Ryan Peterson is the 22 year old grandson of a legendary canoe racer, Buzzy Peterson, and the son of world class canoe racer, Steve Peterson. He paddled bow with me in my beat up woodstrip pro-am tandem racing canoe. There were about 40 canoes in the line at start on Lake Calhoun for the first Hoigaards race of 2004. The winds were calm and the water was flat. We lined up next to Al and Jeff Dubois in a new looking black Crozier racing canoe without knowing we would be near them for the next hour during the race. You could hear friendly verbal jabs and nervous laughter along the row. No one was creeping forward, as is often the case at the start of a canoe race.
The air horn blast triggered dozens of paddlers to dig small swirling white tornadoes in the water. Urgent barks of “Hut!” rang out across the lake. The line of canoes became jagged and then gradually turned into a large “V” shape as the faster canoes pulled ahead and the slower canoes fell behind. Four faster canoes pulled ahead of us from the right and Al and Jeff pulled ahead of us from our left side. We were tossed back and forth on the huge rollers from the canoes on all sides and I struggled to keep it lined up with the canoe ahead of us. We zigzagged across the “V” behind Al and Jeff’s canoe and gradually the zigzags became smaller until we fell in place directly behind their canoe. We followed Al and Jeff because it looked like they were going to hang on to the front four canoes. I was surprised when they fell back a wave.
We pulled alongside Al and Jeff to try and catch the front four before they got too far ahead, but we had waited too long behind them. Across Lake Calhoun, we same-sided the 90 degree buoy turn tied for fifth place. Side by side through the channel to Lake of the Isles, Ryan paddled very consistently the whole time. I concentrated on pushing my blade downward deep into the water with each stroke. We gradually pulled ahead of Al and Jeff in the deeper water across Isles and were just ahead of them going into the weeds. There was no clear channel through the weeds and Ryan had to sweep almost every other switch. The Dubois stayed behind us through the north arm drafting directly behind us to let us act as a weed breaker. Then they sprinted inside to take the inside of the 360 degree buoy turn. We tried to drop back and cut inside, but botched our turn and were a canoe length behind them coming out of the turn.
Ryan and I paddled hard and we gradually caught back up to draft directly behind the Dubois canoe. On the way out of Isles towards the channel to Cedar Lake, I said loudly “The only thing better than riding a canoe wake is riding a Dubois canoe wake!” and got no response from the Dubois. From paddling with Al Dubois before, I knew they didn’t like giving rides to other canoes and very much enjoyed riding the wakes of faster canoes. The Dubois team was famous in marathon canoe racing for riding wakes of other canoes. Now here we were riding their canoe wake.
Then came the next 360 degree buoy turn on the far side of Cedar Lake and they pulled away from us again because of another poor turn on our part. We fell several canoe lengths back on the way back through the channel. The smell of tar was strong under the old wooden railroad trestle bridge. Sweeping more weeds, Ryan said he would really like to get the Dubois and I said we could if we did it right, trying to sound convincing. I didn’t really believe it yet though. Back up the north arm to the final 360 degree buoy turn, we hadn’t gained back any canoe lengths. This time we did a better turn and didn’t lose any more lengths.
The final stretch of weeds proved to be their undoing. They chose a bad path and had to spend a lot of time sweeping which allowed us to catch back up with them. They weren’t happy to have us as company again, especially since we rode directly behind them through the worst of the weeds which made them do more of the work. It was only fair because they had used us as a weed breaker on the way in.
We were able to pull up beside them as we came out from under the bridge onto Lake Calhoun. Then we fell back behind them on the final 90 degree buoy turn as they tried to sprint away. It’s good practice to sprint whenever you come past buoy turns or obstacles because you’ve got a good chance of pulling away if the trailing teams make a mistake. We didn’t mess up and were able to hang onto their wake until their sprint subsided. I was thinking that I would be satisfied with finishing in sixth place if we rode their wake all the way to the finish.
Ryan was thinking otherwise though. As we got to within a couple dozen canoe lengths of the finish buoy, he pulled us out of their tail wake and we pulled up beside them far enough away so neither canoe had a side wake to ride. I concentrated on calling the huts calmly and firmly to show confidence and on being smooth so we didn’t look like we were trying hard even though I was trying hard. Ryan kept paddling smooth and consistently strong as he had the entire race. Then the Dubois pulled closer to catch our side wake as we pulled away, but it was too late and they fell behind. We crossed the finish line a canoe length ahead of them to take fifth place. The four canoes ahead of us were all good teams so there was no shame in fifth place. Al and Jeff congratulated us on a good race and Al asked if we had paddled together much because we looked like we were a good team. Ryan and I had only practiced together once so we had a great race!
