SUP Racing, Jesus Lizards

I've really been having fun lately, albeit a masochistic variety of fun, with SUP racing and training. Yesterday I won another of the local Imperial River races put on by CGT Kayaks. A couple of the differences between this race and the last race were:

1) I'm now officially on the CGT "Race Team" so I have a cool blue jersey with the Caloosa tribal design on it. Being on the race team means that we're expected to do some out of town races this year, so I'll be reporting on that later.

2) We started in groups of four this time rather than being released individually, which made for tighter and more strategic competition. It definitely gets choppy with four people side by side all paddling as hard as they can. My fiercest competitor Ben Walker fell off in the cross chop and that helped me out early on. Of course later I fell, too, trying to weave through several German tourist kayakers blocking the upriver turn-around buoy.

After the race we did a Hawaii longboard surfer style photoshoot with some of the race team.



Also, after the race we got to see a Jesus Lizard that shop owner "Caloosa" John had adopted. These are the famous water-walking lizards that can escape their predators by running so fast across the water that they don't sink in. Like many other tropical reptile species, they have been released into the wild and become a pest in Florida.