If you had 24 hours and a Hobie Mirage Eclipse, how far could you travel? Two friends found out the weekend of October 22-23, 2016.
“We’re hoping to get to 100 miles. We’ll need to keep a pace of 4.5 mph or better to do it,” Jaden Hartley said before the attempt. The manager of the Missouri outlet of the Ozark Mountain Trading Company took on the challenge of setting a record with stand up endurance athlete Shane Perrin.
Perrin, who was unavailable for comment, was the first person to paddle a stand up paddleboard the full length of the MR 340 race, a 340-mile run down the Missouri River from Kansas City to St. Louis, so this wasn’t entirely a new experience despite the different platform.
They didn’t quite reach their goal, but the result is still impressive. 66 miles! “It was a fun experience. Definitely a challenging one. We didn’t go as hard as we could. We decided to keep it fun and light,” said Hartley.
RELATED: Video – Hobie Hits the Big-Time on Kathy Ireland’s Modern Living TV
The record attempt – the first endurance mark we at Hobie are aware of on the Mirage Eclipse stand up pedal board – took place on Missouri’s Table Rock Lake.
Hartley and Perrin faced a variety of conditions, everything from beautiful glass to nasty chop and waves. “The boards did fantastic,” Hartley said.
Hartley was impressed with the performance of the Mirage Eclipse. “It is fantastic. For all the moving parts we had nothing go wrong. It was everything you could ask for. If you put in the effort, it straight up boogies. The durability is top notch. I give it an A,” he said.
The record attempt came together when Perrin dropped by an Eclipse demo. He thought pedaling the MirageDrive powered stand up would make for a good bookend of his past 24-hour paddleboard effort. “He was nice enough to let me come along. I wanted in on it,” Hartley says.
Hartley prepared by putting in two- to five-hour intervals on a local lake. It’s a workout. He figures he burned 1,000 calories for every five miles he traveled. During the attempt, he fueled up with nutrition drinks, energy gel tablets, jerky, sandwiches, and S’Mores.
He played with foot and body positioning to determine how best to power the Eclipse. “You can get in some positions where you get a crazy burn,” Hartley said. During the record attempt, he kept his feet around the middle of the board and stood up straight, with just a subtle lean towards the handlebars. “I can last quite a while,” he said. That he can: 24 hours.
