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The 2008 Beargrease Marathon Race - Part 2
Day 1 - The Race Start
© 2008 Jaye Foucher The race didn't begin until 1 pm on Sunday, but mushers were asked to be there by 10 am. As we drove into Duluth my stomach was a mess of both nerves and excitement. The whole area around the school where the race start was held was filled with spectators and vehicles. We were shown to our assigned parking area, pulled the truck in, and got out to start getting the sled and gear ready. We had been told at the driver's meeting that the first 10 miles of trail to the first checkpoint at Billy's Bar was fast and thin in spots, with a lot of road crossings. I had just picked up my brand new Husky Creek sled the day before from Ryan Anderson and it had been a year since I'd driven one of these sleds. They are far more flexible than the Arctic Star sled I'd been driving all winter and I was nervous about taking it out for the first time on a fast and probably hairy trail. I decided I felt more comfortable using my Artic Star with it's worn runner plastic for the initial leg of the race and would swap to my Husky Creek at the Highway Two checkpoint. I also decided that instead of carrying just the required 12 lbs of dog kibble that I wanted to carry more weight to give me a tad more control, particularly since the dogs had been cooped up in the truck and hadn't run for days. So I put about a half a bag's worth of dog kibble in my sled, about 20-25 lbs. In retrospect, I should have put a whole 40 lb bag in there. :P 
Even after prepping my sled and packing my sledbag there was still a lot of time to kill between our arrival and the start of the race. We walked around to greet some of the other mushers, checked out the souvenir stand, snapped some photos of the starting line, and I walked along the entire starting chute to see what I was going to be facing.
The start line was located in what appeared to be the school's track & field area, next to the bleachers. Within seconds of leaving the start there was a 90 degree curve to the right. The snow here was hard packed and the trail looked to be extremely fast. They had put a group of straw bales on the opposite side of the curve - as bumpers for our sleds I imagined? Then the trail wrapped along behind the fencing of what appeared to be a baseball diamond, went up a slight hill that was laden with sticks and weeds popping out of the snow, wound through some trees, past the far end of the school's fields and then crossed a road. From there the trail went alongside the road for a short distance (they added some snow to the side of the road to make the trail) and then took a sharp right turn up onto a golf course. 
After walking the starting chute and deciding it was hairy but nothing I hadn't encountered before, I went back to the dogtruck. The staging area where the dog trucks were parked was mobbed with spectators all morning. Around 11 am we took the dogs out of their boxes and left them on their tieouts at the truck so that people could see and pet them. Since I have the traditional "pretty" Siberians we generally get a lot of people coming up to see them and snap photos. Most of my dogs adore the attention they get, but Quinn was surprisingly afraid of the strangers and their kids and he sat with his body backed practically under the dog truck giving everyone a wary look. He's usually so confident in the dogyard and certainly met his fair share of strangers both young and old as a puppy so I hadn't expected this reaction, but on the other hand it was his first race ever and the amount of noise, activity and people was probably overwhelming.
I was having so much fun with all that was going on pre-race that I was almost bummed when it got to be quarter past noon and time to start harnessing up! With 3 of us harnessing it didn't take much time at all to get the dogs ready. Before I knew it we had a group of race volunteers standing by ready to take us to the starting line, and we hooked up the team quickly and then were on our way across the parking lot to the starting area. 
While standing on the runners at the edge of the field waiting for Musher #2 to be counted down, I had a moment to think, "Wow, I'm actually running the Beargrease Marathon." Even though we had driven all the way out there, had gone to the opening ceremonies, the drivers meeting, the vet checks; even though I had spent months talking about it, preparing for it and thinking about it, the reality still seemed very much like a dream I was having.
Very quickly it was our turn in the starting chute. The two minutes between teams flew by as I listened to the announcer read off my short bio. I mentally planned how I was going to get around that sharp corner only about 500 yards ahead, and next thing I know they're calling "10 seconds...5, 4, 3, 2, 1..." | |
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