Check out the Peninsula Clarion newspaper's cool "Sights & Sounds" coverage of the Tustumena 200 here . See a great shot of Kristy as she leaves the starting line (photo #20 in the lineup) and also one of Paul and team (#24 in the gallery). You can even post comments!

Scroll down for Evy's most current race update!

(photo) Kristy Berington, running a team from Morning View Kennel, approaches the finish line of the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race in 2009.                                                                                                    

Morning View Kennel Update – By Evy Gebhardt
Tustumena 200 Pre-Race
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With the remnants of frostbitten skin on his cheeks and nose, and the frigid running of the Kusko 300 barely a memory, we are now closing in on the next race of the season – the locally run Tustumena 200. This race gets underway Saturday morning just a few miles from our Kasilof kennel, and will run throughout the weekend.

We have both Paul and Kristy signed up to run in the Tustumena races, with Paul in the abbreviated 100 mile T100, and Kristy in the full 200 mile T200 out and back circuit.  Paul is planning to approach the race as a quasi 100-mile training run, while Kristy will be testing out a few more dogs for the final Iditarod selection against a very robust field of competitive mushers, including several past champions.

This is always a crazy time of year around our place, with Iditarod food drops just around the corner, and the post race/ pre race packing and unpacking going on. Of course adding another team to the mix is a new dynamic, but there is no shortage of positive attitude and assistance from Kristy as she approaches her rookie run in the 1,100 mile Iditarod.

Earlier this evening, Paul and Kristy were going through the dogs that each would be taking on the races this weekend. It was an interesting jockey between the two, as Paul assured Kristy that it would be better to leave the veteran leader, Houston, home on this race and use him in Iditarod later on. Despite the absence of this sage trail hound, I feel confident that Kristy will make it around the trail with the leaders she will take. Paul’s Kusko team will be off for this race, although they fared significantly better on that race trail than Paul did. (He is certainly a little more trail toughened than when he left a week ago!)  They will take the dogs in for a pre-race veterinary check tomorrow, and later in the evening we will learn Paul and Kristy’s starting positions during the pre-race banquet.

The race can be followed online at http://www.tustumena200.com/, and I will be posting updates as well.
Until later – life is a journey, enjoy the ride! Evy

 Paul Gebhardt draws his starting position at the pre-race banquet. Soldotna city Mayor Peter Michiche served as the evening's MC.                                                                                                                                                                                    

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              It is a different space for me to be in compared to years past, when I had served as the announcer and banquet MC for the Tustumena race. I gladly passed the gavel to Soldotna City Mayor Peter Michiche earlier tonight at the pre-race banquet, and for the first time enjoyed sitting with Paul and being a spectator for the evening rather than manning the podium. Tomorrow, with both Paul and Kristy’s teams to get out of the starting chute, I will forgo the longstanding tradition of doing live broadcast for ESPN radio that I have done for many years at this event. Tonight, rather than frantically organizing the bios of all the mushers according to starting positions and prepping gear for an early morning trek to the starting line, I am able to focus just on our kennel for a change.

              Paul and Kristy are packing the last of their gear, and my trademark “pink parka” is out and ready to go for the big day tomorrow. When the time comes, Kristy will be leaving the chute in position #21, and Paul will be the 10^th musher in the 100 mile class to leave the starting line.

              Kristy’s 200 miler is the first group to head out, which will be nice to have Paul to help with this. After all of the T200 mushers leave, the 100 mile class will follow shortly thereafter. Paul’s race will take him out 50 miles with a mandated 4 hour layover at a remote checkpoint nestled near the shoreline of a lake in the Caribou Hills high country called Caribou Lake. He will then turn his team of 10 dogs around and head back to the finish line located between the communities of Kasilof and Clam Gulch. Kristy will do a full 100 miles before reaching her halfway point at Clam Gulch. I should have just enough time tomorrow to get chores done here at the kennel, drive down to Clam Gulch to get Kristy into the checkpoint and settled down for her mandatory rest before heading over to greet Paul and the team into the finish line as the early hours of morning are approaching. Then it is back to Kristy’s team to help her get headed out on the trail again before turning the dog truck towards home for morning chores. While Kristy will spend the rest of the day on the runners of her sled being challenged by the hilly terrain that dominates this race, I will catch a nap and some hot coffee.

            The forecast is for some pretty chilly temperatures beneath a cloudless sky. The trail is “beautiful, hard and fast”. I think it will be an exciting weekend. Stay tuned! http://www.tustumena200.com/

 Kristy has her gear checked prior to the race start
Paul Gebhardt being interviewed prior to the race start.

 Kristy Berington leaves the starting line of the Tustumena 200 Sled Dog Race in Kasilof, AK

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It has been a busy 24 hours here, with multiple races unfolding beneath a bright half moon that turned a deep orange hue as it settled beyond the shoreline of Cook Inlet here on the Kenai Peninsula. With overnight temperatures sliding to below zero and a clear sky, it was a good night for dog racing – and Paul took advantage of this to claim first place in the Tustumena 100.

Just after 3:30am, with his leaders: BEAR & KING leading the charge, he crossed the finish line to outpace the field of a dozen mushers on this out and back course. Paul had dropped just one dog from his team, his Kusko leader LIEUTENANT was dropped from the team because Paul felt he had put in enough miles and did not need the last miles racing into the finish line. The rest of the team that came in with tails waging and barking were: HAG, DUKE, TINKER, HERSHEY, BETSY, WEASEL & PSYCHO.

As soon as we had Paul’s team watered and home in their dog houses, I made the drive back to stay with Kristy’s team as she completed her mandatory 8-hour layover in the 200 mile class. Her timeline for this was not quite what she had anticipated when she started the race. She had intended to “camp” with her team of many yearlings along the 100 miles in to the half way point, and had packed straw and supplies in her sled from the starting line to facilitate this.   What she did not intend, was a frustrating series of multiple, untimely attempted passes by another young musher that ultimately got her off the main race trail on this first leg of the race.

She had come upon a team in front of her, and the driver was stopped to do something with his dogs. She had passed him and while it boils down to a technicality, she indicated that the musher had not waited the proper amount of time to elapse before he tried to pass her again. He was not able to stay ahead of Kristy’s team, and she was trying to hold our team back as they bore down on the leading team. She had to keep riding the brakes to keep her team slow to stay behind the other team, and she said she was getting frustrated with this. I am not certain how many times the two volleyed the lead position, but in the processes, the teams somehow got off the correct route. By the time Kristy realized this, she became very concerned that she would be penalized or disqualified for taking the wrong trail to reach the checkpoint. Rather than continue on this shortcut, she knew the ethical thing to do would be to turn the team around and take the proper course in. The mistake cost her at least 10 extra miles of running, but fortunately she was wise enough to look for the lesson learned in the experience and keep a very positive attitude.  (Once the race is over, Paul will spend some time coaching Kristy on how to handle the passing/ re-passing situation if it comes up again. He has experienced this in the past, and he said it is very frustrating for dogs and musher alike.  He has had mushers that also refuse to pass your team, instead opting to “draft” off your team’s momentum while literally running with their leaders immediately on your sled runners. It allows their leaders to travel at a steady pace without any of the stress of making decisions on the trail. One strategy that Paul feels will give you some distance is to stop your team and snack them. He said that often times, you Likely you will end up passing and pulling away from the other team down the trail in this scenario.)

Unquestionably, the dogs picked up on Kristy’s upbeat attitude, and when they finished up their 8 hour mandatory rest at the T200 half way point, they were barking and rearing to be back on the trail. (She is currently in 17^th place.) Paul had caught a couple hours of sleep by that time, and he came down to see her back off onto the trail. He was very pleased with how the young dogs were performing and especially glad to see how well they rested at the checkpoint and ate.  Paul and Kristy had been spending time in training to teach the dogs to rest, so seeing this come to fruition under the race atmosphere was very rewarding.

Kristy was chipper and told me how she was surprised by what she learned on the trail. She indicated that there were some real technical elements that the trail presented, and many of the veteran Iditarod mushers echoed how much like sections of the steps to Happy River or the Gorge a segment of this year’s Tustumena race trail resembled. There was one bad hill where another musher had taken a tumble that caused her ax to be catapulted out of her sled. Remarkably, Paul heard about this from the Ham Radio operators that provide race update information for the Tustumena. On his way to the finish line, he stopped his team to fish the lost ax out of the snow and carried it in before turning it over to the Race Marshall. The other musher was undoubtedly very appreciative, as an ax is a piece of the required mandatory gear that each musher has to carry or they will be disqualified.  

As of the halfway point in the race, Kristy had dropped two of her 14 dogs due to fatigue. Her leader was SKUNK, and the two dogs she had dropped were DOWNY & CUTIE PIE. The rest of the team consists of: RINGER, WOLF, GIBSON, TITAN, GREYSTONE, MINK, QUEEN, TESSA, BLACK DOG, MARSHALL & her own pup, JONAH. We are expecting her to finish around midnight tonight.. The sky has clouded up, and the temperature is warmer than the chilly weather that dominated the dark hours overnight, so that may slow the team down some. 

I’ll do at least one more Tustumena wrap up, then it is onto food drops and the upcoming Denali Doubles race in February.

              Until later, Life is a journey.. Enjoy the ride! Evy