Topic for nature, adventure, explorations. I’m putting it in the “Joy” category because… well…
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Tomorrow begins the annual MR340, the world’s longest non-stop river race – a 4-day, human-powered race over 340 miles on the lower Missouri River between Kansas City and St. Charles, MO. I’ve posted about this before, probably on BBBBS/TOP. The weather is looking good. This year I’ll be working the race on a safety boat, one of a fleet of a dozen or so powerboats assigned to monitor the racers, maintain progress, rescue if needed, and follow to the finish line in St. Charles. There are about 500 entries this year. Probably about 300 or so will finish. I’ll try to post photos.
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Yay! I’m so happy when you post news about this race, MrShiv!
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Dense fog this morning
This canoe’s team is doing the entire race under human power. They started in Jefferson City, bike-trailered their canoe to the starting point, and are going to bike-trailer it back from the finish line. Their trailer and bikes are on the boat. Even their ground crew is completely human-powered.
Edit. Just passed them on the safety boat @ MM216
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Wow, those guys are committed! 
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All of my leg muscles are cramping in sympathy.
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48 hours in. We already have a winner. In 2nd place, Salli O’Donnell made MR340 history as the first female top solo finisher with a time of 39:42. Amazing!
Leaving “Jefferson Shitty”, as it’s locally known. Here’s our state capitol full of clowns, idiots, and racists.
Bonus: State trooper boat, ASS TRACKER
Checking on racers
Boat visitor
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Baltic Summer.
As they say, there ain’t no such thing as bad weather.
And when you’re at the FKK section of the beach clothing isn’t an issue anyway.
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Well, I’ve had a few days to recover. Just a few final notes on this incredible event…
- 378 boats entered the race. 25 of them didn’t start. Of the 353 that started, 272 (77%) crossed the finish line.
- The overall winner had a time of 39:25:08, for an average speed of 8.6 mph (13.84 kph). This was a tandem pedal drive team on a ridiculous (but fast) boat called the “Krakamaran” – a double-hull (catamaran) kayak with a kraken-style pedal drive mechanism, which uses chains and a complex linkage to “row” a pair of paddles (as opposed to standard pedal drives, which operate flippers under the boat).
What’s even more amazing about this is that one of the two team members dropped out about halfway through for health reasons, and the other guy finished and won on his own. - There were two dragon boats this year, one with 17(!) paddlers, some from Europe and Australia.
Both finished. - Want a guaranteed or “easy” win in a division? Enter the women’s solo SUP or women’s solo pedal drive (1 entry each this year), men’s tandem SUP (1 entry, but did not finish), women’s solo rowing (2 entries), or men’s solo rowing (5 entries, 3 DNF).
Here is an amazing Strava animation of one guy’s entire run. (Facebook link only, unfortunately.) You can see that he was really good at following the main channel of the river. That’s super important for speed and effort. Leaving the channel = lost time
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