Paddlers test endurance in Missouri River race

GLASGOW, Mo. -- For paddlers like Texas teammates West Hansen and Richard Steppe, reaching the finish line first was the only thing that mattered in the second annual 340-mile Missouri River race. Sleep, food and bathroom breaks could wait.

Thursday morning -- a mere 44 1/2 hours after the race's start in Kansas City, Kan. -- the tandem canoeists pulled into the St. Charles riverfront well before dawn, shattering the course record in less than half the time of last year's tandem winners.

Then there were competitors like Don Treece, a 46-year-old Kansas City cop who had to look extra long for a kayak to fit his 5-foot-7, 300-pound frame.

For Treece and most of the remaining 90 endurance junkies in the Missouri River 340, simply crossing the finish line by Saturday's 100-hour deadline will more than suffice.

"I'm not as fit as some of these people, I don't have a paddling background, but I wanted to prove it to myself," Treece said Wednesday evening during a snack break in Glasgow, 141 miles into the race and the fifth of nine mandatory checkpoints.

Treece didn't even own a kayak until six months ago, when he convinced his wife Pam that conquering the Mighty Mo was a mission, not a lark. He has been training ever since.

"This is the biggest thing I've ever done in my life -- and the hardest," said Treece, a military veteran and police officer for nearly 25 years.

Make no mistake: Finishing the race, period, was no easy task. By Thursday afternoon, 18 of the 93 paddlers had dropped out.

By the race's end, organizers expect one-third of the competitors to bail -- a number consistent with last year's results.

One couple had to withdraw about 2 a.m. Thursday after their kayak collided with two barges being pushed side-by-side by a tugboat near Hermann.

Wayne Kocher, 70, and Ann Grove, 66, of Benicia, Calif., had to crawl from under the barge after it ran over their kayak, tossing the couple into the water. They were not injured, the Missouri Water Patrol reported.

"This ain't no mama's boy float trip," organizers had cautioned before the race.

Whether racing solo or paired with a friend or spouse, competitors had to brave an unrelenting sun, barge traffic, bugs, wing dikes and other obstacles. After dark, the biggest challenge was their own sleep-deprived imaginations.

Mike "Kicker" Fools, a 47-year-old Cass County detective from Harrisonville, is racing solo but alongside a friend from church. On the race's first night, he encountered tree shadows, lapping waves and other hazards before settling in at 4 a.m. for a 90-minute nap on a sandbar.

The nighttime obstacles were both real and imagined, he said.

"We were up for 20 hours, so a lot of it was not real," Fools said.

The race was organized by a pair of Kansans hoping to draw attention to the Missouri River's bountiful cultural and natural resources.

Scott Mansker, who teaches at-risk students in Olathe, Kan., said he fell under the river's spell on a weeklong rafting trip with some college buddies nearly 20 years ago.

"I was hooked," he said.

Two years ago, Mansker and Russ Payzant of Gardner, Kan., hatched the idea for a statewide race that would alert both locals and visitors to the river's resources.

The inaugural effort attracted 15 entrants, but word of mouth in the paddling community increased that number fivefold.

This year, competitors hail from California, Colorado, Georgia, Indiana, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin and Ontario, Canada, as well as Kansas and Missouri.

Two hours after Hansen, of Austin, Texas, and Steppe, from Dallas, touched ground, men's soloist Dave Anderson of Seattle crossed the finish line. His time of 46 hours, 21 minutes topped the course record Hansen set last year by more than seven hours.

Ardie Olson of Cumming, Ga., finished second in the men's solo division with a time of 49:48. The first female solo racer is expected to finish Friday morning, Payzant said.

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On the Net:

Missouri River 340: www.morivermiles.com