by Juerg Geser

(founding member living in California)

Great race for a good cause over Memorial Day Weekend hosted by Newport Aquatic Center (NAC) and Operation Open Water, supporting the health of every First Responder & Veteran through unique training programs, fellowship, and open water experiences.

Had to quickly change my race strategy based on who actually showed up at the race. Last minute registrations by Jake Graham and Paul Pianowski made me quickly realize that this will be a battle for 3rd place for me. These two guys are just too far out of my reach. They are leaner, younger, stronger, and just better paddlers than me, congratulations to you two for 1st and 2nd place!

The 3rd place was up for grabs for a few, especially Rich D'Souza who has had an incredible season so far, and then back from Peru we had Paul Gonzales who is faster every time I see him, then we have Dave Anderson, the fastest one off the line, Shawn Tierney  who is a wild card, he is always one to look out for, depending on how far back his last private lesson with Danny Ching was  Kenny Kwong must have had some miracle breakfast as he showed up in my draft and pushed me hard at the beginning of the race.

With this all going on, my new strategy was to go out hard and keep a mean pace. The pace was faster than my original plan for sure, and luckily, I was able to take advantage of the two buoy turns to shake the draft train behind me at the halfway point. Right after the turns, i paddled as hard as possible to create a gap to the paddlers behind me and then just kept my head down going against the wind and paddle my heart out till the finish line showed up. Really had to earn my 3rd place .

Training is now shifting from short distance events to long distance, getting ready for SUP 11 City Tour in September.