I participated in the second race in the Hood River Big Winds series on Thursday, June 25th. I love the idea of a race series on Thursday night. Nothing much else going on, it stays light until ten in Oregon this time of year, and it's a reasonable after-work drive from Portland. Diane packed a picnic dinner, we tossed the dog in the truck, picked up the grandkids from the OMSI Summer Science camp (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) and headed up the gorge.
We got to the registration in plenty of time, had a quick dinner by the river, watching the kite and wind surfers, and headed for the hook.
While I was getting the board off the car I noticed two SUP paddlers rounding Wells Island. A few minutes later they showed up on the shore--Michi Schwieger and Dave Kalama. What a surprise. They had been at the first race along with Robby Naish, and I knew they were headed up to Canada to poke around, but I didn't expect to see them at the second event.
Since there was no elite paddler class this time they took off at the same time as the women and juniors, and just cruised with them, providing tips and encouragement.
The Men's race started ten minutes later and I pulled into a comfortable early lead, rounding the tip of the hook well ahead. Then we hit the wind. I'd say it was blowing twenty knots. I'm guessing twenty because it felt like thirty. I dug in and paddled hard, but two young whippersnappers got past me and pulled out a little lead. I could see a wind shadow near wells island, but there was also a lot of side swells. After a long grind I finally reached the shadow, wobbled off balance as the wind shut off and promptly got knocked off by a swell. Five paddlers got past me before I regained my feet and started paddling hard for the buoy.
After rounding the buoy I slowed a bit to catch my second wind, then started stroking hard, working to catch the little runners. I did a lot of short stoking into the swells, then quickly turning on the face to extend the run and build speed. It worked pretty well, You can see from the GPS track that I got a lot of runners and maintained a pretty high speed. I passed my way up to fourth from eighth.
I started catching up with Dave Kalama in the downwind section--he was standing on his board with his paddle up catching wind, talking to the woman in last place and giving her tips on paddling. He was moving almost as fast as I was. What the hell is with that? I didn't pass him until the last upwind section, where I was two strokes from blowing a gasket and he was still chatting calmly. Clearly he's made some kind of deal with King Neptune.
The leaders were just ahead of me heading for the last stretch. I had some thought of beating them by making an all out effort--as if they wouldn't be also. I nearly got the guy in third, but he saw me coming and redoubled his efforts. We crossed the line about two board lengths apart.
Fun race. The short length and high average speed belied the difficulty. It's not easy. 1.9 miles in 24 minute with an average speed of 4.6 knots. But it's a true sprint--I had nothing left when I crossed the line. I think this is another good format for SUP racing.
No comments:
Post a Comment