In brief: Danny Ching has ended the long reign of Chattajack King Larry Cain after claiming victory in his first visit to Chattanooga, Tennessee over the weekend.
Danny took out the 31 mile “Inland Molokai” after an impressive 507 teams (including 236 SUPs) started the challenge. Larry, who went undefeated in Tennessee from 2014-2018, had to settle for third step on the podium after Danny and Frenchman Olivier Darrieumerlou (the 2018 11 Cities non-stop champion) pulled away in the final sprint to the line.
Seychelle picked up her fourth title (and third straight) after holding off Kim Barnes over the final 200 metres, with the duo having already broken pre-race favourite April Zilg mid-race. Seychelle and Kim actually earned “equal first” in this race way back in 2015.
Follow Chattajack on Facebook for more coverage. Here are the top 10s…
1st: Danny Ching (4:53:46)
1st: Seychelle (5:26:24)
UPDATE: Gina di Primio was missing from the original results, she finished fourth
Click here for the full results
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Chattajack 2019 Race Recap: As you all know, I wasn’t feeling 100% confident in my ability to paddle 31 miles this weekend. It’s been a long year of injury recovery and my longest paddle since Chattajack 2018 has been 15 miles, one time. My plan was not to go this year alone. I knew I had worthy drafting partners for the first time in 3 years. I rallied both @ksb56 and @aprilzilg last week into lining up together and forming a draft train to share the journey. We found each other before the start and were on our way to the line when the gun went off. No one was ready (I think Ben’s watch might have been 2 min fast) but in any case off we sprinted in what is historically one of the craziest starts of any race. Over 300 people in a single start “GO.” 😳 For several miles it’s nothing but wash from all directions. I got a good lead. (I secretly love that kind of chaos.) so I decided to run with it for a while. By mile 2, I was 50-100m ahead, Kim and April linked up and were working together to catch me. I still didn’t want to do the entire race alone, but I wasn’t about to slow down. My plan became “let them catch me, but make them work damn hard for it.” I paddled at a comfortable pace. Well 10 miles later and I still had a good lead. A head wind began to build, which means hammer down or get eaten alive. April dropped back. I was starting to fade as well. Kim caught me at mile 15. I took turns drafting leads with Kim. We traded off every mile for the 2nd 1/2 of the race. but my motivation was no where to be found. I was ready to quit and thought about it a lot. Like really seriously, “F this wind. I’m turning around. It’s not worth it. I don’t care enough to keep going.” went though my head for the next 5 miles. 😓 But besides feeling tired, my body was doing just fine. Unarmed with a legitimate excuse to pullout, I kept battling my daemons and I kept paddling. Then a miracle happened… continued in comments Photos: @johnmeskauskas
A post shared by Seychelle (@seychellesup) on Oct 28, 2019 at 9:12am PDT
