The MR 340 2010 Part One

What constitutes a successful MR 340 is unique to each team. In fact, it is often unique to different paddlers on the same team.

Last year, being our first, the measure for Paddlephiles success was simply to finish the race in the allotted 88 hours. This is a proper goal for any first time entrants in this race and when Mike and Patrick finally beached the water pig Jim at the finish line after 83 hours and 3 minutes, 2 hours after the awards ceremony and 4 hours after the complimentary dinner, none of us were disappointed. It was a total success.

That, however, was last year. To repeat that finish in our second run would be a total failure. We needed new goals.

So let's see if we can shave a full 24 hours off of that time. How do we make that happen?

If you said train harder, you're absolutely right! You're also absolutely NOT a Paddlephile. If anything, we trained a lot less. We needed simpler solutions.

Paddlephiles 2.0

The Paddlers

Spoiler alert.

This year we've got 3 paddlers instead of 2, with Jeff opting to ride to St. Charles in the boat instead of the truck. This decision was simply based on Jeff's desire to paddle, but it had some interesting consequences. This year's race started 79 tandem teams. Many of them are very experienced, very fast and very hard-core paddlers. Placing in the top 3 in the tandem division was never so much as a passing fancy. No Paddlephile dared even whisper the possibility.

Having that third paddler put us in the team division, which started only 5 boats. When you only have to beat 2 boats to place, you can't help but think about it. When you start thinking about it, you can't help but obsess over it. So now there is a secondary goal. Let the name Paddlephiles ring out loud and clear at that ceremony! Let us hear the approving groans of exhausted paddlers and the muffled fapping of hands too blistered and sore for real applause!

Los Humungos Blisteros

The Boat

How about putting coasters under those beers fellas?

The biggest lesson learned from our first run is that the boat makes all the difference in the world. Jim was no racer. It was a lot like paddling a downed oak tree up Niagra Falls. So the boys all pitched in and ordered a 3 man kayak. It was like Christmas morning when the box arrived with the boys all standing out in front of the house with their PFDs on ready for a test paddle. Boy were we surprised when all that was in the box was a bunch of strips of wood and a few buckets of smelly goop. That's totally not how the boat looked in the picture on the internet. Apparently there is some assembly required. I say apparently because all the instructions were in Swahili and the drawings were crudely chiseled on flat stones. Frankly there was no way to be sure this was even our package.

Knowing only enough Swahili between us to ask which way to the diamond mines, we were just going to have to figure it out. And by 'we' I mean 'they' as my delicate typing fingers are far too valuable to risk any contact with tools or labor. And by figure it out I mean lounge around the Paddlephiles Skunkworks drinking beer and sniffing epoxy for 3 months.

Many attempts were made to arrange the pieces into something boat shaped. We later realized that you get the same box of random wood pieces no matter what kit you order and they just put in different instructions.

They say that a million monkeys with a million typerwriters would eventually write Shakespeare and the same must be true of Paddlephiles and inhalants because eventually, Morning Wood was born.

The Crew

What boat?

It was a lot of work last year for Jeff and I to support 2 paddlers. Now I've got 3 paddlers and no Jeff. I'm going to need help! Luckily, Mike's fabulous wife Julie and my lovely girlfriend Stacy volunteered to come along and provide some much needed assistance and even a few good ideas.

Last year I'd swear I spent nearly half my time washing dishes. This was completely insane and unneccesary and I swore not to do it again. Still, every paddler likes a home cooked meal on a chilly night. This year, Stacy introduced us to the 'bierock'. It's like a homemade hot pocket sandwich. The great thing about them is that you can fill them with anything. A traditional bierock is made with a ground beef and cabbage mixture, but we also made them in pizza, ham and cheese and bbq varieties. She cooked them up the weekend before the race and we wrapped them in foil and froze them. Now all we have to do is bring them along in a cooler and throw them on any heat source for a quick hot home-cooked meal. This inspired further foilage as we added breakfast burritos to the menu along with ready to grill potatoes and corn. We had enough hot meals for 3 days without doing a single dish. We also went through enough aluminum foil to open a hattery in Roswell.

And so the stage was set for race day. The Paddlephiles had good goals and a solid plan to achieve them. We were prepared for any eventuality. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

Coming Soon, The MR 340 2010 Part Deux: Everything Goes Horribly Wrong