Around hour 47 of an ultramarathon-like paddleboard competition, Lindsey Tilton performed a simple act that got her through the next hour of the excruciating endurance race: she took a breath.
The power of breath, which she has relied on during her years as a yoga and meditation practitioner, allowed her to push through what would become a nonstop 48-hour paddleboarding expedition on a 400-acre lake in Sarasota. The endurance race began on the morning of December 2 with 31 total competitors, and 26 men and women dropped out before Tilton. She ultimately became the last female paddler standing—setting the women’s record in the process. (At the inaugural race the previous year, the longest female finish was 13 hours.)
Tilton missed out on the title of 2023 Last Paddler Standing by just two hours, an accolade that went to male SUPer Blake Carmichael of Fort Lauderdale. But she earned an equally impressive unofficial crown along the way: queen of female empowerment.
“After the race, it cascaded into this girl-power movement,” she says of her finish in Last Paddler Standing, one of the few paddleboarding competitions with only an all-gender division, meaning women and men compete for the overall win. “Girls messaged me to say they had watched my performance and were asking for advice and saying they were going to sign up next year.”
Endurance paddleboarding wasn’t even on Tilton’s radar until four years ago, when she learned about it after taking a paddleboard yoga class. A longtime runner and surfer, the Jupiter resident was hooked from the beginning and purchased her own paddleboard that same day. When she began SUP racing, Tilton says she was one of the slower paddlers, often finishing last. Friends assured her she would get better by training, and that was all the motivation she needed to keep paddling.
Today, the 30-year-old is a regular at standup paddleboard meetups at Coral Cove and Burt Reynolds parks and has created an online and in-person training group for paddlers of all levels called Aloha Athletics, alongside fellow paddleboarder Casey McCullough. Tilton says training other athletes in a sport she loves is a dream: “I didn’t set out with that race to inspire all these girls, but we need to bridge the gap in resources and training to make it a level playing field for men and women.” Aloha Athletics is open to both men and women.
She may not have set out with the goal of empowering other women, but it’s an accolade she gladly wears. “It’s addicting to see if I can go faster, go longer,” she says. “That drive is motivating for me to break those walls.”
At press time, Tilton was training for the June 23 Crossing for Cystic Fibrosis, an 80-mile paddle trek through the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf Stream from Bimini, Bahamas to Lake Worth Beach that supports patients diagnosed with the life-threatening disorder. This year’s event will be Tilton’s second solo crossing.
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Text by Nila Do Simon
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