After missing last year’s Catalina Classic because he broke a leg surfing, and finishing sixth in 2009, Brad Thomas knew this might be his last chance to have his name engraved on the Catalina Classic Paddleboard Race Perpetual Trophy.
Thomas is 43 and his wife Jill, whom he met four years ago at a Catalina Classic awards dinner, are expecting their first child in two months.
Thomas was favored this year, but not heavily. The Redondo Beach “Shoulder Doc,” as he is known by the many lifeguards whose rotator cuffs he has repaired, defeated last year’s Catalina Classic winner Adam Buckley two months ago in the Hennessey U.S. Paddleboarding Championships in Redondo Beach. But last month he had finished a relatively distant 12th in the Molokai Paddleboard Race, 34 minutes behind 10-time Molokai winner and former Catalina Classic winner Jamie Mitchell. More significantly he had finished 13 minutes behind Australian Mick Porra, and six minutes behind Hawaiian Brian Rocheleau, both of whom would be competing in this year’s Classic.
“I knew Rocheleau and Porra would be competition, but Catalina is a different race than Molokai,” Thomas said with his characteristically understated manner.
Like the Classic, which starts at the Catalina Isthmus and ends at the Manhattan Beach pier, Molokai is a 32 mile open ocean race. Hawaiians describe the Molokai as “wrestling alligators.” Simply staying on the narrow 12- to 19-feet boards is a challenge because of the large, following swells. But those same swells propel the paddlers, a benefit Classic paddlers don’t enjoy.
The wind blew 25 knots out of the northwest across the Catalina Channel for the three days prior to last Sunday’s Classic, leaving behind a west swell for the paddlers who would be paddling just two degrees off of north to the Manhattan Beach pier. Molokai may be a more technical race, but it’s less a test of will power and endurance. Jamie Mitchell’s only paddleboard race defeat in nearly a decade was in the 2006 Catalina Classic, won by Los Angeles County lifeguard Kyle Daniels. Like Daniels in 2006, Thomas went out hard Sunday morning when the starting horn blew at 6 a.m. By the time he reached the waiting escort boats at Ship Rock, two miles out, he had separated himself from the pack of 80 other paddlers.
From there, Thomas never looked back, literally.
“I didn’t look back once,” he said following the race. “My support crew wouldn’t tell me where Rocheleau and Porra were until we reached the R10 buoy.”
The R10 buoy is one mile off the Palos Verdes Peninsula and eight miles from the finish line. Paddlers are required to pass east of the buoy before heading to the Manhattan pier.
Thomas reached the R10 in 3:54:19, for an average of nearly 6 miles per hour, despite the broad beam swell and the even more punishing head wind that measured up to 10 knots mid channel.
Rocheleau was almost six minutes, or nearly a mile behind Thomas when he reached the R10 and Porra another two minutes behind Rocheleau. The closest other paddlers where 10 minutes back of the Hawaiian and the Australian.
All that stood between Thomas and his goal was Thomas himself.
“It’s all about the mechanics of it,” Thomas explained after the race. “You have to use your entire body if you want to keep up your endurance and be fast. The speedier way is on your knees, utilizing your whole body and your back to pull your arms through the water. It uses your hamstrings, quads and torso. You can lie down on your stomach and just use your arms, but it’s faster on you knees.”
“However,” said Thomas, “staying on your knees is tiring. My strategy was to do 100-150 strokes on my knees and then rotate for two to five minutes on my belly.”
Matt Meistrell, 29, the skipper of Thomas’s escort boat, made certain his paddler stayed well fueled.
“I had a feeling from the beginning that he would win,” Meistrell said, “He just had to keep a pace and hold it.”
“We kept him focused and well hydrated with goo bars and gel things,” Meistrell said. “Towards the middle of the race he drank a couple of Coca-Colas to settle his stomach and keep up his energy. “
“When you’re paddling you have to eat or you’re going to cramp. The Clif Bar I ate after the first hour went down like cardboard. I took a bite, drank some water and forced myself to swallow it. Eventually I moved onto these gummy things, which are difficult because once you start you have to keep eating them. Otherwise you’ll crash because of all of the sugar,” Thomas said.
“You can’t imagine how good it feels to burp,” he added.
A long handled pool net was used to pass the nutrition bars between the boat and paddler. Water bottles were simply tossed back and forth.
Crew member Nathan Shore focused on keeping Thomas’s spirits up.
“You got this!”
“Don’t stop!”
“Keep it up, you’re smoking them,” he yelled throughout the 32 miles.
The strategy of gapping the field early didn’t come without a cost. Thomas’s legs were cramping so badly by the time he reached the R10 he was no longer able to paddle on his knees. The final eight miles to the pier became a mental test.
“At that point I really charged. I just dug deep and pulled out everything I had and pushed,” Thomas said.
Rocheleau smelled blood and began to reel Thomas in, cutting the gap nearly in half. But his surge came too late.
Thomas finished in 5:22:17, Rocheleau in 5:26:17 and Porra in 5:33:40.
“Once I got to shore I just fell off my board,” said Thomas. “My hamstring was so tight I was stuck in the water for 10 minutes, but I used what I had to finish and get it done.”
At the awards dinner Sunday night at Sangria on Pier Plaza, Thomas expressed appreciation to his training partner and 2003 Classic champion Sean Richardson, and to his wife.
“My wife’s pretty awesome,” he said. “I wouldn’t have won the race without her support and motivation. She hasn’t complained once.”
“It’s my goal to do 10 Classics, but now that my wife is going to have a baby, my life is going to change and it is going to be hard to muster up the time. It’s just nice to join the club of winners… and to stop training for awhile.”
Dueling women
The tradition-bound Classic has never allowed a woman’s name on the Catalina Classic. Not until last year did it even allow for a women’s division. But that concession came with a condition. A minimum of five women competitors are required for a female winner to be recognized.
This year only three women entered the race – Australian firefighter Jo Ambrosi, Redondo resident DJ O’Brien and Ashley Marino of La Jolla. All three were racing stock (12-foot) boards, which are slower than the unlimited and do not have tillers for steering.
Even without trophy recognition, the duel between Ambrosi and O’Brien has already become part of Classic lore.
Ambrosi opened up an early lead, but by mid channel her left forearm began to swell.
“I wanted to quit and just get out after about two hours, but my friend Shannon Delaney’s kids were on board, and I didn’t want to show them I was a quitter.”
“I had to just keep putting one arm in front of the other,” Ambrosi said. “Eventually they felt almost slippery like fish, dropping through the water. My survival skills just kicked in and the people on my boat really kept me going. When somebody cheered for me, it just made me smile and go a little faster. Donny Souther, the captain, also had the straightest course and kept me fed, hydrated and motivated throughout the entire race. All I had to do was paddle. That makes it easier.”
Souther escorted Kyle Daniel on his Classic wins and knows the channel as well as any local skipper. He said he took Ambrosi high, rather than on a straight line to the pier, to protect her from the current that sweeps south when the tide retreats from Palos Verdes. The rising tide gave the paddlers a push at the start of the race, but by the time they reached the R10 the tide was falling quickly.
Ambrosi had what appeared to be a safe lead rounding the R10. Then, like Thomas, her legs failed her. She fell from the kneeling position and after that was too weak to knee paddle again, except for one short spurt as she neared the Manhattan pier.
“DJ is a good friend,” Ambrosi said. “I knew she was trying really hard. I just didn’t know how close behind me she really was. Once we got to the R10 she started reeling me in. First a third of a mile, then 400 meters, then 200. My support crew kept me updated towards the end, but by then I couldn’t even imagine what 400 meters looks like.”
At the end of the 32 miles, the gap between the two competitors was 34 seconds. Ambrosi finished in 7:01:34 and O’Brien in 7:02:08. Marino finished in a respectable 8:02:03
“It was a really tough race. If it would have been any longer, she would have caught me. I was struggling a bit,” Ambrosi said in another characteristic paddler’s understatement
After the two women crossed the finish line, they slid off their boards to embrace one another.
Molokai paddlers sweep stock division
In the men’s stock division, two Hawaiians upset a strong field of local paddlers. Eric Abbot, of Oahu, added the 2011 Classic title to his 2011 Molokai title in a time of 6:21:55. Fellow Oahu native Bert Charlton, who finished third at this year’s Molokai, was second in the Classic, less than a minute behind, in 6:24:56.
Jack Bark, who at barely 18, is the Classic’s youngest paddler ever, was third in the stock division, in 6:29:49. Bark and partner Mike Cote, won the stock relay division at Molokai this year. Paddleboard maker Joe Bark, the only previous Classic winner in this year’s race, and a veteran of every race since 1983, finished a full 35 minutes behind his son, on a new unlimited board, in 7:04:15.
Wounded Warriors
For the first time in Classic’s history, a relay division was created to accommodate the Camp Pendleton Marines Wounded Warriors team.
The team was organized by the Manhattan Beach-based Jimmy Miller Foundation, which offers ocean therapy, including surfing and paddling lessons to the Wounded Warriors, composed mostly of Afghanistan and Iraq war veterans.
Three of the Wounded Warriors, Ryan Allen, Ryan Artuso and Krystal Flanigan alternated with half a dozen local paddlers over the course of the race. They finished midway in the pack in 7:29:10.
Sportsmanship award
If there was a Classic sportsmanship award, this year it would go to Los Angeles County Lifeguard Ian Moore.
Moorewoke Sunday morning at 7 a.m.
“I knew instantly the alarm didn’t go off,” the 23-year-old Moore said. “For a couple of minutes I just laid there. I had just missed the race. I was more than an hour late.”
“Then I looked at my friend and I said, ‘Nikko, I’m gunna go.’ I threw on my Speedo and shorts, couldn’t find my rash guard so I just put on a T-shirt and sprinted to get my stock board. I didn’t eat, pee or even stretch, I just ran.”
The cut-off time for finishing the race is nine hours.
“I did it under seven hours last year, so I knew I could do it under nine, even if I was an hour late,” Moore said.
An hour and 50 minutes after the other paddlers started across the channel, Moore joined the race.
“When I caught up to the first paddler I realized how far back he was. From then on, I just kept focusing on boats and bunny hopping from person to person, keeping them in view as a goal. All I was thinking about was finishing.”
His brother Spencer and friend Nikko Waldschmidt thought he was crazy.
“They just kept saying, ‘This is a bad idea,’ over and over again,”Moore said. “I think they settled down after the first hour or so, but we all had that sinking feeling in our guts.”
Moore finished in 8:13:13, just one minute off Abbott’s winning stock time of 6:21:55, assuming Moore had started at 6 a.m.
“I’m coming back next year for sure,” he said. ER
