At 45 km a lady paddles up and slows. We introduce ourselves. 305 meet 471. From the dark her advice drifts to me “when we hit the tide don’t expect to keep going the same pace”, “just try to keep moving forward”. She moves off into the dark and my expectations change. The tide hits and it’s a grind. I have a problem. The tide has not only slowed me, its making me yaw. I try everything but can only get three strokes on each side before having to change sides to keep the XP Vortice straight. I figure my fin is too small. Not to worry its only five hours to the next stop and a bigger fin. I laugh dryly commenting to myself no wonder they call it Wiseman.
Two hours out from Wiseman and eight hours into the race I am adjusting my posture to relieve the pain in my knee. I find that rocking backwards and forward reduces the ache in my feet. I am still taking three strokes on each side. I slip into a trance like meditation and hit a series of mini walls. I begin to focus on only the next paddle.
At Wisemans I can hardly walk as I step off the board. This surprises me, but not Linda. “You’ve been on your feet for ten hours”. Linda insists I wear my rubber like thongs/slippers. Bless her, I paddle the rest of the way in slippers and the pain goes away except for the final two hours. I see Inoke, he is in First Aid and getting worked on, looks like blisters. Its getting cold now and I need to get back out there as my core temperature is dropping. A Chinese guy works a 5 minute miracle on my back. He looks confused when I tell him my feet are sore. I do not have the energy to explain what Stand Up Paddle is. After the race I tell him “I’m the stand up paddle guy” and he smiles and says “ok I get it, you’ve been standing on them”.
Fins are changed in the dark and I spill a thought to Linda, “I’m not sure if I can make it”. Its 2.20am, there is 50km to go and the river looks cold and lonely. Again I hear a whisper and Linda’s voice drifts to me, “ Come on its all down hill and you’ve got the tide with you now and this guy just told me that if you measure the course on a GPS its 98km”.
I jump on the tide and suddenly I’m invincible. I smash the next 14 km. A strong feeling tells me to go flat out for as long as I can and then grind home into the tide to the finish. And fly I do. It works and I’m buzzing, the river looks beautiful from midstream and I can feel the river for the first time. Inoke is behind me now as he has taken a longer at Wisemans. I am up to eight strokes each side.
At 20km to go it occurs to me that Linda could have lied about the guy with the GPS. The thought makes me laugh. If she has it’s the best lie she has ever told me. I just paddled 30 km on it. With 15 km to go I realize that if I cross the finish line in front of Inoke I get bragging rights for a whole year and the race record. I push that thought to the side as I watch the sunrise and remember there are no guarantees out here. I could still have physical failure or equipment failure or an accident.
I’m back in the moment, paddle by paddle the kilometres tick down. Shortly after a particularly tough grind into the tide I see the bridge and its just as I visualized it. To sprint for the finish line after 109km may seem a funny thing. But I want to smash that finish line and just dominate it so when I see that bridge I go. I am a better judge of distance now and I guess it’s about 2 km. Again I have that invincible feeling, the pain disappears and my body feels like a perfect machine. Those large salmon oil doses I took for three weeks prior to the race have done there job, at least in my mind.
The finish is easy. Eight hours ago I had doubted I would make it. Many doubted me at the start. Every one applauded me at the finish. Hours after the finish, after my post race massage, after my post race carbohydrate hit, after my post race hydration and vitamin hit, Linda spills. “When I saw you wobbling up the course at the start I thought Oh my god you’re never going to make it”. In discussion after the laughter had died down we reckoned we had paddled much more than 111 km due to that wobble. The best thing of all for me was that the journey was worth it. The preparation, the waking up excited, the sponsors getting a hit sponsoring us, the mistakes and triumphs for all of us all along the way. The journey was much longer than 111km.
End Part 3 of 3
Beyond the Break
Sports Coaching, Lifestyle Coaching, Surf Coaching
Stuart Murray
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