At the start of the race I had a plan and a pace which I was planning on maintaining in order to finish the race in 59 hours. With the water low and slow, I felt like 59 hours would be a good goal.
However, my plans went up in smoke quickly when I started racing people to Lexington. I went way over my planned pace.
By the time I hit Waverly I was feeling sick (I think from the heat and exhaustion) and I had to stop for awhile.
By the time I hit Miami I was really sick and nauseated with a pounding headache. I ended up sitting in Miami for two hours trying to pull myself together.
By the time I reached Glasgow, I was still nauseated and felt exhausted and ill. My head hurt too bad to sleep and when I was finally able to sleep my daughter told me that I had only slept for about an hour when I woke up. ... However, when I woke up my headache was gone and I felt much better and hungry. I ended up eating a huge meal before I left. By the time I left Glasgow (I think I was there for 4 or 5 hours) I was feeling 100% better and I told myself that the only way I was going to finish in 59 hours was to paddle non-stop without sleeping anymore. So, that was sort of my mind set when I left Glasgow.... That had definitely not been my original plan.
The hallucinations started several miles after I pulled out of Jeff City. I started seeing these large (8 or 10 feet in diameter) black glass cubes (or boxes) pop up out of the water. At first I thought it was amusing, like something out of a science fiction movie... but then, several miles down the river, past Chamois, the water started moving in different directions all around me and watching it was making me dizzy. I had to stop paddling and focus my eyes only on the deck of my black boat multiple times to keep from losing my balance and falling over into the water.....
The tree people, whom usually seem friendly and non-threatening, seemed to take on a more menacing appearance. I started seeing buoys pop up several feet in front of my boat, and I would try hard to miss them, but as I was going past them they would vanish into thin air.
I also started hearing whispering voices in the wind.
After awhile I was feel intoxicated, like I had been drinking, and I started playing a game with the buoys, paddling as close to them as I could and trying to hit them with my paddle to see if they were real or imaginary. ..... Lets just say that I did hit a few with my paddle.

This is the 5th year that I have done the 340 but this was the first time that anything like that has ever happened to me and I didn't like it at all.
By the time I left Hermann I was hearing voices in the wind telling me that I had better paddle faster because some unknown menace was behind me and it was gaining on me. It was making me feel very paranoid.
What helped greatly was when I caught up to some other paddlers and I paddled with them for awhile and was talking with them.
However, by the time I reached Klondike I was paddling by myself again and the hallucinations started back up full force again.
Coming into St Charles, when I made that right turn, and you see the first bridge, triggered something in my head and I started seeing huge circus tents and huge circus flags shooting up out of the water around me.... Some people had a bon fire going, right past the bridge on the left, and I thought that was the finish line and I paddled up to them and was so happy and relieved that it was finally over, until my world came crashing down when they told me that they didn't know what I was talking about but that I must be confused...

They had no idea how right they were... I can laugh about it now but at the time it was not funny at all.

I was able to come into St Charles with a decent time of 62 hours (only 3 hours slower than what I had originally wanted), but I never want to go through those hallucinations like that again. .......
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Traci