Season start
While
some dogs and cats get to relax on the couch, the racing teams
continue their workout schedule; I ran the dogs 600 miles so far
this November. This week we took the dogs to the South Canol Road,
which is not being plowed in the winter time. With the first 8
miles going mainly uphill and the road being nice and wide, it
offers great long distance training, with low risk of injuries.
This was our first time on the sled, so a lot of preparations had to be done,
from chopping a lot of chicken, to assembling the lines of the sleds to packing
for the outing. We took 3 teams of 12 to 15 dogs, 39 in total which is quite
a number to truck. While the dogbox holds 24 dogs we put "my" team
in the enclosed trailer, together with all the gear.
Arriving at the Canol Road I almost got that that big rig stuck
in the snow and had to do a lot of backing up. Chicken Gerry also
arrived with 2 teams and Dieter one of our guides drove his 2nd
string of dogs. Hooking up 5 teams was quite a commotion and we
headed down the trail. The dogs were seemingly exited by finally
being on the sled. It was a beautiful night, full moon, clear and
about 10 F. I snacked the team twice on the 5.30 hr run to the
Quite Lake Campground. Most of the trail was broken out and only
for the last 10 Miles we had to break some trail. Arriving at the
Campground we found the pleasant surprise of lots of firewood in
the shelter cabin and even poly in the windows. I believe William
and Catherine did that, thanks guys! That made for some
cosy night, if it would not have been for Gerry’s snoring.
I could definitely tell that my dogs had their share of camping
in the past, they curled up in a hurry. Feeding them twice a light
chicken- dryfood meal we headed back to the truck at 7 am after
6 hrs of rest, making the trail home in 5hr 40 minutes, 10 minutes
slower than up. Gerry passed me and his team has a lot more
speed than mine. I made the mistake, of course, trying to keep
up with him, on the uphill no problem but on the downhill I can
never even get close to his speed. Hank got a sore shoulder from
me running the team faster than usual down the hills, I should
have known better.
In other news, some of you might have seen, I signed up for the Iditarod as number 83. Of course I can come up with all kind of explanations, but time will tell if I will be able to run both, I think as it looks I will only be able to run the Iditarod, but it never hurts dreaming.
