fitness paddling: exercise, train, race by kayak & canoe

Erin Magee is a Texas Water Safari and marathon racer. In the each of my three safaris I started from the same row as Erin for a simple reason that as an out-of-state racer I didn't need to earn my starting position in the preliminaries. I used to follow her to the first portage, sometimes I still saw her ahead up to five mile downstream of the race course. Then, after 260 miles, I could meet her again at Seadrift where she was arriving 20 hours or so before me. Fortunately, she used to stay at the finish until 100 hour time deadline if not longer.

Erin maintains her weblog Updates from the River where she recently wrote 12 Traditions of Paddlers Anonymous . I really like the #8 one:

8. To offset the lack of donations, we are often personal trainers or certified paddling instructors but we tend to forget we’re supposed to charge to teach our competition to beat us, we so love any involvement with paddling.

The picture above is from the start of 2004 Colorado River 100 Race.