Marathon kayakers finish another epic paddle across the Show-Me State

It was an ominous start. On Tuesday morning, as hundreds of racers were supposed to be slipping into the Missouri River, a drenching storm with flashing lightning settled over Kaw Point in Kansas City, Kansas. For more than an hour the athletes were stuck on shore, anxiously pondering the brutal headwind they would face when the race got underway.

Lucky for the 255 kayaks, canoes and pedal-powered craft that muscled through the Missouri River 340, a marathon paddle from Kansas City to St. Charles, the gloomy start was the darkest hour.

Yesterday afternoon, Scott Mansker, the Olathe resident who started this annual outbreak of mass paddling insanity, was kicking back at a picnic table at Cooper’s Landing, a river-rat paradise halfway between Missouri’s coasts. The race doesn’t technically end until midnight tonight, but Mansker says people are already asking about 2010.