This is just a test, while Andy is doing the dishes, he wants me to try out this way to update the website, while he is out on the race. I might have internet access here and there. The crew is out feeding dogs at minus 25°, but it is not that warm further north, Fairbanks and Circle are sitting in the minus 45° and minus 50° range. Hopefully that improves a bit for the weekend. The trucks are ready packed outside, we are doing some small last minute preparations. On Wednesday morning 3 of us are leaving, bringing my Iditaord Food drops to Fairbanks, doing the Bloodwork and EKG with my Iditarod dogs and bringing Andy to his first Quest Meetings. Time to hit the road.
Saturday Rudi and I was in Fairbanks with our 30 dogs to do the Vet-Check. Read the whole post »
I just came back from a nice, two day run to McLaren with my Questteam.
Saturday we where in Fairbanks to drop the Fooddrop - 37 packs in total. As I saw them all standing there I asked myself for how long will we go out, but of course 14 dogs will be feeded.
Today I run a little 20 km loop with my Questteam in the heat of the day 
- in the morning it was -38°C and when we left about -30°C.
So my team looks like follows: Tang, Herring, Ibex, Eagle, Wondar, Suhmo, Libby, Casper, Franky, Jack, Buckley, Hobo, Kritter, Free, Eagle (M) und Lucky.
As we start withn14 dogs in the Yukon Quest I have to find two dogs which stays at home.
Sab will start this weekend at the Kuskokwim 300.
Today evening we draw our bibs - Sab draw number 16 and me 9, so we can start at 10:30 h and 10:16 h respectively - but we have to be in the starting area already by 6:30 h for the vet check. Yesterday we got some snow and according to the weather forecast we’ll get a cold race as they anticipate temperatures below -30°C.
The dogs will come tomorrow directly to the start so they can have an extra night in their own doghouses.
Today Sab and I only did a small run (17 milles / 27 km) with the dogs which will run in the Copper Basin 300. The wheather is a little bit colder with -22°C and we had light winds, so I was happy that the trainingsrun didn’t lead as passing the magic Mile 8 (there the wind often gets stronger).
Otherwise it was the day of preparation - the big part was already done by our handlers (cutting and portioning meat, packing booties, blankets and the vetkits, etc.) - but there where always things to prepare.
Today Sab sorted the dogs out, after Dave and Andrew left, the teams had to reordered. In all we have now 4 complet teams in training. Then we redistributed the doghouses teamwise.
After noon I got off, in the sunshine by -20°C, for a 34 miles trainingsrun (55 km) with the following team: Skunk - Kritter, Ibex - Onyx, Kali - Lucky, Jack - Franky, Bertha - Ricky, Kiana - Susie, Elliot - Jasper und Nani. The run was almost unspectacular, expect at Mile 3 we saw a moose with her little only about 100 m beside the trail behind the willows.
The moto of today was cleaning. The four sleds needed to be emptied and all the material needed to be ranged again, there was also some “feed maintance” for the dogs on the programm, that means cutting nails and the hairs between the toes.
I also managed to finish the Racereport GinGin 200.
At 10 o’clock Gatean left with the dogs that didn’t run the race for a 90 mile trainingsrun (145 km).
I arrived in Alaska and next weekend my first race is on the plan, the GinGin 200.
If you have any questions - general about huskys, about our race preparation, etc. - then you have the possibility to post it here as a comment.
We’ll try to answer your question here in the blog.
