AuSable River Canoe Marathon: The Feeders.

They call the AuSable River Canoe Marathon "The Toughest Spectator Sport in the World."  Whenever anyone makes a statement that includes something like "in the world" your first response best be of a skeptical nature.  The thing about watching an 18 hour race though, is that you must first stay awake for 18 hours.  Then you must be prepared to be hot and cold, hungry and tired, and avoid getting lost along many winding back roads as you navigate to the next location in which you will wade into the cold river in the dark and wait for your team to approach.  You refill water bottles and mix up Spiz.  You wade out to your team who is often too tired to really acknowledge your presence much less communicate anything of substance.

Though Mark and Lauren were arguably the "main attraction" for this 120 mile canoe race, they were definitely the people that I saw the least that night.  They buzzed by every couple hours with barely enough time for an exchange of high fives.  Before we knew it (or something like that), it was all over!

Onto the play-by-play.  A recap from the feeder's point of view:

6:45pm: The team started off on the right foot with the Stern Paddler getting a nutritious meal before the race's start.

8:00pm: The team lined up along the road where they would pick up their boat and start running the half mile to the river.

9:00pm: The gun went off and the teams ran to the dock to put their boats in the water.  It was a crazy silly 3-minute mess of awesome!

3:49am: The FRowe's made the toughest cut off of the race, Mio Dam, by just 11 minutes.  As we waited on top of the dam we could see the lights of approaching boats.  Since it was pitch black, we couldn't identify the boats until they were very close so we anxiously hoped that one of the dwindling number of approaching lights belonged to Mark and Lauren.  It wasn't until then that I actually considered the possibility that they could be eliminated from the race.  And more importantly, if they were eliminated and dropped out at 4am, where would we sleep?!

4:00am: After excitement like that, us Feeders were going to need to eat a little something.  You have to keep eating if you want to keep going!  Seeing as the McDonald's in Mio was not yet open to sell us coffee, we plugged Pat's percolator into the electric outlet next to the 3-foot tall picture of a cup of coffee outside said McDonald's.

4:05am: Because every racer, and feeder, has unforeseen obstacles through their race, or "race", we added jumping a car to our list of accomplishments for the night.

6:00am: McKinley Bridge was what I would call the turning point.  The 15 minutes before getting in the water were spent "resting our eyes" with the heat in the car on full blast to warm up our swamped feet.  After Mark and Lauren came through, the sun was just starting to rise and we were finding a second wind.

7:00am: By second wind I mean Pat fell asleep the next time we turned the car off, but you've got to get sleep where you can.  I only made it until the following stop before squeezing in an hour of shut eye.

We stumbled upon a scenic overlook where we could see about a half mile stretch of the river.  This was a special view into what the majority of the race was like for Mark and Lauren; a paddle through gorgeous, silent terrain.  Well, silent aside from Mark's barking and Lauren's singing.

The Feeder Crew was all smiles all the way to the end!

1:45pm: Foote Dam was the last of the race.  With enthusiasm still surprisingly abounding, Mark and Lauren completed one last portage before sailing off toward the finish.

 

3:30pm: The AuSable River Canoe Marathon was like any long distance race where you think it's really cool at the start.  And then there's a large portion from the middle to about three quarters of the way through where you question why anyone, ANYONE, would do something like that to themselves. Especially on purpose.  And then you get to the end, and the calamity has ceased and you realize that you're still kickin' it.  That you just pushed yourself further and harder than you thought was possible and you are, more or less, just fine.  Now that's the kind of thing that makes you almost forget about the long, exhausting, monotonous 18 and a half hours that preceded the celebration and contentment of that moment.  Almost.

On my way back home I stopped along the shores of Lake Huron to take a dip and lower my body temperature before getting back into my hot box on wheels with broken air conditioning.  As I got up to leave, a butterfly danced around me, almost following me up the beach, and not just any butterfly, but a monarch butterfly.  And maybe it was just a butterfly, but maybe it was Verlen's way of saying "You crushed it, FRowes!"