More than a dozen paddle their way down the Teche for race
CHARENTON — Brad Rex was the first across the finish line Saturday morning, at the annual Tour Du Teche’s Chitimacha 20, a 20-mile race for kayaks, canoes, pirogues and stand-up paddle board race.
He finished the stretch of the Tour de Teche that spans from New Iberia’s City Park to the Charenton boat launch, in the sovereign nation of the Chitimacha, in just over three hours and 20 minutes. It was the end of a side-by-side battle in which he barely prevailed over Robin Lashaway, in the solo double-blade division.
“We were together until the last 50 yards,” said Lashaway.
Rex attributed his win to a special energy bar containing bee pollen.
“You eat that, you’re just going for 45 minutes after that,” he said.
Not long after, David Kaiser, of Austin, Texas, and Max Dugas, of Lafayette, cruised past.
“3:34:04,” Mike Carpenter, seated before a time clock at the finish line, shouted out as they passed. Next to him, Andrew Pellerin, a member of the race’s board, wrote down the official time.
“Not bad. We were shooting for 3:30, so that’s not bad,” said Kaiser, hearing the time.
The race on Saturday was one of several in the longer Tour de Teche series of races along the bayou. Pellerin said 12 boats of about 15 people were on the water Saturday. Kaiser and Dugas were using the race to train for the 260-mile Texas Water Safari, billed as the world’s toughest canoe race.
“This is the toughest stretch of the Teche,” Dugas said. “It’s 20 miles, so it’s kind of a sprint, but it’s not quite a sprint. The water was doing some weird stuff today.”
There was little current, a headwind and a lot of sunshine, conditions that make the race significantly harder.
“That sun comes out and just sucks the life out of you,” Dugas said.
“The stretch of river right here is really slow,” said Thomas Wagner, a racer who was their just as a spectator Saturday, watching his friend Craik Windsor compete. “To the north, it narrows, and to the south, it’s fed by the Atchafalaya, both of which make the water much faster. But right here it’s slow. And it’s summer time, it’s hot,” he said.
Windsor seemed to attest to that.
“That was one of the more physically diminishing things I’ve done,” he said, exhaustedly paddling onto the boat launch. “Christ.”
In the Chitimacha race’s first year, 2010, it was run as a single, 135-mile race. It was broken up in consecutive years for several reasons, according to Pellerin.
“There are broad support aspects — support for the racers — that encouraged breaking it up,” he said. “And also, to keep people here. People come from Texas, Michigan, Mississippi to race. We try to keep them here for three, four, five days.”