The section from Hocheim to Cheapside is the second longest stretch of the course without any access points. Again, you have to be careful to take on enough water for the entire section because if you run out you are in trouble. It's one thing to simply calculate 18oz. of water per hour for 5-1/2 hours with a given pace of 5mph over 25 miles, but it's another to consider the unexpected. What if we tump and lose a jug? What if one of us gets sick or cramps up so we have to stop for an hour or two to recover? How much extra water will we need then? We had taken our precautions, but it was still stressful to think about things going wrong.
The scenery and the river were the same as the section before - miles and miles and miles of slow brownish water with muddy banks lined with trees. Every now and then there would be a riffle or a gravel bar, but it was all pretty monotonous. You know it's bad when you are happy to see cows as something different to look at.
We stopped at least once to swim because the situation with our bodies was the same. The pain ebbed and flowed but mostly flowed. My traps, lats and upper back were on fire most of the time and very, very stiff. My butt hurt from pure pressure. Every now and then I'd stop paddling and lift myself up for a little relief. I'd also reach as far forward as I could on a series of strokes to stretch out. Robb would do similar things to find relief.
We saw a couple of other boats along this stretch and traded places with a couple of other boats. The afternoon stretched into evening and at some point we decided that we were going to stop and sleep in Cuero, the checkpoint after Cheapside. That gave us something to look forward to and a reason to push it to get there.
Of course, the same thing happened where the mileage on the GPS said we should have been to the checkpoint and we weren't there yet. We had been five miles off the checkpoint before, so I was expecting it, but it was still frustrating. We expected at every bend to come into view of the checkpoint, but every time it was more river and more trees and no bridge. We came to a long straight section of the river where we could see several hundred yards behind us; maybe a half mile. This was rare since the river constantly twisted and you could never see very far in front or behind. We could see another boat far behind.
The banks seemed to get lower and sandier instead of muddy at a certain point. Right around that point we came around another bend and there was the bridge. Audra and my parents where there; happy to see us as usual. We were happy to see them, too. Cheapside was much better that Hocheim. The area where you pulled up under the bridge was a sandy beach where you could actually get out and walk. There was a bluff above the river where the checkpoint officials had set up camp and several people were sitting in camp chairs looking over the river. We swam for a couple of minutes and changed out our jugs. We got race news and I was surprised to hear the names of some of the people who had dropped out.
The boat that was behind us pulled up while we were still there. I knew that they had done the Safari several times before and knew the course. We had never been on the section that we were coming up to now, which included Cuero dam. I was a little concerned about this section because there had been some chatter about it being hairy. I didn't want to go into it blind. So I asked the guys in the other boat if it would be okay if we followed them through there. Actually, I tried to be casual about it and I asked, "Are you guys heading to Cuero dam." They kind of looked at me funny and asked me back, "Where else would we be going?" They had a point. Anyway, they said it would be fine for us to follow them through there. They gave us a short description of what we were going to see and they set off. We followed shortly after.
So we were through the two most grueling sections of the course, finally. I felt good leaving them behind, but I was a little apprehensive about the section from Cheapside to Cuero since we hadn't seen it before. Cuero dam scared me a little bit, so I was glad we had an experienced team to follow. Little did we know that this section would prove to be one of the craziest sections for us.
Comments