January Mid Distance Training Update

Clear blue sky, the trees and landscape wrapped in a thick blanket of white, and the thermometer showing a brisk -15 made for a beautiful, albeit cold, run for Paul and the team early this morning.  Over the past two weeks, we've realized a steady accumulation of snow, which brings with it the welcome opportunity to run the dogs directly out of the kennel here on their continued training runs.  With the calendar pushing us ever closer to the start of the Iditarod on March 1^st, each of these regular training runs is an exercise in assessment for Paul. 

Last weekend, Paul used the structure of a mid distance race, the Knik 200, for the purpose of analyzing some of the younger dogs in training this season.  With our helper, Tyler, running the main string of Iditarod dogs, the two teams had planned a rather uneventful run out and back on a section of trail that actually serves as the initial leg of the Iditarod trail.  Paul appreciates the opportunity to put the team onto a trail that offers "river running", which is predominantly what the race is known for.  This mimics sections of the Iditarod trail, which we do not have available from our Kenai Peninsula training base.

However, when have any of us ever known Paul to give us "uneventful"….???? It turned into what could easily have been near-disaster.   I am beginning to think Paul is jinxed when it comes to the Knik 200 race. Last year, Paul's leader, Governor, had gotten loose and ran down the trail costing Paul and hour and a half of time.  This year, Tyler hit a stump with his sled and snapped the gangline, loosing his entire team.  (Gee, sound like another story some of us have heard before?!)   Tyler had drawn one of late starting positions, so the majority of the race field had proceeded him out of the starting chute and he was bringing up the rear.  When he hit the stump, he was catapulted over the handlebar and into a snowbank.  He said he saw stars and got up just in time to be out of reach of the now-free running team.  Not unlike Paul's experience, the dogs just motored up the trail without a sled behind them and Tyler could do nothing but run after them.  He did have the good fortune if another team picking him up, while the next team ahead of him on the trail had grabbed the loose team and was holding them when he caught up.   His big excitement came when the other musher, who later told me he thought the dogs were going to lay down and rest, tossed the rope to Tyler and took off.  The problem was, that Tyler's leader, Houston, decided to give chase. Instead of being able to tie off the team as the other musher had expected, Tyler suddenly found himself doing some EXTREME mushing! A fully trained team like that can easily pull a pickup truck, so Tyler was no match to try and stop them.  He did get some assistance from a series of additional mushers to secure the team and to retrieve his sled, but it certainly put a monkey wrench into his whole run. Compounding the drama of Tyler eventually get his intact team safely back thanks to good fortune and good Samaritans, was a problem Paul was challenged by when some of his front end dogs experienced unexplained muscle cramping.  This occurred on the second leg of racing, and caused Paul to load up four dogs in his sled for a slow journey back to the finish line.  The dogs are recouping in warm beds of straw in our shop at home, and Paul consulted with our veterinarians to determine possible causes.  As a whole, it was not quite what Paul had expected when he left for the weekend race, and he is hoping for a cleaner run in the upcoming Kuskokwim 300.

Paul has run the challenging 300-mile "Kusko" a half dozen times before, with a personal best finish of 4^th place.  This is the premier mid distance event in the state, and despite the logistical challenges involved in getting dogs and gear to the starting line of the race, it hosts the "who's who" in mushing every year.  The race course travels through a series of small villages along the Kuskokwim River delta, starting and ending in the western Alaska village of Bethel. Beyond a handful of local mushers, the rest of the field will fly in from Anchorage, and be hosted by various families in town. The hospitality of the communities in the area is incredible.  "Camai" (pronounced Cha-Mai) is the area's traditional Yup'ik language translation of "a warm hello", and the community gravitates to this major winter event. This is another of the mid distance races that Paul elects to run specifically because the trail navigates on a river.  Coupled with the caliber of competition, it offers a good chance to test dogs in a racing environment. 

The weather can be absolutely brutal on the mushers out at the Kusko.  Paul has experienced everything from pouring rain, to temperatures plummeting to -70.   One year, a storm surge off the mouth of river, fueled by high winds and waves from the nearby Bering Sea, caused a last minute alteration to the starting chute and race trail.  The aftermath left several of the trailbreaker's snowmachines submerged in water when they went out to work on the trail.   Paul was running along the "marked" race trail in the hours of darkness, and could see some strange reflectors right on the surface of the trail.  As they had already encountered sections of open water during the race, he wanted to be very aware of any new routes that may have been put in at the last minute.  But these reflectors he was seeing did not seem to match any of the ones the trail had used previously in the race, and he didn't understand whey they would be so close to the ground.  Normally, the trail marking lath stood several feet high.  It wasn't until he came upon them that he realized what he was looking at.  A thin veneer of ice was all that floated his team over the rushing water that entombed the snowmachines he was mushing directly over.  The reflectors he saw were ones that had been put along the edge of the top of each windshield - which was all that protruded from the ice' surface.  By the Grace of God, the dispersement of the weight of the team and the sled kept them all from breaking through.  Obviously, it would only have been as deep as the snowmachine's height, but it surely would have been cold! 

Following the Kusko 300, Paul may have Tyler enter an abbreviated version of our local 200 mile race, the Tustumena, held here on the Kenai Peninsula.  Paul serves as the race marshal for the event, and I do the announcing.  We have been involved in this for a number of years, and although Paul has won the event several times, he prefers not to race it personally as it is run on his main training trails. Instead he volunteers considerably towards the trail and other elements of the race. He has already spent a great deal of time working with other volunteers to put in the race trail.  Not unlike the sacrifices the volunteers out at the Kusko made when their snowmachines plunged into the water, Paul actually burned up his engine on his snowmachine working to groom and break trail the other day.  He puts in many hours locally working on the training trails from our kennel, that other mushers are then able access and to enjoy for their own use.  While he never asks anything of them, I am always amazed that even when they recognize the resources involved in Paul's trail grooming, they fail to offer any assistance. Paul would put the effort in regardless, as he feels he owes it to our team to give them the best opportunities he can, but it is kind of a burr under my saddle that the local mushers don't support something they will benefit from.  In the end, I guess I just need to look at it like Paul does - that the dogs as a whole benefit from what he is doing.  He stays grounded in a philosophy of "it's all about the dogs", and that is why he does what he does.

Between training, volunteering and caring for the dogs, now is the time of the season when considerable energy is going into preparing the race food drops.  Tyler has been a fantastic helper with cutting meat and packaging food.  Paul works on packing booties and crafting new ganglines when he has free time in the evenings.  Soon I will start a cooking frenzy, preparing Paul's trail favorites for vacuum sealing and freezing to ship out on the trail.  Paul is also looking at the shape of his sleds.  He was talking about building another new sled this year, as the trails have not been kind to his equipment this season and last. Once he gets rolling on a sled, I have to practically take food out to the shop to get him to stop and eat between everything else we have going on.  But I think he enjoys that quiet work, and he certainly crafts some beautiful sleds.

Recently, he had the bittersweet project of a friend's casket that he crafted.  The wife of our friend and neighbor, Dean Osmar, was killed in a car accident on Christmas Eve.  When Dean asked Paul to build the casket in fulfillng her last wishes, it took Paul down a creative path he never would have expected.  The craftsmanship of what he made reflected 30 years of skilled carpentry and a lifetime of love for our friend.  I tend to think that in each joint that he blends and every stanchion that he fits when he builds his dog sleds, he is building a part of himself into the project. Since the death of Governor back in November, our world had not been the same, and we are still grieving the loss of sweet Sarah. In many aspects, we are brushing ourselves off, and getting back on our feet right now.  I have every hope that as the final weeks of training and preparations unfold, we will have an uneventful journey. 

Until later…. Life is a journey, enjoy the ride - Evy

(PS - we are looking at a Feb. 10^th fundraiser hosted by The Crossing Restaurant in Soldotna- more details later)