This past Sunday, June 2, 2024, the Ontario Sup Series kicked off its first race of the season at the picturesque James Dick Quarry in Caledon, Ontario, Canada. The premier SUP race series in Canada returned to the same venue as the previous two years, offering competitors a challenging yet scenic course. The flat, freshwater quarry provided a perfect setting for the event, with a beach start and six buoy turns making up the approximately 3.5 km lap distance. With top-notch athletes and eager newcomers alike taking to the water, the stage was set for an exhilarating competition. Here’s a recap of the action-packed race day by Tim Oliver.
Photo credit Jeff Holubeshen
This year the organizers threw in an awesome twist… adding a super lap that was effectively a 3 loop out and back to the far buoys. It was up to the racer to decide when to do the super lap so it led to many different strategies and lots of Chaos (in a good way). I was stoked to put on the no.1 race jersey as the 2023 Defending Champion of the series after a few hard weeks of training, I was eager to see how I would feel.
After a quick warm-up and final decisions on what gear to use. I finally settled on 2024 All Star 20.5, Flash fin placed about an inch from the front of the new longer fin box, and the Lima Pre-Preg paddle L.
I placed my board on the beach set my paddle in a rack about 20m behind the beach and prepared for the Lemans-style start… When the horn went off it was a free-for-all all back to the paddle rack and in the chaos the rack got knocked over and scattered everyone’s paddles… I dug through the pile found mine, and scrambled back to my board. I was a few board lengths behind the first few guys so I decided to do the “joker lap” first…
From then on, the race turned into a solo time trial. I think it was the right strategy because it separated me from the rest of the field and did not let anyone else hop on my wake… I put my head down and started ticking off the KM’s trying to focus on good technique trying to keep my shoulders and arms relaxed. I figured the race might have gone this way so beforehand I set a personal goal of trying to keep a 6 min/km pace and charging hard out of the turns.
Once I had finished the “joker lap” I did my beach run and started off on the remaining 2 standard laps and locked into a solid travelling speed (which is made a lot easier by how effortless the Allstar 20.5 is to get up to over 10km per h). I stayed at around threshold level and was cruising around the first few turns of the lap and caught up to a few friends on the course.
After we shouted some encouragement back and forth and I proceeded past them only to somehow zone out and miss an orange salmon egg buoy that I was meant to stay to the right of….. a bit of brain fog lol… Luckily for me, the same crew I had gone past yelled to me that I had missed the buoy so I turned back, passed back around the missed egg to the left and re did the section of the course… (I checked the GPS after and found I added about 250m or 1:30 sec to my race)
I had paid the price for my mental laps and knew I was going to have to push hard for the remaining 5km of the race if I wanted to pull off the win. The most interesting part of this race format was none of us really had a good indication of where we were about other racers on the course so it all came down to personal motivation and who was willing to go the deepest! In the end, I was able to grind out a solid performance averaging exactly the pace I was hoping for 6 min per Km, and considering the 20-plus turns during the race I was stoked that I got the win with that average speed. As always, my equipment was stellar and so far, this season with the huge help from Starboard I’m starting to hit numbers in training and racing that I have not seen before. I can’t wait for the next race! Special shout out to my daughter Ainsley who is my biggest supporter and came to cheer for me and took the Allstar 20.5 for a spin after the race!
See you on the water,
Tim
