Portland Race Hosted by Moutain Home OCC

I met Doug down at SSP at 6:30 this morning, got his boat transfered to my car and off we went. Unfortunately Top Pot Doughnuts wasn't quite open yet, we'd have had to wait 10 minutes or something, so off we went to a Starbucks, oh well. The drive down to Portland was relatively quick and filled with good conversation. We arrived at our destination along the Columbia River around 9:45. Weather conditions seemed ideal. Sunny, no appreciable wind, just praying it holds for the duration of the race!

Getting out of the car we began to greet friends and see who else was planning to race. We went down and registered, got our race numbers and then back to the car to unload the boats. It was a little dicey getting down to the beach, there wasn't a proper path, just a bunch of rocks and then a little jump across a gully in the sand to make it up to the beach proper. Then back to the car to change into paddling clothes. The pre-race meeting was at 10:40 during which we learned the race course. The start line was between a bouy and the chase boat, head up river counterclockwise around what google earth called sand island, then a down river run past the launch beach and around the channel marker bouy and back up river between the start bouy and the launch beach. Doug had told me to stick close to the shore on the upriver leg and in the channel for the down river. If only I'd listened!

I probably started out to far into the channel, I was quite close to the chase boat. Shortly aft 11 am the horn sounded and off we went. The next thing I knew everybody was hundreds of yards ahead of me and pulling away fast. Time to dig in and start catching up. Ya well, they all seemed to have the same idea. I finally caught up with Ed M. (different from Ed W. of previous posts) at mile two and edged passed him. Next in my sights was Stan from Wakinikona, I knew I could catch him, I just knew it, just had to dig deeper and push myself a harder. Closing the gap some, a little more, now not so much, how is he doing that!, now a little closer. He followed the shoreline closer, it probably helped him conserve some energy that I spent fighting the current. Once he passed beyond the top of the island I was working even harder to try and catch him. I made it around the island and Stan had completely disappeared. In actuality he'd gotten to the center of the channel and was cruising on the current. I tried to catch the same ride. For the down river run I hit a maximum speed of 8.0 miles per hour, as documented by my GPS, a new maximum speed for me. After I completed 6 miles, as the GPS reads, I realized I could see Darcy, my main (and only) category competition, nearing the channel marker bouy. I glanced at my distance value as she made the turn and again as Stan made the turn. Doing some quick math as I made the turn I calculated that Darcy was less than 0.3 miles a head of me and Stan was 0.15 miles ahead of me. That's about the limit of my multitasking capabilities! After I passed the bouy I gave it everything I had left, which didn't feel like much. I was able to close some of the gap between me and Stan, after my finish horn sounded I realized he was only 0.11 miles ahead, so I made some ground on him. But dang I was pooped. I told him I'd been trying to catch him the entire race. He quipped back, "It's because I'm on a faster boat!" I was confused and staring at his boat, it took a moment to realize he was joking, he was paddling the same make and model canoe that I was!

I completed the 7.7 mile course in one hour, twenty seven minutes, fifty seconds. Quite respectable in my book. I took second in master women, same as the race at Jericho. The first two of my goals were met easily, didn't come close to huli'ing, totally finished the race. I wasn't so certain about my third goal of not finishing last. Turns out a kapuna master woman named Alice was still behind me, allowing me to meet my third goal! It was a good hard race but nowhere near as brutal as the race up at Jericho two weeks ago. With each race I'm gaining experience and confidence, hopefully, next time I'll gain some speed, too! Next race is in two weeks in Tacoma. Anyone want to carpool?