By Eric Simons
The sun went down after 12 hours of paddling, but Brandon Nelson kept stroking, chasing the bobbing green glow sticks that lit the oval path he'd follow through the night.
Nelson, 34, had prepared for two years to set a new world record for distance paddled in 24 hours, and he didn't plan to slip past the 15-year-old record of 131 miles -- he planned to smash it. In the face of darkness, exhaustion and even a broken boat, he powered across the water, driven by a desire to honor his mother, who had died of cancer three weeks earlier. When he stepped out of Washington's Lake Whatcom on the morning of May 3, 2006, having logged 147 miles, he embraced his father, wept, and said, "It's all for mom."
He didn't know that three days earlier, 760 miles to the south, 30-year-old Bay Area kayaker Carter Johnson had paddled 150 miles on San Francisco's Lake Merced, upping the world mark by nearly 20 miles, telling almost no one -- and edging out Nelson by a measly three miles.
The separate, nearly simultaneous attempts at the record illustrate the fickle nature of records in a world of increasingly skillful paddlers. But they also provide an example of a competitive event in which both competitors came away with something remarkable. Johnson, the new record-holder, received a confirmation note in August from the Guinness Book of World Records, securing his place in the book's lore, and only then did he allow friends to announce what he had done. His reticence seemed more a function of personality than strategy: although he had to take the advance step of inviting representatives from Guinness to watch, he said he never intended to make any announcements and labeled the marathon session one of those things "I just kind of do."
Nelson, meanwhile, chose to make his event a fundraiser to support hospice care programs in Arizona, California and Washington, after his mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer near the end of 2005. More than 300 sponsors came aboard, purchasing personalized buoys to line the lake. To go along with his goal of 145 miles, Nelson set a goal of $10,000 -- and doubled it, hauling in more than $20,000. After his paddle he received a letter from a woman who had taken a test for ovarian cancer after reading about it on Nelson's Web page -- and discovered Stage I, treatable cancer. Nelson's paddle had saved her life.
"To take that over the official record, or a certificate from Guinness," Nelson said, "anyone would do that."
Johnson called Nelson a "great guy" and "wonderful person," and said they talked afterward about their conflicting attempts. "He was really cool about it," Johnson said.
He also recognized that had it not been for a few bad breaks, their roles might have been reversed. Although both paddlers had complications, Nelson probably suffered the worst of it. Eight hours into his quest, his custom boat got caught between two wind-whipped waves and crunched like a taco. With water leaking in, Nelson completed his lap and came ashore to switch to his backup, a sea kayak three feet shorter and 30 pounds heavier. Nelson slogged along at an ever-decreasing speed while the boat designers reinforced the original, and wasn't able to get back in for six hours.
Johnson, who paddled a Huki S1-X surfski, faced heavy winds as well, lost two miles in long turns around a poorly placed buoy, and spent 45 minutes entirely off the water with stomach problems. He said his diet, "exclusively oatmeal cookies and salami," made him sick, and that he hadn't yet learned the experienced paddler's trick of downing Imodium before a race.
"It's something that can easily be avoided," he said. "I just wasn't privy to that secret."
Despite the potential for upping the record with a problem-free race, neither paddler seemed eager to try again, although Johnson said he would defend his title if necessary. "I know there's a lot of paddlers out there better than me," he said. "If someone breaks it I'm happy to go out there and try for 160 miles."