Tonight's race was going to be interesting, with two days since the Sun Run, it would be fun to see how I will do. I had a race plan for tonight's race, which was to go hard right from the get go.
I had Bob in his V10 Elite on the left side of me, Jim in his K1 Thunder just ahead and to the left, and John and Lina in their double baidarka. The race was going to be straight across Indian Arm, counter clockwise around Jugg Island, and back. It was a fast start, at least to me it was. Jim just shot ahead like a rocket, with Bob and myself in hot pursuit.
Jeff, Chris, and Daryl was paddling hard and fast coming from the right, as well as Gary and Sean in the XT double. Everyone seemed to merge in the middle before heading toward Jugg. I had a good hard start, but could not hold it, and started to slide back a little. The other juniors, Kiran and Kristin were in the battle of things as well in their K1s.
Soon there was a long line of paddlers all trying to catch the boat in front of them. I pulled out to the left and was trying to find the side wash to ride up. As we headed out into the main channel and out of the safety of the cove, the waves started to build. It was getting fairly bouncy, and fun. Slowly I was being caught by a couple of paddlers on the right. Just as I was glancing over to the right to see who it was along comes the safety boat on the left with a bunch of tag a longs.
So here I have Katja on my right and john and Lina on my left riding the boat wake, and flying. I tried to get on the same wave, but got bounced around, and almost into Katja. Once they had passed, I gathered myself up, and put my head down and started to grind to catch up. By now the waved were getting fairly large and coming from all directions. this made the last 300 meters to Jugg a little dicey. As I came around Jugg, I saw Gary and Sean standing on Jugg, doing something to their double. They got back into their boat and they were off again chasing down the rest of the field.
Now that I was around Jugg, I thought that my next goal, should be to chase down Rod and Micky, since they were the closest to me, and it was achievable. We were now going mainly with the wind, but from the back left quarter. I started to look for waves to use to ride up to my two adversaries. slowly but surely I was catching up, but I realized that it was going to take along time. I noticed that Rod was starting struggle. It wasn't until after the race that I found out that he was injured. Points to Rod for paddling with cracked ribs.
It wasn't too long before I had caught up to Rod, but it was not easy the waves were coming in from my right back quarter. Which made for a fun and rocky ride. As I passed Rod, I could see Jim having trouble in his K1. This was big because Jim can basically balance in anything. (paddles an OC1 without the ama)
My next target was about 100 meters in front of me. Micky. I had a good guess that I could catch him, but I was going to have to work hard to do it. I managed to move up close enough to catch Micky's side wash. From there it was just riding the wash right up to him.
Now we were side by side, and cruising. With about 200 meters to go, I starting thinking on how this was going to go down. If I waited too long, Micky for sure would take me. So at about 125 meters to go, that's what I did, I went. I start to hammer, as hard as I could. Micky cranked on the power as well, and the sprint was on. In the end I managed to get ahead, and held off Micky to the line. A great finish to a fun race.
The running and the swim training is starting to help me in these races. Normally I would not have even caught Micky with such a lead over me, let alone beat him in a sprint.
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