BPN Athlete Jeremy Rodgers wins the Colorado River Race setting a new course record!!!!!!!!
It all started innocently enough loading kayaks at my home (see photo 1) in Boulder County Friday evening to make the drive to the 2008 Colorado River Race held on the class 2 section from Dotsero to Hanging Lake on the Upper Colorado River. I stayed the night in Leadville, Colorado Friday night to pace my patient Joy Robertson in the Leadville 100 trail running race on Saturday morning from Winfield up over Hope Pass to Turquoise Lakes. Nothing like running 27 miles at 10,000-12,000 feet the day before a race but the Leadville 100 race is truly legendary and paddlers don’t really use their legs anyway (actually I pump my legs quite aggressively while paddling and felt the fatigue immediately but they loosened up). I spread Clif Bar love the entire way on the Leadville course handing out my favorite Mojo bars to unsuspecting weary runners wearing my fancy Clifbar visor and KEEN pack. Rain, hail, and lightening was the word for this years Leadville 100 being under cloud cover and precipitation almost 75% of the time. I heard from the course medical director post race that only 30% of field finished this year to compared to usual 50%.
I finished pacing Leadville at 10pm, slept for 5 hours, then drove to Dotsero/Vail for my own race. I was hell bent on breaking the course record I’d set last year on this same course as the race director put an asterisk besides last years time noting that the Hanging Lakes portion of the Colorado River was actually flowing slightly last year. Shoshone Dam below this section was under construction last year so the usually stagnant water of Hanging Lakes was flowing slightly but was only 6 inches deep compared to usual 6 feet deep. In that shallow of water the bow wave coming off my bow hitting the river bottom slows me down more than the slight flow offsets so I was ready to let it rip this year. Regardless, I set my Garmin pacer 1 minute faster than last years course record and set off at 8am. Andy Hall, a jolly 200 lb power lifter from South Africa in a Fenn Surfski and Mike Lesnick from Missoula, Montana in a West Coast Boat Shop Thunderbolt gave immediate chase. South African’s are always a concern as they know how to paddle a surf ski better than any other country as a whole and surf skis are generally lighter than a closed kayak like I was in. Luckily, Andy is a known sprinter and the 1 hour length of this race didn’t suit his strength but he sure made me paddle hard the first half of the course. My strategy was to get 0.5 mile ahead of my Garmin pace setter by midrace as I knew the slack water at Hanging Lakes would drop my pace significantly. The 5 class 2 plus drops were a welcomed encounter for this new wildwater paddler even though I was in my 23 ft JKK Supernova open ocean racing kayak from New Zealand.
I did indeed finish the race in a new course record time of 1:04:32 almost 4 minutes ahead of 2nd place at 1:08:33. Mike Lesnick, one of my old mentors from my early days and now almost 55!, finished 3rd in 1:09. He reads water like no other and still amazes me with his pre-race drawings of every rapid on a notepad that he always shares with me demonstrating every minute detail of flow gradients. I also give special thanks to my wildwater mentors on the US Wildwater team as my paddle stroke efficiency and water reading skills were exponentially improved this year.
Sorry in advance the photos are not close enough to show the KEEN, Clifbar, and IR branding as this boat has smaller stickers than my wildwater boats as I ran out of the super big ones. The race director took them and perhaps his lense wasn’t clean..kinda hazy but I was in all out sprint the last kilometer!
I’ll be sending out a professional 2009 promo video sometime in the late fall complete with slow mo video and summary of 2008 season. Wildwater national trials will be held late next year as part of FIBARK in June then world cups will be held in Aussie and Tasmania fall 2009. This will allow me to do alot more US whitewater festivals held in June every year.
I have a couple of more regional races yet this summer including paddling the paddle leg for the Adventure Xstream Race in Vail next weekend with Adam Chase under Team Clif Bar (Mark, Adam is sponsored by Salomon and wouldn’t budge on Team Clif Bar KEEN but says he’s still a big fan of KEEN) I’ll use my wildwater boat in this race of 500 some racers so at least I’ll spread the KEEN brand!
Best,
Jeremy
