Won North America’s longest and largest river race!
The Missouri 340 is a paddling endurance race that extends 340 miles across the entire state of Missouri.
St. Maarten/Amstel Bright sponsored athlete Terry DeWitt and her tandem paddling partner Loreen Mattson of St. Louis, Missouri, recently competed in this race, navigating a 19-foot, plastic tandem Kayak. This ultra marathon event challenges paddlers to complete the 340-mile (547 kilometres) race within the 88 hours of allotted time. The teams are required to safely navigate river obstacles and dutifully report at nine checkpoints along the course without exceeding pre-determined cut off times.
The newly formed team of DeWitt and Mattson were intrigued by the race concept, though neither of the athletes had prior experience in a paddling event of such magnitude. “We decided to give the MR340 challenge a chance, knowing that we were facing some very difficult odds” said Dewitt.
“We did not have the superior level of equipment that our competitors were going to be racing with and our minimal knowledge of river paddling resulted in us having to rely heavily on our endurance skills to pull us through.”
The race began at 8:00am on August 24 in Kansas City, Missouri, with a firelock start- with all the boats in the water crossing the congested start line simultaneously. Paddlers faced high, fast water conditions on the Missouri river this year, due to recent flooding. Teams navigated treacherous river obstacles, which included floating debris, dangerous wing dikes, swollen river banks, hidden bouys, industrial barge boats’ passing wakes, heavy fog, daytime heat, night time chills and entrapping bridge pilings during their long and winding journey across the state. Many paddlers and their boats were flipped, crashed, tossed or turned as the mighty Missouri river ran its natural and rugged course. Oddly enough, there was even one paddler who was unable to finish the race after being knocked from his boat by a large, jumping Asian Carp!
The DeWitt/Mattson team took the women’s tandem lead on the second day of the race by travelling through the night without stopping to rest. “This move surprised the other boats and allowed us to take a three-hour lead in the race.” They maintained their position until the final hours of the race, when their more experienced competitors put on the “heat” and moved ahead.
“We continued to paddle, though we were sure we could not match the other team’s sleeker racing kayak. To our surprise, we caught the other team and were able to sneak up and pass their boat, and again take the lead. We had no idea as to where our second wind was coming from” said DeWitt. “We were dead tired from padding with no rest for over 48 hours. We were disappointed and discouraged to see our competitors pressuring us so strongly at this late stage of the race. We needed to give everything we had left in our bodies, minds and souls to get our heavy craft moving and successfully win the race. We put up a tough fight, and our competitors were unable to keep up the pace after working so hard to catch up to our boat. In the end, we managed to win the race in record breaking time.”
The St. Maarten/St. Louis team finished the race in 49 hours and 17 minutes, breaking the record for the women’s tandem division by over 11 minutes. The ladies finished 19th overall out of over 250 boats participating in the race.
“We can never say enough thanks to our support crew, sponsor and families for making this all possible” concludes DeWitt. “It was an amazing adventure!”
