| First Marathon // Event 04 October 2008 By: Stuart Murray Location: Hawkesbury River The Hawkesbury Classic, a race down a river for charity. It's overnight, navigation is by marine compass and temperatures can drop to four degrees. There are snags, overhanging branches and the tide is your friend and your enemy. You decide. This race does not allow relay, you go all the way solo or you don't go at all.  We turn up at the Hawkesbury Base Camp for scrutineering and the pre-race briefing. The air is thick with anticipation as hundreds of athletes prepare themselves and their gear for the evening ahead. We get strange looks and curious questions as we unload and prepare our gear amongst the gathering of conventional craft, canoes. Stuart Murray, paddle in hand stands by a 14 foot stand up paddle racing machine. Inoke Tuhukava does the same beside a 12 foot river cruiser. We know our gear and are quietly confident; except we are stand up paddle surfers and we are creating quite a stir. Someone asks, "Do you have a strategy to finish the race". "To paddle with my heart", I reply. The gathered people laugh. I keep my eyes down appreciating the laughter and know I actually mean it. The pre-race briefing holds some good news. We are told we are 300 metres above sea level and technically the race is all downhill. The sports physiotherapist tells us that if we start to fatigue then we should paddle from a different posture, thus resetting our muscle memory and consequently freshening the muscle. This is a tip that saves me some six hours later when my right knee, possessing half a cartilage, begins an ache that has to be rectified. It is bright and cheerful at the 4:00pm start. The afternoon sun is warm and a light breeze fans the surface of the river. There is still a buzz in the air. Away we go and I see the back of Inoke's head fading into the distance. I begin to overheat. Maintaining core temperature at a sustainable level is a matter of layers and my thermal is a touch too hot. To take it off would mean temporarily removing my personal flotation device and I am just not in the mood for that. I settle into my own rhythm and do not stop. It's a long race and it will get cold soon enough I figure. At this point I give up trying to keep in touch with Inoke. I counteract the heat by drinking at regular intervals from my hydration pack. As other paddlers pass me I get regular comments. Some are, "You are a legend, you can get first place right now just for having a go". I thank those paddlers. Others would comment, "So how far do you hope to get?". Each time I would reply with a searching hint of a smile, "Well, when I close my eyes I can see this bridge". I was referring to the Brooklyn Bridge that stands at the finish. I had been visualising it for three weeks. I would usually get uncomfortable, surprised laughter in response. There are three stops in the Hawkesbury Classic. There is Sackville at 31.2km, Dargle at 40.8km and Wisemans Ferry at 65km. After Wisemans Ferry you are on your own until the finish at 111km. Being smart at these stops is critical to your success. Here you get the opportunity to refill hydration packs, smash down food and get first aid for the rainbow of aches and pains that turn up. I had thought our plan was to miss the first stop in Sackville at 31.2km and go straight to Dargle so I nearly run through the first stop. Linda Dickerson, from the land crew, saves me and calls me in. Her voice is a welcome sound. Looking back, missing Sackville would have been a big mistake. Here a freakish lady chiropractor jumps on me and cracks my back where it has never been cracked before. She whispers in my ear, "Make sure you use every stop, after Wisemans Ferry it's a long way home". With that ringing in my ears I bolt back out onto the river. It's getting dark and I'm on my own. For the first time I sense the rhythm of the river. Inoke is out there somewhere.  I make Dargle after 40.8km and it's dark and I'm sore. As I come in I hear, "Go 305", my race number, and it gives me a lift. I figure all that stand up paddle goodwill I shared at the pre-race is coming back and it feels good. I wander into the land crew area. People are everywhere looking lost and sore. I keep my food intake up with some fruit cake, put another layer on for the cold and jump back onto the river. Inoke is still ahead. It's solo for me. At 45km a lady paddles up beside me and slows to my pace. 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 at 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, it's making me yaw. I try everything but can only get three strokes in on each side before having to change, to keep going straight. I figure my fin must be too small. Not to worry, it's only five hours to the next stop and a bigger fin. Two hours out from Wisemans Ferry and eight hours into the race I am adjusting my posture to relieve the pain in my knee. I had been wondering how my knee with half a cartilage would go. I am pleasantly surprised and relieved to find it works. I have also found rocking backwards and forwards reduces the growing ache in my feet. I am still taking only three strokes a 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 Ferry 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 thongs as the ground at this stop is full of seeds dropped from the trees. Bless her, this gives my feet instant relief and it dawns on me to paddle in them. Amazingly it works and the pain goes away except for the final two hours. I glimpse Inoke as I pass the first aid area and I hear it's blisters. I feel my core temperature dropping dangerously low. I need to get back out on the river. I let a Chinese guy work a 5 minute miracle on my back. He looked confused when I told him my feet were sore but I just do not have the energy to explain what stand up paddling 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". Funny stuff.  While fins are changed in the dark I spill a thought to Linda, "I'm not sure I can make it". It's 2:20am, there is 50km to go and the river is looking cold and lonely. Again I hear a whisper and Linda's voice drifts over to me from the darkness, "Come on it's all downhill and you've got the tide with you now and this guy just told me that if you measure the course on a GPS it's 98km". With that I jump on the tide and suddenly I'm invincible. I smash the next 14km. A strong feeling tells me to go flat out for as long as I can and then grind home against 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 longer at Wisemans Ferry. I am up to eight strokes each side now with a bigger and longer fin. With 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 30km on it. With 15km to go I realise 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 throw colour across the river and remember there are no guarantees out here. I could still have physical failure or equipment failure or an accident. I turn back on and become watchful again. I'm back in the moment and paddle by paddle, the kilometres tick down. Shortly after a particularly tough grind into the tide I see the bridge and it is just as I visualised 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. 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 their 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. Everyone 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 gosh, he's never going to make it". In discussions after the laughter had died down we decided we had paddled much more than 111km due to wobble. The best thing of all for me was that it was worth it. The preparation, the waking up excited, getting sponsorships, the mistakes, disappointments, triumphs and achievements. For everyone the race was much more than 111km. Final Results: Stuart Murray (14' rudderless) - 17 hrs 16 mins 37 secs Inoke Tuhukava (12' rudderless) - 17 hrs 43 mins 52 secs We sincerely thank the race organisers, fellow paddlers and spectators, our outstanding land crew and all those who supported us. | |
