12 years ago, after paddling folding kayaks for more than 20 years, I got my first hard shell boat. I built a stitch-and-glue 19.5 Patuxent from CLC, perhaps the fastest kayak available for home building at that time. Racing? No, I just wanted to travel fast by water to some remote photography destinations.

A couple years later I was surfing the internet looking for winter paddling opportunities on Padre Island. I have never gone paddling there. Instead, I discovered the Texas Water Safari. Hours of watching video tapes produced by Pat Spencer, three visits to Texas including the 2001 race and two boats later I ran my first paddling race: 2002 TWS. I was hooked.

Since then, I have completed the Texas Water Safari three times, entered three WaterTribe events and finished one Everglades Challenge, completed three Missouri River 340 Races, and several shorter events from 10 to 100 miles.

How can I compare these three ultra-marathon paddling races? Which one is the toughest, the most challenging?

The distance to be covered by the racers seem to be quite similar. All three races run non-stop with mandatory checkpoints. You need to be prepared to paddle day and night, and paddling conditions can change drastically with the weather. TWS and MR340 are river races while EC is a coastal race with longer timeframe.

Everybody has a different story and experience. I am not a competitive athlete. My goal is just to finish the race, competing mostly against myself. My additional challenge is to shoot pictures and video when racing. The perspective of Carter Johnson, who paddled all three races in a surfski setting a solo record every time, would be quite different.

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