Never give up
Hi from Anchorage,
I guess for most of you it is an old hat, that I won the Yukon Quest in a record time of 9 days, 23hrs and 20 minutes. Pretty cool, this is the first time the 10 day barrier has been broken. Mark also ran a great race, finishing in 11th position with 11 dogs. Way to go, considering he had never been on a sled prior to November. I am proud of Mark.
This gives me the choice of a great team for Iditarod. I will take my complete finishing team. Nemo, Popcorn, Inuk, Austin, Skunk, Finn, Grisman, Vasser, Yonder, Scruggs. The team is a combination or mine and Rick Casillo´s dogs. To that I will add Saffron which I dropped in Circle. She was not hurt, but mentally down at the time. From Marks Team I picked 7 dogs: Gas, Diesel, Denali, Polar, Battier, Moose, Ricky. So there is 2 spares, not sure yet who I leave behind. It is exiting to have a team of all Quest finishers. We ran them every day after the Quest, yesterday was their first day off. The dogs look great, they are fat and happy most of all, they are in shape mentally and physically.
I am running out of time to write more about the Quest. It was an exiting race, where I stuck to my camping plan, staying very little in checkpoints. The warm weather made that possible. I hardly ever saw any other mushers past Dawson, only camping once with Brent Sass on the Yukon River. I had a grand old time, never enjoyed myself that much on a 1000 miler before. Although I started falling behind the lead group of Kleedehn, Neff and Little by 8 hrs, my chance came when all 3 encountered difficulties going up Eagle Summit. A long 16hr push to Twin Bears, and a 2 hr time penalty Hugh had to server in Twin Bears, found me leaving in 1st position for the final run. Hugh almost caught up to me, he showed up a mere 4 minutes behind me a the finishing line. Way to go man, his team looked sharp and happy at the finish line. I am sure we will see a bit of each other in Iditarod.
Many thanks for all the helping hands who made this sucess possible, specially to Gisela and Dieter in Fairbanks for putting us up in their great cabin and always making sure I am well fed. That is not an easy taks. And to Bonnie and Jim here in Anchorage, who have to put up with me now. I think I managed to eat 5lbs of their pot roast last night.
To everyone out there, thanks for the well wishes, and have fun following Iditarod, Adventure part 2 is just around the corner.
Cheers
Sebastian
Sab
