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The 2007 Can-Am 250 Race
It was everything I had imagined it would be. And it was beyond what I could possibly imagine.
© 2007 Jaye Foucher 8 dogs and myself finished the Can-Am Crown 250 mile dogsled race on March 6, 2007. It was my first ever true distance race. Many people would classify 250 miles as "mid-distance" but I don't know about that; having run it I think any race that involves more than 2 days out on the trail with multiple checkpoints should qualify as "distance". Pre-Race 
We left for Fort Kent on Thursday afternoon, March 1st. Originally I had planned to leave before dawn on Friday but an approaching snowstorm forced me to reconsider that plan. Wednesday's plan to pack checkpoint bags had gone out the window due to last-minute work and one last training run, so Thursday morning I was up at 4 am starting to pack gear. By noontime I had called one of my best friends to come help as I knew without some assistance there was no way I'd leave that afternoon. Kim pitched in for about 2.5 hours, packing dog food in checkpoint bags, cutting up the last of the doggie trail snacks, carrying gear out to the truck, even helping me to feed dogs before I left. I rolled out of Ashland around 3:30 pm to start the 7.5 hour drive to northern Maine. I arrived at Fish River Lodge in Eagle Lake around 11:30 pm. My very good friend Tenley and her husband Wayne run the place and they offered to be my "host family" for the two races up in that area this winter. After dropping dogs for one last time I went into my cabin and hit the sack, bringing McKinley in with me to keep me company. I was kind of reminded of our trip to Karen Ramstead's that summer, where McKinley and I shared a cabin with bunkbeds at night - this cabin looked a little similar. I think McKinley thought that too, since she settled right in comfortably with minimal exploring. Friday morning I was up early to take care of dogs, as is always the case on a road trip. After feeding and watering the dogs I took the sled off the roof to change runners. The new runners refused to slide on easily, however. I was struggling with them and trying to grease them up with some doggie linament when Rita Wehseler and her crew came out to drop their dogs and came over to help. It took 4 of us, some WD40 and graphite powder to get those runners on. Don't know what I would have done without their help, so huge thanks to Rita, her husband and her handler for pitching in! After making some adjustments to the drag brake, writing names on the dogs' collars, having coffee with Tenley and then trying to kill time at the cabin I finally decided to head into Fort Kent a little early. Our vet check wasn't until 2:15 but I was too antsy to sit around reading and had run out of things to do or organize at my truck. I ran some errands in town, went to my favorite discount department store (Miller's) to poke around and bought myself a new fleece, then finally headed over to the ski lodge to register and get in line for a vet check. It was a thrill - the first of many - to walk up to the 250 musher's table to check in instead of the 60 table this year and to be handed my 250 bib. Then down to the vetcheck registration area, where I was handed a packet and given instructions on how to fill out the vet book, attach little yellow tags to each dog collar to identify them, and attach tags to all my drop bags. The 250 is definitely more complicated than the 60! But the degree of organization really impressed me. They've had years to perfect how this race runs and it runs so smoothly by now that I can't imagine them finding new ways to improve upon it. 
While waiting for the vets to come around to the truck I closed up my checkpoint bags and coolers, labelled them, chatted with a few friends I've made at other races this year, and filled out the vet book. When the vets came over to check the dogs they commented on how friendly my crew was. Always nice to hear! They could barely get Weyekin to stand still because she was too busy trying to wash the vet's face. All dogs passed their vet check with flying colors.
After that I had to kill time until the 6 pm driver's meeting, which I did by hanging around the parking lot chatting with friends for awhile, going to grab a bite to eat (where my friends Becki and Tara found me and came in to chat), then feeding dogs. It had started to snow early afternoon and was beginning to accumulate on the ground. Fort Kent was predicted to get at least 8" of snow overnight, which would likely make the race trail very slow. Just before 6 pm I headed over to the driver's meeting. My next big thrill was putting my checkpoint bags and coolers in the big trailers outside the building for transport to the checkpoints. I wished someone had a camera to snap a photo of me doing this because I had such a sense of "WOW" while I was putting those bags in. The reality of running this race that I had dreamed of running since I came up here in 2002 to watch it was really starting to sink in. I paused before entering the room where the driver's meeting was being held, awed by the fact that I was about to enter the 250 meeting and sit with all these names and faces I've seen running that race for years. At least two mushers in the room were Quest and Iditarod veterans. Christine Richardson worded it well when she came in: what a humbling moment. The driver's meeting actually took far less time than I thought it would, and after grabbing a bite to eat after the meeting I headed back to Eagle Lake in practically whiteout conditions; at one point I thought it might actually be easier to leave my dogtruck and hook up the dogteam and drive the sled back! The snow was really coming down fast now and the plows hadn't gotten around to plowing the road to Eagle Lake in recent hours, so at times it was hard to figure out exactly where the road was. I finally made it back, had a glass of wine with Tenley and Wayne, dropped dogs once last time, and went off to bed. Day One: Fort Kent to Portage 
I was awake and up before the alarm went off on race morning. The minute I left the bed McKinley took over my spot and was still passed out there when it was time to leave the cabin. I had to coax the little princess out of bed... hard to believe this was a tough sleddog about to embark on the longest run of her life thus far! As I went to put my feet in my boots to go drop dogs I looked down and realized I was only in my long underwear and had forgotten to put on my ski pants. Oh boy, off to a good start! If I'm forgetting my pants after a full night's sleep, what am I going to be like after not sleeping for a few nights? Leaving the cabin for the last time it really hit me: "I'm not coming back here for DAYS." Wow. My stomach was in knots on the drive into Fort Kent. Once there, however, I was able to keep busy enough to not think about it. After parking my dogtruck in my designated spot I walked around and say hello to some of my friends running the 30 and 60 mile races. Becki Tucker and Tara Lemieux were both running their first ever 30 mile race. I was thrilled to see them moving up to that distance, and very proud when they both finished (later that day) what is the toughest 30 mile race in New England as their first one. Way to go girls! Also there was Rob Cooke, in his first 60 mile race. Rob and his wife Louise adopted two pups from me a year and a half ago and both dogs were on his 60 mile team, one leading the whole way. I had to stop by their truck to wish Rob good luck (although he wasn't there, so I passed the message along with his wife) and to say hi to "my boys". Paris and Hektor are brothers to Tristan and Jackson, who were running on my 250 team. What a fabulous litter that turned out to be! Their daddy Stump was running lead for Mike Ellis in the 250 yet again this year. 
Then I stopped to say hi and good luck to Bob and Rhonda O'Hearn; Rhonda was running the 60. They loaned me Bob's Husky Creek sled to use in the 250, and thank god for that because it handled so much better than mine and, more importantly, fit probably twice the gear. Definitely will be buying one of my own this coming year!
With all my socializing over, it was back to my truck to drop and water dogs and pack up gear. I could take my sweet old time - my start time wasn't until 11:08 am. It was very quiet back where I was parked since I was pretty far away from the start line and the commotion of the crowds. Bill Matott was parked next to me, and we both agreed our parking spots wound up being the best since it was so peaceful and quiet. I made the mistake later on of walking back up to the start to use the bathrooms and hearing the announcer and seeing the teams heading for the start line sent my nerves back into overdrive, whereas back where I was parked it was so quiet you hardly knew a race was going on. Eventually it was time to harness and bootie up. Becki's husband Kevin and Tara's friend Ray came back to help me hook up and get to the line, and so did Mitch Ingerson. Before I knew it we were hooked up to an ATV to help us to the starting line, and heading down the long street towards the chute. People wished me luck as I headed there - can't remember who, or whether I even knew them. Then we were in the chute with less than 2 minutes to go. Someone offered to stand on my brake so I could go up to the dogs, so I went up and started petting and kissing each dog on the head. I heard the announcer make a joking comment about "only 30 seconds left to kiss your dogs" which struck me as funny... perhaps not all mushers kiss their dogs before a big race? The race people asked if I wanted someone to ride on the runners with me down Main Street and I decided that'd be a good idea for control, so a guy hopped on behind me for the ride. I believe we made it down main street without stopping for any doggie bathroom breaks (thank god) then my passenger hopped off just before the sharp corner at the end of main street which takes you out onto a snowmachine trail.
No sooner had we gone under the bridge than one of the leaders had to go the bathroom and brought the team to a grinding halt. One of the dogs got tangled in the process so I sunk my hook to go straighten things out. Unfortunately the dogs were so psycho to go that they managed to pull the sled forward and sink the hook so deep that when I went to pull it back up I couldn't budge it. I'm pulling and pulling and pulling and that hook just wasn't going anywhere. By the time I got it unstuck the team behind me out of the chute had already caught up and passed. We were off again, and shortly after turned onto a 7 mile stretch of railbed. With the soft snow, the dogs were tossing booties left and right. But I wasn't the only one with this problem - that trail was littered with booties. By 5 or 6 miles into the race most of the boots on my own dogs were gone, and I'd had to stop and pull off a few that were shredded from running down main street. I tried rebooting a few dogs but they lost their boots again rather quickly and I just didn't have enough boots to last the whole first leg at the rate we were losing them, so I decided to let them be for awhile. I also had to change leaders pretty quickly, as Snowy just wasn't doing so well up there with Magik. She has her on days and her off days and apparantly this was an off day. So I put McKinley up with Magik. I caught up with Sue Ellis who was stopped to reboot her whole team. She obviously had a bigger supply of spare boots than I did! She ran behind me for awhile until she must have stopped again to boot or for some other reason, because at one point I turned around to see how far back she was but she was no longer in sight. 
Not too far into the race we caught up with Lev Shvarts' team and passed them. That was a surprise; normally his dogs are a little faster than mine, but I was guessing that in the slow, soft conditions my dogs just excelled. Or maybe those conditions just evened out the teams. I wound up passing him and eventually moved on ahead, though I kept looking behind me for both him or Sue to catch up after that.
Just after the turnoff where the 250 trail heads to Portage and the 60 trail heads back to Fort Kent, I stopped to snack and boot some dogs. Sue passed me at that point and so did Lev (if I recall correctly). My dogs weren't anxious to be stopped for very long and before I could even finish bootying they popped the snowhook and I lunged for my passing sled. I hooked down again and finished the last few boots just before they popped the hook a second time. The trail was really slow going and by now I knew we would be getting into Portage much later than I'd thought. I must have repassed Lev at some point (though I don't recall this - either that or he didn't actually pass me while I was stopped earlier, but I could swear I remember that - hey, it's all a blur at times!) Darkness fell and I stopped to put on my headlamp and the blinking red lights on my leaders. It had been snowing off and on during the day, and it started up again pretty heavily after dark. At times it was impossible to even see my leaders through the snow, and the headlamp illuminating the snow that was driving in my face looked like a scene out of Star Wars when they yell, "Light Speed Aheeeeaaad!" The dogs were often perking up and running like maddogs because they smelled or heard something in the woods and I started to obsess about running into a moose on the trail; in those conditions, I wouldn't see a moose until I smacked my head into its stomach! I was really starting to get nervous and stressed about the lack of visibility in the dark and snow. I knew Lev wasn't that far behind me, and sure enough when I stopped to pet dogs and give them a breather Lev's team passed. "OK," I thought, "I can follow his light and stop stressing so much!" I saw him shut off his headlamp from time to time and thought, "Hmmm..." So I tried the same thing and viola! I could see better without the light! This made very little sense to me as there was no moonlight and it was snowing furiously, but I guess with the ground being white and the sky being white, the dogs and the trees looked like dark shadows against it and, well, maybe there's some scientific explanation to do with light reflecting off of snow; but whatever the reason, I could see way better without the headlamp than with it so I ran mostly without. Finally around 11 pm or so we arrived at the Portage checkpoint. It had been a 12 hour run. My dogs have never been out on the trail that long and neither have I. We were 2 hours behind my anticipated arrival time, but I found out in the checkpoint that pretty much most racers were about 2 hours behind their plans. Guess I'm right on schedule then! I got the dogs taken care of and bedded down, fed, wristwrapped and blanketed, then took my gear into the checkpoint building. Most everything was soaked - the snow had been a very wet snow, probably mixed with a little rain at times. Thankfully I'd sent a change of ski pants to Portage, but had a tough time drying everything else there as there were no heaters or woodstoves to dry gear on. Actually there was a heater, but it wasn't blowing any air. After a big plate of spagetti and a few cups of coffee I decided to get a few hours sleep and went into the musher sleeping room to curl up on a thick pad. I had a hard time falling asleep at first but eventually dozed off. I woke up on my own before my wakeup call and went out to grab another cup of coffee or two before hitting the trail. Just before leaving the checkpoint I went to the bathroom. As I came out of the ladies room I looked down and realized not only were my ski pants still unbuttoned but they were unzipped as well and about to fall off. Geesh, what's with me and the pants on this adventure? Continued on Next Page » More Race Photos » | |
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