me.  Turquoise Hugh.  Conditions would start out flat, but would improve as our progress lengthened the downwind fetch.  With some of the top paddlers opting out of this short-notice race, the field was wide open.  Using the terminology of just about every web link teaser I see these days "When you find out what happened next, you'll run screaming around the room and then crap your pants!"  Chris described the course to us in some detail, which the dullards among us distilled down to one key instruction: when your GPS hits 8 miles, turn right.

After a brief warm-up, we set off.  In retrospect, this would have been the perfect venue for a Le Mans start.  Sandy beach oriented perpendicular to the course.  No other people and no obstacles in the water.  Fine complement of North Shore paddlers who could reap the benefit of their Salem League training at the expense of everyone else.  We'll pencil that in for next year, yeah?

Lacking a true rabbit like Francisco (or Kirk when in a boat that he outweighs), Wesley found himself in the early lead, with Tim off his starboard quarter.  For a few delightful minutes, Bruce Deltorchio and I settled comfortably in the sweet spots behind these two.  I'll always remember fondly those halcyon moments of letting Wesley and Tim do 90% of the work.  After a while, however, I sensed that not everyone was as thrilled as I was with this arrangement.  Head hung, I struck out on my own.

I saw something like this in the latest X-Men movie.  I just hope I can harness my powers for good.

Even before a Great White took a chunk out of a kayak on the safe side of the Cape, there had been a lot of talk recently about the explosion of sharks in these parts (Shark-N-T! Sharkburst! Sharktic Blast! I'm waiting by my phone, SyFy channel...).  While the Men in the Gray Suits may be monopolizing the news, Chris Chappell's harrowing race-day encounter reminds us of a more significant regional threat - Chaps in the Green Onesies.  I'm referring, of course, to sea turtles.

These beaked denizens of the deep don't usually leave any witnesses, but Chris claims to have seen one surface threateningly in Mike McDonough's wake.  His muddled description of the beast ("Saucer-like shell, razor sharp flippers, huge compound eyes like those of a honeybee, and a prehensile tail") reflects the understandable terror he must have experienced while watching his own screaming reflection multiplied a thousand times in the great reptile's eye facets.  The leviathan had perhaps recently supped on an unsuspecting SUP, because it let Chris pass unharmed, sliding into the depths behind them with nary a ripple.  I don't want to say that this was unfortunate, but it sure would have helped the reputation of New England paddlers if one of our number could boast some turtle beak scars.

There were many fine runs to be had, particularly in the last couple of miles in the open bay.  While the wind-driven waves trended slightly more shoreward than I wanted, I was able to find other small bumps to help me veer periodically to the left.  Although it felt like I was zig-zagging crazily across the bay, my GPS track reveals a sober profile of subtle course corrections. I hardly even know who I am anymore.  As we spread out on our individual routes, it became difficult to track the other paddlers.  I could see Mike's teal-decked Huki on an inside line off to my right, and a speck of an unidentifiable white ski way off to my left, but that was it.  It was difficult to judge, but I felt like I was slightly ahead of both.

Chris leads us in a pre-race Wampanoag chant designed to ward off Leatherbacks.  Kirk, apparently feeling sufficiently protected by his totemic shirt, demonstrates the kind of hubris that generally ends up with someone short a leg.

At the start of the race I thought I had a bead on the distant promontory that marked the entrance to Megansett Harbor, but as we got closer the once-simple shoreline resolved itself into a series of several individual peninsulas.  My GPS was indicating 6 miles elapsed, but I couldn't decide which of the forthcoming points was still 2 miles distant (and thus where we were supposed to turn landward).  Hedging my bets, I stayed on an outer line until it became clear that the next point ahead really had to be more than 0.02 miles away, at which time I swung starboard and headed into the Harbor.

Once in the Harbor, we had nearly two miles of comparatively flat water to the finish.  With my head on a swivel in a fruitless search for Mike and the mystery ski, I concentrated on catching and eating whatever tiny bumps wandered into my path.  They didn't provide much sustenance, but it was just enough to get me around the breakwater and past the finish dock.  I had established the course record of 1:19:04 - a time which now sits glumly on death row awaiting its inevitable termination in 2015.  Mike pulled in less than a minute behind.  Nabbing the final podium spot was the Inspector Gadget of paddlers, Dave Grainger.  Dave has only raced twice in the last two seasons, but has made those races count - 3rd here and 1st in the 7 mile Lighthouse-to-Lighthouse race a few weeks back.

Bruce and Ken Cooper rounded out the top 5, with Mary Beth and Leslie Chappell taking the top women spots.  The finish of the day came as Bob Wright outlasted Dana Gaines in a final sprint between their SS20+ boats.  The navigational error of the day came as Tim (of mystery ski lore) - apparently so far out in the bay that he could no longer see land - missed the turn into Megansett Harbor and added over half a mile to the course (but still finished in 8th place).  Mike, on the other hand, had taken a line so true that he actually shaved a tenth of a mile off the straight line distance.

We finished our splendid day by eating all of Chris' burgers, finishing off his beer (except the stuff he was trying to get rid of), and stealing his collection of Phil Collins memorabilia (I'm wearing the Invisible Touch Gloves (™) at this very moment).  Many thanks to Chris, Patty, and Sarah for throwing such a great race.

Lighthouse to Lighthouse: Fevered Paddling

Two years ago the Lighthouse to Lighthouse race boasted a complement of twenty-some surfskis - a respectable showing for an East Coast race, but nothing to work yourself into a lather over.  Jump forward 25 months (we had a long winter) and the L2L is now the largest ski race in the country that's not stuffed to bursting with Australian and South African filler.  Eighty skis converged on Connecticut's Shady Beach to compete in the East Coast Surfski Championship this year.  Those in the 14 mile race would be racing on an out-and-back course that would take them by Peck Ledge Light (twice, if all went well) and around Greens Ledge Light.  The 7 mile race would, by my math, be about a third of that distance.

The forecast in the days leading up to the race indicated heavy rains and the likelihood of thunderstorms, but indefatigable race director Gary Williams cashed in a handful of his karma points (don't worry, he's still flush) to push those storms off until evening.  I don't mean to quibble, but would it have killed him to splurge a little and knock a couple dozen degrees off the thermometer while he was at it?  As it was, the temperatures would be in the upper 80s, with an exertion-adjusted heat index slightly above the melting point of lead.

Not sure if the technical term is "flotilla" or "armada", but the East Coast has never before seen such a congregation of skis (Photo courtesy of Betsy Echols).

The field was packed with talent.  With Austin Kieffer, Reid Hyle, and Borys Markin attending, we'd have the 1st, 6th, and 8th place American finishers from the recent US Championships in San Francisco.  And, of course, the 3rd place overall woman finisher in Beata Cseke.  All the local standouts were racing, as well as some regional stars from as far away as South Carolina.  Given my recent paddling funk, breaking the top ten would require 3 to 5 separate loaves-and-fishes caliber miracles.  Plus maybe a little rudder line sabotage, just to be safe.

Unfortunately, New England mainstays (and frequent contributors of priceless raw material for these reports) Kirk Olsen and Bill Kuklinski were race day scratches.  While making their way down the Mass Turnpike, their ski rack was ripped from Kirk's car and deposited on the side of the highway.  Nobody was hurt, but the skis suffered a few race day scratches of their own.  Based on his various misadventures during the 2013 season, it looked like Jan Lupinski might usurp Kirk's role as the guy you'd least want to be standing next to in a thunderstorm.  However, between somehow wedging his paddle under a competitor's rudder during the Double Beaver and this latest ski-lift maneuver, Kirk has stepped up his game.

During the course of the day I met a dozen or so new paddlers, all of whom were named either Mike or Mark.  I suggest that in the future, race officials enforce a more stringent Mike/Mark cap to level the playing field.

Maybe I should have concentrated a little more on the race start and less on taking crappy pictures.

Let's skip ahead to the part of the report where I've gotten off to a terrible start but, with scrappy determination and a can-do attitude, I'm clawing my way towards the front.  Actually, I've gotten a little tired of that clichéd narrative arc.  Let's instead say that I've gotten off to a terrible start but, with a growing sense of panic and frustration, I'm clawing to hang onto whatever draft wafts my way.  I passed a few boats right after the the start, but after a few minutes I was making no further progress through the ranks.  Fortunately, I managed to pull myself together long enough to bridge a small gap to Chris Laughlin.  It wasn't a flashy promotion, but I was working my way up the ladder.

Chris was holding fast on Rowan Sampson's wash.  I settled in behind Chris to also take advantage of the latter's legendary strength.  I had the foreboding sense that someone was on my tail as well, but since I make a point in life of not confronting my fears, I kept my eyes forward.  Matt Drayer has a distinctive stroke that allows you to pick him out of a crowd from a distance - and not just when he's on land.  I had spotted him some minutes earlier up ahead and now was pleased to find that we were closing on him.  Even though I wasn't actually the one doing the work to reel in Matt, a small flicker of optimism was ignited.  Maybe I could turn this race around...

Or maybe things would get worse.  Yeah, that one.  Chris took over pulling from Rowan and we did pass Matt, but I could no longer hold on to the train.  That lonely spark of optimism was gently snuffed out.  Then - just to be sure there were no lingering embers - Chris Chappell, Peter Kahn, and Matt ground their heels on the ashes as they passed in succession.  It was a kindness.  I was now inoculated against further episodes of foolish hope.  I paddled on toward the turn-around at Greens Ledge Light.

Immediately after turning and starting the downwind run back home, I realized that I had made a terrible mistake.  By showing up, I mean.  I had been paddling poorly up until this point - there's no way around that.  I was drained and discouraged.  With the loss of the marginally refreshing headwind, however, whatever small reserve of competitive juice I had left boiled off in the blistering conflagration.  I just hoped that the authorities would have time to clear out the islanders before my inevitable nuclear combustion.  When Tim Dwyer and Wesley passed me a few minutes later, I felt not the least twinge of disappointment - only envy that they'd be out of this frying pan sooner than I would.

It's been kind of a downer report so far, so I figured I'd ask Jan to provide a little comic relief.

They always tell you not to try out any new equipment or procedures on race day, but I figured I could exempt a hat from that dictum.  I've worn hundreds and - excluding a sombrero incident I'd rather not get into here - have never had problems that couldn't be resolved with a 500 peso note and a midnight escape by burro.  Good ol' Stanley.  I generally tether my hat to my PFD so that if I somehow slip out of the jacket after a spill, I'll dangle comfortably just a couple feet under the surface for easier retrieval.  I was using a new hat with a slightly different tether for the L2L.  Not sure why, other than the thrill of living on the edge.

When I caught the first whiff of burning human flesh about 15 minutes into the return trip, I figured it'd be wise to quench the fires before the aroma attracted cannibals from nearby Long Island.  I whisked off my hat to scoop water over my head, only to find that I was a latter-day Tantalus.  For a few seconds I stared stupidly at the hat, held stubbornly motionless a foot over the surface by its tether.  Failing to grasp the simple mechanics of the situation, I lifted the hat and tried again.  Still no dice.  Finally understanding what was going on, I tried several contortions to lower my shoulder (and the tether anchor) closer to the water - excellent balance practice, by the way.  Giving up on this unsuccessful strategy, I fumbled to undo the velcro closure on the back of the hat and detached the leash.  Unbeknownst (man, that really doesn't look like it should be a word) to me, in my overheated haste I had inadvertently ripped off the strap containing the velcro loops and dropped it unseen between my legs.  I found myself confounded yet again as I tried to reset the velcro adjustment - the hooks refused to attach to any part of the hat, no matter how many increasingly vehement expletives I applied.

I wasn't sure I wanted to live in a world where velcro could just mysteriously stop working (what's next, post-it notes dropping off willy-nilly?), but I had more pressing problems.  Without the strap to hold it in its proper shape, my cap was now just a limp piece of nylon.  As such, it scooped water about as well as a teflon coated spatula.  What little water that actually made it to my head did nothing to quench the inferno - it evaporated in a cloud of steam before it could even drip past my ears.  Lacking built-in pate protection, I spent the remainder of the race either balancing the formless cloth on my head or using it to flip token splashes of water on myself.

You may think I've wasted an inordinate amount of time writing about a stupid cap.  That's true, but there's a method to my madhatterness.  While you've been occupied trudging through the last few paragraphs, I managed to finish the rest of my god-awful downwind leg without having to relive the experience in writing.  You didn't miss much.  I got passed by yet another Mark and Mike (Mckenzie and Alexeev - both of whom seemed way too chipper for the searing apocalypse we found ourselves in).  I caught and passed Wesley, who was cramping so badly from dehydration that he resembled one of those gnarled Inca mummies that turn up every so often in the Andes.  Once I managed to ooze around Peck Ledge Lighthouse, a cross-wind provided enough of a respite from the heat that I was able to regain solid form for the finish.

Borys at the finish (Photo courtesy of Betsy Echols).

I had managed to break the coveted 2:07 threshold by a single second - good enough for 18th place.  Some 25 minutes earlier, Austin had set the new surfski course record, with Borys and Reid taking the other podium spots.  Jan (who ages like a fine cheese over the course of a season), Craig Impens, Andrius Zinkevichus, Flavio Costa, Andrew McMarlin, Beata, and Eric Costanzo filled out the remaining top ten singles' spots.  In the women's race, Beata was joined in the money by Pam Boteler and Mary Beth.  Eric McNett and Jim Mallory made short work of the double's race.

At last year's race, Mary Beth had badly Markin'ed the course, paddling past the returning cut-in at Goose Island and instead rounding Cockenoe Island (and then some - you can never be too sure).  That added about 2 miles to her day, granted, but fails to explain how she managed to come in 38 minutes quicker this year.  She has been subject to bouts of uncontrollable rage recently, but there's probably no connection there.  For her effort, she was rewarded with an oversized novelty check which she has since lorded over me mercilessly, and with an alarming disregard for logic.  As in... Me: "Don't you think the TV is a little loud?" Her: "When you've won a substantial cash prize, you can choose the damn volume.  Now make me some waffles."  I might just have to ask Kirk to strap that check to the top of his car.

I enjoy racing for racing's sake.  But for some people, it's all about the payout...

With solid sponsors (Stellar and WomenCAN International), impeccable organization, the best post-race spread in the business, and more lighthouses than one person could ever hope to count, the L2L is already the premier East Coast surfski race.  However, Wesley has set a goal of making it the biggest surfski race in North America - a lower-key alternative to the US Championships out west.  Knowing the Echols' drive, even if that means duct-taping unsuspecting beach-goers onto boats and pushing them out to sea, I suspect he'll see to it that we have 125 skis in a year or two.  I was going to helpfully suggest a tongue-in-cheek slogan to draw paddlers from the Championships - "You've seen the best, now paddle with the rest!" - but with competitors like Austin, Borys, Reid, and Beata showing up, I'm afraid that tagline doesn't really hold water.  I'm looking to forward to finding out who turns up next year, and in what quantity.

US Surfski Championships: Westward Whoa!

Each time I told land-based friends or family members that I was heading out to the US Surfski Championships, I allowed myself several seconds to enjoy the grudging admiration they expressed at finding that I was competing at the national level (while ignoring the raised eyebrows of obvious surprise).  I then felt guiltily compelled, however, to point out that the qualifying criteria were limited to ponying up a registration fee and making your way to San Francisco.  I took no offense at the inevitable replies of "No wonder!" and "Now it makes sense...", but was a little hurt that my dad was doubtful that I could even get to California on my own.

I'd be participating in two races in the Bay Area, both organized by WaveChasers - a local paddling group.  On Wednesday evening there'd be a warm-up competition in the waters south of San Francisco.  Then on Saturday morning the championship race would have us starting in the Pacific, going under the Golden Gate Bridge, and crossing the Bay to end at in Berkeley.  Mary Beth wouldn't be racing, but she'd accompany me on my mission as a one-person support team.  A Robin to my Batman, you might say.  Assuming that Robin's duties consisted primarily of apologizing for Batman's social blunders, assuring him that the Joker was laughing with him, and occasionally cutting his steak.

Better get a beverage and some Twinkies.  This is a long one.  You're going to wonder if it's supposed to be a real-time account.

Our trip out West didn't start auspiciously.  Discovering that paddles could not be taken as carry-on luggage, I had obsessed for weeks over how best to safely transport them, eventually settling on checking them within a hard-sided gun case.  Not wanting to attract the wrong kind of attention, I had plastered the case with stickers that said "Paddle Inside" and "Kayak Equipment".  This had roughly the same impact as dressing a rabid pit bull in one of those plaid poodle vests.  Responses at the airport ran the gamut from people casting nervous glances over their shoulders to diving for cover.  In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have worn my novelty bandolier.

After assuring most of the United employees in Boston that I was not, in fact, checking a firearm, I checked my paddle, caught up with Mary Beth (who took a heck of a long time tying her shoe out at the curb, now that I think of it), and proceeded to airport security.  Upon advice of counsel, I won't go into the details of a subsequent incident involving an allegedly oversize carry-on bag.  Oh - not legal counsel.  Mary Beth's counsel.  She feels that I'm likely to embarrass myself enough elsewhere in this report without revealing how exactly I managed to get blood on half the clothes in my bag.

Borys and Beata prepping their skis

Arriving in San Francisco on Wednesday morning, we made our way to the start of that day's race - just south of the airport near Coyote Point.  I met up with Kenny Powell of California Canoe & Kayak, who was providing me with the V10 Sport I'd be using for both races.  Nice guy, Kenny, but something of an enabler for wide-eyed out-of-towners in over their heads.  The rest of the Northeast gang filtered in - Tim Dwyer, Jim Hoffman, Borys & Beata (last names withheld to protect their privacy), and Craig Impens.  In the opposite of a surprising twist, Jan Lupinski showed up 10 minutes before race time in street clothes and without a boat, and yet somehow ended up beating me by 20 minutes.  Although not as packed with superstars as Saturday's race would be, we'd be paddling against such notables as Oscar Chalupsky, Greg Barton, and Sean & Kenny Rice.

We would be racing on a shortened version of last year's Championship course - one of the most reliable downwind paddles in the country.  After rounding Coyote Point, we'd head south under the highest span of the San Mateo bridge, continue another 4 miles deeper into the bay, then angle right into Redwood Creek (which sounds a lot more appealing than it actually is), finishing at the Bair Island Aquatic Center (affectionately known as BIAC by locals, and as "Oh sweet Jesus, the end" by me).  While the Championship race would include the glamor of the Golden Gate Bridge and spectacular views of San Francisco, Alcatraz, and the Berkeley hills, Wednesday's course was decidedly less scenic.  Nobody ever asks a passerby to take their photo in front of a slough.

Greg Barton getting some last minute pointers from Tim

I usually use a paddle leash.  I wasn't about to take any chances in California though, so I instead broke out my leg leash and had it surgically attached to my tibia.  Then I got nervous, thinking that in the inevitable high-speed capsize, I might inadvertently rely on a non-existent paddle leash while shielding my head from the impact (figured I'd tuck and roll).  You can never have too many loose lines, I thought, as I rigged up the second leash.

Shortly after 5, a crowd of 40-some skis hit the water as SFO-bound jets streamed low overhead.  Two chase boats maneuvered into position to define the starting line, and we were off.  Although we all presumably were headed for the same initial waypoint - the center span of the San Mateo bridge - a spectator couldn't be blamed for assuming our mission was to fan out and reconnoiter the lower reaches of San Francisco Bay.  No two boats seemed to be on the same line, so I followed their lead and claimed a bearing for myself (114 degrees, if my compass was true).

Evidently my line wasn't as unique as I had thought.  I found myself close to Beata a few minutes after the start.  I've managed to stay in front of her this season in the placid waters back east, but she's clearly the better rough water paddler.  If I could keep her in sight, I'd be doing well.  Turns out I couldn't, and I wasn't, but I did manage to stay with her for the first couple of miles.

As the locals had promised (or warned, depending on your perspective), once we got out into the main channel approaching the San Mateo Bridge, the conditions intensified.  A wind-versus-tide conflict magnified and steepened the waves, such that I found myself in seas twice as large (and, say, eight times as terrifying - it's an exponential relation) as anything I had ever previously encountered.  We'll occasionally have conditions like this back home, but we're generally too busy boarding up our windows to get out on the water.

Through a combination of blind luck, the stability of the V10 Sport, and a few well-placed prayers, I managed to string together several spectacular runs (while simultaneously losing ground to the paddlers ahead of me, granted, but they still felt spectacular).  Lacking the sense or skill to cut diagonally down the waves, I seemed in constant danger of burying my bow.  While crawling out on the back deck to avoid this, I had visions of being pitch-poled high over the next wave, my boat pausing momentarily behind me until the leash bungees pulled taut and hurled a carbon-kevlar javelin in my direction.

That Wile E. Coyote scenario didn't quite come to pass, but as I pushed too hard to hop on a particularly vengeful wave, I flipped in a convincing fashion.  I was safely tethered to the boat (and paddle!), wearing a PFD, dressed appropriately for the water temperature, and have never lost a single crew member in dozens of prior boating mishaps.  In short, I was in no actual danger.  Despite all of this, a casual observer to the scene would have assumed that an epileptic non-swimmer had been tipped into arctic seas wearing only a speedo.  Overwhelmed by senseless panic, I swallowed a good mouthful of seawater (calms the nerves) and scrambled crazily to get out of the water.  Not only did I forget everything I ever learned about getting back on a ski, my initial wild-eyed attempt at remounting demonstrated a twitchy lack of coordination more typically associated with marionettes than 38 year old athletes (or 47 year old wannabes, for that matter).  At one point I believe I had both feet in the bucket and one arm passed through the foot strap (try that, Howdy Doody).

If executed correctly, a panicked frenzy is self-limiting - you'll quickly find yourself too exhausted to keep up the manic outbursts.  Calming myself in this fashion, my third remount attempt was successful.  As I sat astride my ski, catching my breath and getting my bearings, a fellow racer cruising by asked if I was OK.  I shouted out a resolute "I think so?" and watched him speed downwind.  It was at about this point that I realized that I was essentially lashed to the boat.  My leg leash was wrapped around the hull, my paddle leash was wrapped around the leg leash, and both were coiled around various appendages.  Those marionette cracks were coming back to haunt me.  I had chewed halfway through my leg before, to my chagrin, I realized I could just undo one end of the leash to untangle the cords.  I slipped my surly bonds and was free.

My GPS indicates that from the time I went over until I started paddling again was only about two minutes, but that malicious little flapcrapper lies all the time about my speed, so I'm not sure why I should believe it in this instance.  Despite being a little shaken by my quarter hour adventure, I screwed up what little courage I had left and threw myself back downwind.  I passed under the San Mateo Bridge without incident, and my race went reasonably well for the next couple of miles. 

Several other paddlers later corroborated a phenomenon that I thought I might have been imagining.  The alignment of the wind, course direction, and sun meant that you would be alerted to a particularly large wave approaching not by your stern lifting suddenly, but by an ominous shadow that stole over you as the wave blotted out the low-lying sun.  More than once I took advantage of this advance warning system to power up in preparation for the wave itself.  I was catching a reasonable number of runs - at least enough to help minimize the amount of time I was losing to the rest of the field.

With 3 miles of downwind left, however, I started to lose the rhythm.  Or perhaps I had grown so fatigued from chasing down uncatchable waves that every wave now fell in that category.  There was a lot of wallowing, supplemented by a healthy dose of swamping and peppered with salty language.  I went over once more, and spent so much time sloshing around in a bucket full of water that I had to periodically stop to scrape the barnacles off my thighs.  Talk about chafing...

Craig didn't need a single stroke to complete the downwind course

Although most of the racers were dressed in fluorescent hues of eye-searing brightness, and thus were visible for quite some distance, these guiding lights had gradually been blinking out ahead of me over the course of the race.  Increasingly enveloped in metaphorical darkness (with literal darkness not that far behind, if my understanding of celestial mechanics wasn't off base), it was getting downright lonely in the rushing sea.  Ultimately, I was left with a single lodestar - a snake-striped Huki two dozen lengths ahead of me.  Fearful of being unable to find the turn into Redwood Creek on my own, I flogged the water mercilessly in an attempt to maintain contact.  Although our long-distance relationship was tested over the next couple of miles, we ultimately made it through the trying times.

Before the race, I had heard some jaded locals grumbling about the 3 miles of flat water that marred the finish of their otherwise unblemished downwind course.  They failed to note that today we'd have the added indignity of paddling these flats against both the tide and wind.  By the time I got to Redwood Creek (a delightful name that I have to assume was given ironically), however, I was so grateful to be free from the uncooperative waves that even the subsequent sub-6 mph slog couldn't dampen my spirits.  I even managed to pass a few boats.

As I approached the finish at BIAC, two mystery boats emerged from the twilight gloom to knock me back to my rightful place in the results (32nd!  But also last in my age group!).  It was Borys Markin and Greg Barton - an unlikely pair to join me in finishing nearly 45 minutes after the winner (Australia's Greg Tobin).  Greg and Borys had gotten lost in the tangled estuaries, and would perhaps still be haunting the sloughs now but for a few strategic portages through sucking mud.  With any luck, the fog of time will erase this truth - leaving my 1.8 second loss to a double gold medalist unsullied by nuance.

Nosed out yet again by Greg Barton...

Fortunately, the rest of the East Coast gang picked up my slack.  Jan finished an impressive 14th (at 1:57:39), with Craig (15th, 1:57:53) and Jim (17th, 1:58:54) close on his heels.  Beata took 1st among the women and 20th overall (2:06:03).  Despite stopping midway to touch up his hair and make-up for the photo shoot, Tim smiled his way to 28th place (2:14:48).  I was an exhausted 32nd (2:18:49).  It wasn't quite the indoctrination to West Coast paddling that I had hoped for (I figured there'd be more wine and avocados involved), but at least now I had an all-consuming dread of Saturday's race.

You can view the excellent WaveChaser photos of the event here (including many good shots of Jim, Tim, and me - I'm in the last few of the set, while Jim and Tim are about halfway through).

We're twenty paragraphs in and it's still only Wednesday.  You have to pace yourself.  Take a short break.  I'll wait.

The Northeast gang.  Jan, ever the shy one, wouldn't look up for the photo.

Let's see if I can squeeze the two off-days into a single paragraph.  On Thursday Mary Beth and I drove up to Muir Woods, only to discover that it's bad policy to place a awe-inspiring national monument a half-hour drive from a major metropolitan area.  We settled for scoping out the Muir Beach start, driving up Route 1 along the coast, and grabbing some beer at Russian River Brewing (the US Champion of breweries, with all due respect to Craig Impens and the estimable Stone Brewing) in Santa Rosa.  On Friday - demo day at Shorebird Park - I got an early jump on my Christmas list.  Can't wait to see what's sticking out of my chimney come December.  Tim and I shared some quality time with defending champion Sean Rice.  Sure, it was in the context of a paid clinic, but I'm pretty sure he would've wanted to hang out with us regardless.  Sean's a really nice guy and a skilled instructor.  He may also be the youngest person I've ever met.  The day concluded with a race meeting at which Carter Johnson (a legendary local paddler who apparently lives out of his surfski across the Bay in Sausalito) told us horror stories about the unspeakable fates that await those that try to cut either Point Bonita (death, maiming, etc.) or the Angel Island nun (disqualification, shaming, etc.) in a manner that suggested that he thought the latter had more serious repercussions.

Chumming with the Champ

Congratulations.  You've made it to race day.  After catching shuttles to an overcast Muir Beach, we lined up our skis and engaged in our individual pre-race rituals.  Lacking any goats to sacrifice (see above comment about over-sized carry-on incident at airport), I offered up 83 cents and half a Snickers to a shabby bearded guy with a trident tattoo sleeping on the beach - presumably a human manifestation of Neptune.  I had managed to keep my nerves at bay until this point, but now felt an unbearable pressure in the chest and shooting pains in my left arm.  That's normal, right?

The course was similar to that of 2012.  After leaving Muir Beach, we'd paddle south along the coast to Point Bonita - a dramatic be-lighthoused headland that protects the mouth of the Bay.  Turning eastward, we'd pass under the Golden Gate Bridge and make our way towards Angel Island.  After passing between the island and the green nun, we'd head for the finish at Shorebird Park in Berkeley, picking our way through a gap in the derelict Berkeley Pier on our way.  Several miles into the race, a hotspot awaited one of the superskis.

A good part of my anxiety about competing in the Championships had been focused on the surf launch at the start.  All anyone had to say to me was "Joe Glickman's paddle", and I'd retreat whimpering to the nearest high ground.  Fortunately, that phrase doesn't come up all that often.  For weeks before the race I had woken in a salty sweat from nightmares in which I was frantically trying to reassemble a surf-crushed boat.  Mary Beth's prank of sneaking a busted up ski bow into bed with me one night didn't help matters.  So it was with great relief that I saw that the surf at Muir Beach was minimal.  I launched without any life-threatening issues.

Muir Beach a couple of hours before the start

The strong field of women paddlers were sent off 5 minutes before the men.  Once they were away, I settled into a starting position in the back-most third of the men's flotilla.  Before my mouth even had a chance to fully dry out, the starter set us loose.  My start was typically slow, but unlike most races, I wasn't able to pick off any overly optimistic paddlers during the first mile.  I was in the big leagues now.  Well, maybe not quite in the league - more like attending fantasy camp with the pros.

The field quickly divided into two hordes - one on an inner line aimed at the hot spot and the other apparently heading for Big Sur.  Figuring you only get so many opportunities to be lost at sea, I chose to follow the outer group.  At a safe distance, naturally - no reason to risk a pile-up this early in the race.  As we progressed south toward the mouth of the Bay, conditions grew increasingly beamy.  Nothing too daunting, but sloppy enough to dull my form and keep my speed down to a sluggish (quick glance at GPS, followed by double-take at GPS)... 8.6 mph!?!  Even well outside the mouth, we were being sucked inexorably into the Bay by the flooding tide.

Start of the men's race

For Wednesday's race I could blame poor performance on my country bumpkin ignorance of big city conditions - I was quite literally in over my head.  Now I was in a stable boat in pig slop that was only slightly more distasteful than what I'd often wallowed in back on the farm.  There could be only one explanation as to why I was steadily losing ground to so many faster paddlers.

Even as we passed Point Bonita, the inscrutable (and invisible - at least to me) leaders of the outside pack continued their southerly charge across the mouth of the bay.  I watched longingly as the insiders rounded the point and started eastward on a direct line to the left stanchion of the Golden Gate Bridge.  When I had just about given up hope that I'd ever be flattened by boat traffic in the Bay, I noticed a string of skis in our group finally turning sharply to the left.  As I've never been hesitant to tell people - I eschew right angles (a mantra that explains both why I failed shop class and why I got punched a lot in shop class).   Figuring I'd take advantage of my God-given right as a straggler, I angled diagonally left to cut the corner.  Doing some rough trigonometry in my head, I figured I'd soon be in the lead.

As it turns out, the trailblazers of the outside pack weren't as geometrically challenged as I had suspected.  They had circumnavigated (or, more accurately, rectu... never mind) a minefield of jagged waves arriving from every conceivable direction (and a few I hadn't previously even considered).  I had not.  Struggling to make significant progress beyond what the ever-present tidal boost was providing, and in danger of losing several fillings, I decided that I might perhaps embrace right angles after all.  If they were good enough for Pythagoras, Tron, and Pac-Man, who was I to make waves?  I adjusted my course accordingly, and soon escaped certain jouncing.

In the smaller races that I'm used to, you generally have a good sense of where you stand at any given time.  You keep updating a mental model of your place in the race as it progresses.  In the Championships, however, that mental model was elegantly simple.  At about the 3rd mile I arrived at a unnerving realization:  I'm in last place.  The other 90-some paddlers are now ahead of me.  I am the single worst paddler in this race.  I didn't take this punch to the ego well at first (there were tearful lamentations), but eventually came to peace with it.  Just after settling into my new-found role as a sad-sack loser, I was shocked to see a Fenn trying to slip me to the left.  I'm not in last place!  I can redeem myself!  For the next couple of minutes, I threw everything I had into holding off this challenger, but it was ultimately fruitless - he passed and pulled away.  Alright, now I'm in last place.  And I progressed again through the painful process of coming to grips with my lowly status.  This sequence was to repeat itself probably 25 times during the next dozen miles - the final iteration as I took a swim 200 meters from the finish while desperately trying to stay ahead of yet another threat.

In retrospect, I probably wasn't in last place any of those times.

Rejoining the outer pack (as a fringe member, of course), I eventually found myself nearly in the middle of Golden Gate Strait, pointing directly at the center of the bridge, still more than 2 miles away.  Over the next fifteen minutes, the majestic bridge loomed larger and higher, until finally I passed into the Bay.  No matter how many times I paddle under the Golden Gate Bridge, I still get chills.  And thanks to the glorious leaders of the Outsiders, I didn't have to slink by shamefacedly just meters from the northern shore.  I understand the Insiders don't even get lifetime access to the Gater Club VIP lane.

Since I had made the turn into the Bay, I had been catching odd runners.  The downwind conditions continued to improve as I passed under the bridge, but these were frequently interrupted by capricious patches which had apparently decided to opt out of the prevailing trends.  I found myself
paddling through various fantastical realms: an area the size of a football field with choppy little standing waves, a zone of almost glassy smoothness, an elliptical zone populated by talking seahorses (it's possible that I hadn't been hydrating properly).  During this fevered time, I could see more adventurous paddlers ahead of me, zigzagging crazily in search of the best downwind conditions - sometimes in a direction literally perpendicular to the direct line.  I was content to aim for Angel Island, accepting whatever freaky conditions the Bay deigned to give me.

I had been warned by race officials, area paddlers, and a bizarre anonymous 3am phone call that the Bay would be clogged with boating traffic.  Other than flotsam-to-be surfskis, I mean.  There would be throngs of cargo ships, pleasure boats, tour boats, and sailboats - all of whom would like nothing better than to continue their disbelief in the phenomena (so-called) of self-powered craft.  Although 97% of surfski paddlers insist that they do in fact exist, these kayak denialists would look right through you as they plowed your boat under, perhaps remarking idly that the wind in the rigging can sometimes sound just like human screams.  Despite all this, I had but a single close encounter - a handsome sailing vessel of some size, whose captain had striking hazel eyes (a fleck of blue in the left) and who had recently dined on what I believe may have been garlic scampi.

Fearful of missing the Angel Island nun, I had to force myself to constantly correct to the left lest lust for downwind speed lead me too far off course.  As if to underscore a lesson on the direct line not necessarily being the fastest, just before I arrived at the nun a ski sliced ahead of me from the right, made a sharp turn around the buoy, and headed home for Shorebird Park.

Jim finishing strong and scenic

We now had 6 miles of unadulterated downwind ahead.  The waves were bigger than what I was accustomed to by a fair margin, but not nearly as awe-inspiring as Wednesday's behemoths.  They were manageable.  Surely in a stable boat like the Sport I could string together a solid 6 miles of paddling to cap off my trip.  Let's do this!

To be fair to myself, I can't imagine, say, a baboon in a ski handling this stretch as well as I did.  I linked together several reasonable runs.  None of my 3 remounts concluded with me trussed to the boat.  I was mostly continent.  However, I was also passed by a dozen or so paddlers, some of whom appeared to be napping at the time.  If there was any doubt before about the soft underbelly of my surfski skills, this downwind evisceration revealed my, uh, Achilles' heel.  Nevertheless, I was having a blast.

It was difficult to see the rotting husk of the derelict Berkeley Pier (a 3.5 mile long boondoggle that saw just 12 years of service before clogging up the Bay for the subsequent 75 years), but I eventually spotted it and surfed through one of the gaps.  Once on the other side, the finish was a straight shot just a mile ahead.  Just 3 more people overtaking me ahead.  Just one spill ahead.  Just one gut-busting sprint ahead.

I'm almost home

I finished my first Championships at 2:02:33.7 in 76th place - nearly 30 minutes behind winner Sean Rice (call me, buddy!), who repeated as champion by beating Jasper Mocke by 7 seconds.  Despite my downwind troubles, I had averaged 8.2 mph for a 17 mile journey.  You can do the math for Sean.  The after-race consensus was that the outside line into the Bay was superior, despite adding a half-mile to the course.  Those closer to shore had to contend with eddies and a less robust tidal flow.

I again served as sweeper for the East Coast Crew.  Without Greg Barton to lead him astray, Borys finished a solid 24th (1:45:26), and was the 7th US paddler in.  Beata made the podium by finishing 3rd among women (54th overall, 1:55:59).  Jan (53rd, 1:54:58), Jim (54th, 1:55:20), and Beata showed impressive solidarity in finishing within 61 seconds of each other.  Rounding out the crew were Craig (60th, 1:57:18) and Tim (66th, 1:59:17).  Our Blackburn friends Dorian Wolter and Reid Hyle finished 11th and 20th, respectively, with Dorian being the 2nd US finisher.

The big guns - Sean Rice, Jasper Mocke, Clint Robinson, Dawid Mocke, and Austin Kieffer

After landing my boat and chatting for a while with other competitors, there was no sign of Mary Beth.  She had a thankless week (oh hey, thanks, by the way) as my driver, equipment manager, medic, and motivational coach, so I wondered if she had perhaps decided to take off for some much-deserved R&R in Napa.  I finally found her at the finish line, searching the seas in vain for one final paddler - she hadn't seen me finish.  To her credit, she did a good job of at least appearing relieved to find me whole.

I had a great time in California.  Of the 100 best runs I've had in my life, 97 of them came in this trip.  I can't say that I wasn't disappointed in my performance, but that's just one facet of the experience.  I got to hang out with my paddling buddies, met a lot of great people (including a college friend's wife's sister's husband's brother - small world), learned a little something about paddling (left-right-left-right - who knew?), and had the opportunity to see San Francisco Bay from a perspective that not many people can boast of.   Thanks to all hard-working WaveChaser crew for making such a fantastic event possible.

You can view many more photos of the trip here.