Life Flips Your Canoe - Six Life Lessons From the Day the Missouri River Kicked Our Ass

"It is not the critic who counts… The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."

— Theodore Roosevelt

Two Hours In

Two hours into the paddle on the Missouri River, the canoe flipped. Joe and I found ourselves in cold water with our gear floating downstream. Not long after, Joe started to shake from the cold. The wind was hammering us, the current was pulling us away from shore, and as much as we tried to kick the boat back to safety, we were stuck. I watched thousands of dollars worth of equipment drift away, and a thought rose up in me with a clarity I have not felt in years.

Let it go. People over possessions.

That decision happened in a moment, but it took many years of doing hard things to be ready to make it.

That's one of the lessons the river taught me. There were others.

What We Were Out There Doing

Joe and I have been training for the MR340 — the Missouri River 340. It is one of the most respected endurance races in the country. A 340-mile nonstop paddling race from Kansas City to St. Charles, Missouri, listed in the National Geographic Top 100 Ultimate Adventures. The longest nonstop paddle race in the world. You start on a Tuesday morning and you have 88 hours to finish. Heat, storms, sleep deprivation, hallucinations. It is more than a canoe race. It is a test of grit, and out there you really learn who you are.

I have had the pleasure of finishing it twice. First year solo, second year tandem. It has been about ten years since my last finish, and this year I decided to give it another go. Joe has never done it before, so we have been putting in the work: building cadence, working on communication, getting time in the boat, just like you would train for a marathon. You don't show up on race day and figure it out. You train, you sharpen, you suffer on purpose.

This past Sunday was supposed to be just another training day. Twenty-five miles from the Franklin Island access down to Cooper's Landing, here in Columbia, Missouri. We anticipated a four to five hour paddle. Another brick in the wall.

It turned out to be more about survival than training.

By the end of it we had lost a canoe, almost lost a friend, almost lost each other — and walked away with some lessons that apply far beyond the river.

When Conditions Turn

Looking at the river from the bank, the conditions did not strike me as anything out of the ordinary. The water was moving a little quick and the wind was up, but I have raced this river twice and trained on it many times. I figured we would be okay.

As soon as we got in, I knew we would not be.

You cannot feel the wind on the bank the way you feel it on the Missouri. And wind on a wide river, especially a crosswind, is its own animal. You have current moving underneath you and wind blowing on the side of the canoe, pushing the whole boat. My canoe has a rudder, and I could not control the boat. The water was whitecapping like the ocean. My canoe is not a tippy boat — that is one of the reasons I chose it for marathon racing — and yet there we were, fighting just to keep it upright.

Two hours in, I looked at Joe and said this isn't even fun today. We weren't getting a break. My hip flexors were burning. We started talking about getting off the river at the next access point.

Then we hit a wing dike we did not see until we were on top of it. The water was up and over the rocks, hiding them. The boat went sideways. With the wind and the chop, I had the rudder all the way over and it was not moving. I had to lay back and hold on to the back of the boat just to keep our center of gravity low enough to keep from flipping. We finally straightened back out, and as we crossed the river hoping for a little reprieve — out of nowhere, maybe a log, maybe just the chop — we were in the water.

First time I have ever flipped this boat.

What I Got Wrong

Let me own my mistakes. There are five, and every one of them shows up in business, marriage, and leadership long before they show up on a river.

1. Overconfidence. Complacency kills.

My experience had quietly become arrogance. I did not put my phone in a plastic baggie. I did not bring my inReach GPS device. I did not have our paddles tethered the way I would on race day. I had told Joe a few times before we put in — we don't dump the boat, it's not an option. Well, it happened. And once we were in the water, the corners I had cut showed up immediately. Every second I was holding that phone over my head was a second I could have been pushing the boat.

I say it all the time, and the river handed it back to me Sunday: complacency kills. Past success does not protect you from present danger. Reality only responds to current conditions. It does not care what you did last year, last race, or last decade.

2. Underestimating the conditions.

Wind plus current changes the entire equation. Although the river looked okay from the bank, I did not do my due diligence to check the water flow or the wind. We just jumped in and went. And I will tell you this honestly — even if I had checked, we probably would have gone out anyway. We saw other paddlers on the Race Owl app, we figured we were not the only ones, and we trusted our experience over the conditions in front of us. That's overconfidence wearing the mask of reasonableness.

3. Incomplete preparation.

When chaos hits, you fall to the level of your training, not your intentions. Joe and I are new partners. We have not put in a lot of river time together, and we have not drilled rollover recovery on the big river. You don't anticipate dumping the boat — but it can happen. And on the Missouri it is not like a float trip on a small river. The current is so strong that even in a race, with paddlers coming up next to you to help, it takes serious effort to regain control of a flipped boat. We had no support out there, and it was cold. The drills we did not do beforehand were the drills we needed in the moment.

4. Delayed respect for the situation.

Initially I treated this as an inconvenience. I called Lacey and gave her our GPS location, but when she asked me, "Do you want me to call search and rescue?" — I said no. Not yet. I was confident we would figure it out, and underneath that confidence was pride. I did not want to dispatch resources for nothing, did not want to be the guy on the news, did not want to be made fun of. All the ego stuff.

Lacey told me later that one moment scared her more than anything. When she asked what I wanted her to do, I said, "I don't know." She said she had never heard me say that. I usually have a contingency plan for everything. That "I don't know" was the real signal — and I missed it. Minutes later I had given Joe my phone, the situation had escalated, and the call I had delayed was a call I could no longer make.

What starts as inconvenience becomes emergency. And by the time you call for help, your options have narrowed.

5. Attachment.

I cared about the canoe longer than I should have. When Joe made the call to swim for shore, I should have gone with him. Instead I held on to the rudder and tried to kick the boat in. I watched my partner make more progress alone than I was making with the boat. And when I heard him yell that he was getting tired and saw him stop moving, I knew.

This was serious. I had to drop the ego. I let the canoe go.

The boat, the gear, the investment, the pride — all of it floating downstream. But I needed to be in a position to help Joe if he went under. People over possessions. Boats can be replaced. Lives cannot.

Some of you reading this need that lesson outside of paddling. You are holding onto an image, an identity, a business model that died two years ago, a relationship that's draining you, a version of yourself who no longer fits who you're becoming. And it is dragging you downstream.

What canoe are you holding onto?

What Went Right

Now let me tell you what saved us. Because some people survive and learn nothing, and others survive and become wiser. We are choosing wiser.

We stayed calm enough to think.

Joe had a moment of panic in the water and pulled himself out of it using breathing he had built through his Ironman training. Months of triathlon prep, and he did not even know he was building the skill that would save his life on a Sunday afternoon. I had a moment of my own when I finally got onto the wing dike and let some F-bombs fly — a real little man fit, watching my canoe drift away and not believing this was happening. Calm does not mean no fear and it does not mean no anger. It means functioning despite both. It means making the next right decision while your body is screaming at you. And sometimes it means giving yourself thirty seconds to lose it, then coming back.

We communicated early.

Calling Lacey to give her our GPS location was the right move, even if I should have let her call for help right then. Early communication saved us minutes we could not afford to lose later. In any crisis — business, marriage, health — the people who tell their team early give themselves more options than the people who try to hide it until they're cornered.

We chose life over equipment.

We did not let stubbornness keep us tied to the boat. Letting the canoe go was the right call. The wrong canoe will cost you the right shore.

We had the right partner. And the right community.

Joe was the right partner before we ever dumped, calm and collected even when we got sideways and didn't know how it was going to turn out. The right partner in any crisis is worth more than every piece of gear in the boat.

And after we walked the walk of shame down the Katy Trail, soaked, muddy, carrying our paddles past curious cyclists and runners,  went home and wrote up what happened. I posted it to the MR340 community page. I almost didn't. The page has around 20,000 paddlers on it, and I had raced enough niche sports:  triathlon, running, gravel, adventure racing.  Soome communities can be brutal when you screw up. I figured I was going to get roasted.

Not one person roasted us. Hundreds of comments. Hundreds of likes. People offered to lend me a boat for the rest of the season. One woman came forward with photos she had taken of Joe and me on the river that morning before we dumped, she had been so excited to see paddlers training that she had grabbed shots of us. So we got photos of ourselves out there alive and paddling, just before life flipped our canoe.

That community showed up. And it reminded me of something every reader of this should hear: the people you surround yourself with are tested in moments like that, not in normal moments. Anyone can high-five you when you're winning. The real ones show up when your pride is floating downstream.

 We stayed grateful instead of acting tough.

When I finally pulled myself up that thirty-foot embankment of mud and silt, soaking, exhausted, covered, with one Croc almost lost downstream, I gave Joe a big hug at the top. Two grown men grateful just to be standing on dirt.

Standing on land felt like a gift. Most of what we complain about disappears the moment survival enters the room.

We're Not Throwing in the Towel

There was a moment Sunday night when I told myself I was done.

The boat was gone. The investment was gone. My pride was floating somewhere south of Cooper's Landing. The race is at the end of July. We had just had our worst training day on the books, and I sat there and thought, the hell with it. I'm not gonna do it.

Then I read the comments from the MR340 community. I sat with the lessons. I felt grateful instead of bitter. And I remembered who I am and what I teach.

We're doing the race.

Here is what we're changing. We are getting another boat. We are drilling rollover recovery on the big river before we put in for another long training day. We are tethering the paddles. We are putting the inReach GPS in the boat. We are keeping our phones in dry bags. We are checking the wind and the water flow before we paddle, and we are building the contingency plans I should have already had Sunday.

Then we are showing up at the start line in Kansas City.

Because that is what doing hard things actually looks like. Not the version where everything goes smoothly and you talk about how tough you are. The version where you get your ass kicked, you sit with the lesson, and you get back in the boat.

Life Flips Everybody's Canoe

Life is going to flip your canoe. Your plan will go sideways. Your business will get tested. Your marriage will get tested. Your body will get tested. Your confidence will disappear, your comfort will go with it, and you will get your ass kicked.

And in those moments, you find out who you actually are.

So ask yourself:

Where is your complacency hiding? Where have you been telling yourself "that won't happen to me" when the warning signs are already there? Are you preparing for the conditions in front of you, or for the ones you wish you had?

Respect the river you're on. Respect adversity. Choose good people to be around. Prepare seriously. Stay humble. Hold tight to the people you love — because nothing else makes the trip back home.

People over possessions. Don't let pride and ego get the best of you. Pride and ego could have gotten us killed Sunday.

We lost a canoe. We kept what mattered. We live to fight another day.

Go do hard things this week.

Siegfried "Sig"  Jay Tiegs is an Army veteran, high performance coach, and author of Life on Offense — the first book in his series on becoming the Peaceful Warrior. He coaches driven people through The Forge program and hosts the Do Hard Things podcast. He lives in Columbia, Missouri.

Listen to the full episode of Do Hard Things wherever you get your podcasts. Want coaching support? Visit dohardthingscoaching.com or dohardthingsnation.com.

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