The Great Alabama 650 Paddle Race starts 9/30/2023. Here is the current list of entrants:
Female Solo
Salli O’Donnell
Brooke Vaughn
Male Solo
Bobby Johnson
Jim Lewey
Trey Reaves
Mirko Pruefer
Chuck Scheidt
Christian Logan
Jeff Matonis
George True
Brad Friesen
Goran Gustavsson
David Forshee
Sean Hawes
David Miner
Teams
Ryan Gillikin & Rod Price
Julie Ardoin & Carmen Gustafson
Gregory Peters & Corbin Peters
Matt Taylor & Myles Sumerlin
I got to see a little bit of that route this spring paddling on the coosa. I paddled up from fort toulouse, portaged into the lake and then portaged back out onto the main stem and back to fort toulouse. Nice area. I think that was around 24 miles and wore me out. I can’t imagine 650 miles in less than a week!
The race has a shotgun start at 10 am 9/29/2023. The race continues for up to 10 days. There are mandatory portage points and check in spots, with minimum times for the portage (which can be support team facilitated.) Support teams are required but cannot be in the watercraft. The watercraft types are limited to kayaks, canoes and SUPs. No motors, pedals or sails are allowed. Racers must have completed at least one qualifying race in the last 5 years (see list.) The race map is updated in real time via SPOT trackers.
At the bottom of the page I linked to (above) are links to the rules and additional information.