What exactly is the Ultimate Florida Challenge?
For most of us it would be simply making it from June to October without dropping in the sun and heat. And for others the Ultimate Florida Challenge probably involves 40 or fifty hot dogs and a commensurate volume of beer. For Rod Price the Ultimate Florida Challenge will be a 20 day canoe race around and through the Florida Peninsula.
The Race Around Florida, as it is subtitled, is being held in early March 2012, will be 1200 miles long requiring competitors to paddle through the day and into the night.
Rod Price has been racing canoes for over thirty years and considers this race the toughest he has ever faced. Considering that Rod raced in and won the Yukon 1000, the world, longest continuous canoe race, his belief that this Florida race is the toughest yet is truly a powerful statement.
But knowing the terrain he will travel it is easy to see the basis for Rod’s belief. The race starts in Tampa Bay and travels down the west coast along the Gulf of Mexico. After a simple 100 mile cut across the everglades, Rod will pass Key Largo and begin a trek North. Most of this portion of the race will be in the intracoastal waterway, but there are sections that are right out in the Atlantic. Remember, this is a CANOE race.
Eventually Rod will pass Jacksonville and reach the Saint Marys river. This will carry Rod inland for another 120 miles until he runs out of river and must carry his canoe, tote his boat, for forty miles across some pretty tough panhandle terrain. After this Rod shoves his canoe into the head waters of the Suwannee river just over inside Georgia. He will then paddle 200 miles down to its mouth just above Cedar Key. A quick 90 mile sprint and Rod is back where he started Fort Desoto Park.
1200 miles, 20 days and nights with the nights spent sleeping on the ground or in the canoe, will be a arduous task for everyone that enters. For Rod who will be 52 years old when the race starts. It will be a tremendous test of his training and desire to win.
Rod will be racing for the benefit of Give Kids the World and could use both corporate and private sponsors. Every mile Rod paddles means more funds for this well known most worthwhile charity.
Information for this News Release taken from the article originally published in Orlando Magazine
You don’t have to be Bob Barker to come on down and enjoy the Naples Bay Great Dock Canoe Race. The yearly event held to benefit the local charity “Lighthouse of Collier,” features great food and fun along with a chance to see some of the nation’s top canoe racers.
Central Florida resident, Rod Price, has spent his adult life racing canoes and other light water craft around the globe. At 50 years of age, Price celebrated 30 years of canoe racing last year by teaming up with fellow adventurist, Ardie Olson, to win the world’s longest canoe race, the Yukon 1000. In his book, Racing to the Yukon, Price chronicles some of his extreme adventures in the Florida Everglades, the Amazon River and the Yukon wilderness. Racing to the Yukon entertains and thrills the reader with vivid accounts of Price’s journey to succeed in the physically and mentally challenging sport of adventure canoe racing.