This story was originally published by Bridge Michigan, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from Bridge Michigan, sign up for a free Bridge Michigan newsletter here.
It’s seconds before 9 p.m. and a huge crowd has gathered in downtown Grayling.
People are lining the streets as if they’re waiting for a parade to start. A faint countdown begins and then it happens.
A stampede of athletes carrying canoes is racing down the streets.
This is the running start to the Au Sable River Canoe Marathon. Once in the water, those athletes will paddle 120 miles through the night. The leaders will make it to Oscoda around 11 a.m. the next day.
But the race isn’t just about the paddlers. It’s billed as the toughest spectator sport in America.
Many fans stay up all night long, driving to more than a dozen bridges and dams along the river, cheering for the racers as they paddle through the darkness and back into the light.
And tonight, that’s what I’m going to do, too.
Since June, I’ve been checking things off the Michigan Dreaming Ultimate Summer Bucket List and telling stories along the way. No. 4 on the list is to cheer all night long at the Au Sable River Canoe Marathon.
To complete the task, I enlisted the help of a veteran spectator.
Around 6 p.m.
When I meet up with them, Kane Madsen and his family are gathering at his dad’s place in Grayling for their pre-race ritual of eating pizza and guessing the winners. Madsen lives near Lansing now but he’s from Grayling. The 43-year-old has cheered at the Au Sable River Canoe Marathon for the last 25 years. He says he does it for the racers, many of whom he grew up with.
“I feel like I have a connection with them that's not ordinary, and it's not just, ‘Hey, Kane's so awesome, because he yells,’ but I want to yell for them,” Madsen says. “Honestly, I think it's just my passion.”His family has a white board on which they keep track of their guesses for which will be the first 10 boats to cross the finish line. There are a lot of similar picks for first place, but Madsen’s nephew is the only one who thinks Weston Willoughby, of Traverse City, and Travis Mecklenburg, of Grayling, will take the cake.
Around 11 p.m.
Madsen’s family and a couple hundred other people are gathered at Wakely Bridge, about 20 miles downriver from the start. It’s dark out and a thick fog has settled in. While most people stand on the bridge under a portable streetlight, Madsen’s crew are off to the side, on the riverbank. Some other spectators are out in the water.
“There's a dude with a cowboy hat sitting on a log. That's pretty sweet,” Madsen says.
It’s not long before a glowing orb of the leading boat’s light appears in the fog. The paddlers are Willoughby and Mecklenburg, the boat Madsen’s nephew thought would win, and no one is behind them.
About a minute and a half later, a cluster of three more boats rolls through.
“Do you think any of the racers in this pack have a chance at first, still?” I ask Madsen.
“Goodness, 100%. Yeah. We're way, way early,” he responds. “We'll see what happens because the water changes. It's going to be interesting.”
Up ahead, Madsen explains, there are sections where the river looks more like a pond. Not everyone paddles well in those parts.
Plus, you never know when a boat will make a pit stop with their feed crew.
“It’s kind of just like NASCAR,” Au Sable River Canoe Marathon Communications Manager Kate Reitz told me over the phone before the race. “You know how the car comes in and they get fuel, then they get tire changes and they get a wipe down and a water? Well, it's kind of the same thing with pit crews during the marathon, as well.”
Each boat has a team of “feeders” who meet them at various spots along the river to assist with their needs. The feeders might give the racers another paddle, a change of clothes or food.
If you’re wondering what they eat, one of the top paddlers, Matt Gabriel, told me he usually just sticks to a liquid diet of electrolytes, proteins and carbohydrates, though he said he once ate a cheeseburger in the middle of the race.
“It was actually probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever ate during the marathon,” he said.
Gabriel didn’t keep up the tradition of eating a burger, however, because it took too much time to eat.
Another reason teams might have to stop is if someone is sick. According to Gabriel, getting motion sickness or throwing up is pretty common.
“I vomited in a number of races,” he said.
As for going to the bathroom, Au Sable River Canoe Marathon historian and statistician Ryan Matthews told me, “If it’s just No. 1, you kind of pee your pants.”
But if it’s No. 2?
“That’s up to the paddlers. A lot of them will pull over and go. Some prepare themselves so they don’t have to even worry about No. 2 in the race,” he said.
So Madsen is right. The racers have only just begun and there are countless reasons why they might have to stop over the next 14 hours. And when they do, it could shake up the order.
Around 3:45 a.m.
I take a nap in my car. Madsen stays awake.
Around 5 a.m.
Just as the sun begins to rise, so does the number of spectators. At Alcona Dam, the crowd is big enough that there’s a guy directing parking. The water in front of the dam is still as glass and reflecting the pinks and blues of the sun we can’t yet see.
That is one of the six dams racers have to navigate around. In the distance, we see a boat paddling toward us.
“Way to go fellas!” Madsen yells from the shore. It’s the same leaders — Willoughby and Mecklenburg. The crowd cheers them on as they paddle to the shore beside the dam, pick up their canoe, and start running up a steep hill through the crowd before descending back down to the water on the other side. Almost two minutes pass before the next racers — Chris Issendorf and Christophe Proulx — come through. The pair moved up from third at the last bridge to second place here. The race is almost two-thirds of the way done for the leaders.
“So at this point, do you guys think it's pretty solid that the front runners are going to win?” I ask.
“I don't think so, the way Chris and Kristoff look, dude … I wouldn't want to race against them,” Madsen replies.
Around 11 a.m.
When a boat appears on the last stretch of the race in downtown Oscoda, it’s none other than Willoughby and Mecklenburg, the boat that’s led all night. And, once again, there’s no one behind them.
Madsen cheers loudly as they cross the finish line, but he looks weary. I ask him how he’s doing.
“I mean, I'm going to be hurting,” he says. “I'm pretty tired right now.”
But he tells me it’s all worth it.
"I think it’s just in my blood,” he said. “It's just a cool, fun experience. It's different than every other day of the year. And I get to come back home.”
This article first appeared on Bridge Michigan and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
