I bailed out of the boat in Cheapside—which sounds like a line in a country-western song.
But this was no two-step. I staggered out of a racing canoe under a highway on the Guadalupe River, 154 miles into a 264-mile paddling race called the Texas Water Safari. It was the very first DNF of my life. I laid down my paddle, sobbed a bit and barfed.
My team went on without me. Quitting’s a weird thing. When I tell this story to friends, a lot of them nod and say, “You might have hurt yourself if you’d continued.”
But that’s not it, exactly. I quit because a tiny voice inside my head suggested I do it, and I listened. I didn’t want to slog 100 more miles in 106-degree heat. And so, after 32 hours of nonstop paddling, I bid my tough-as-nails teammates adieu.
Looking back, I foretold my meltdown. I was afraid of the heat and the low river flow.
In 2019, I finished the race, which starts at Spring Lake in San Marcos and ends at Seadrift on the Texas coast, in about 53 hours as part of a three-woman team. I vowed then never to do it again. But when veteran paddler Deb Richardson invited me to join her five-person crew, I forgot about the alligators, mud, log jams, spiders and hallucinations and signed up.
I began spending every weekend on the river. On race day last June, we lined up our 40-foot boat at the back of the pack. When the starting horn sounded, we sliced through the crowd like we were parting the Red Sea. Then, just a few hundred yards in, our rudder cable snapped, and we fell into last place.
Over the next six hours, we picked off boat after boat, clawing our way from 138th position to 100th, then 50th. We nailed every portage and cut through every rapid. That first night, the frogs were so loud you couldn’t hear anything else. I was giddy.
But it was hot, and the water was so low, we had to drag through dozens of gravel bars. My muscles got weak, my butt sore. Racers don’t stop to sleep or admire the scenery, and I got weepy.
After I quit and went home, I slept 12 hours. I woke up to news that my team had climbed into 18th place. I sped back to cheer them on.
In the end, half the 138 boats that started quit. My team finished in just under 77 hours, in one of the toughest years in the race’s 59-year history.
I couldn’t be prouder.
And this time I’m not kidding. I’m never doing it again.
