Sibersong Sleddogs - Adventures in Dog Mushing

On January 20, 2007 we ran our first race with a checkpoint layover: The Eagle Lake 100 in Eagle Lake, Maine. At the very last minute I had to make some team changes due to foot pad injuries, so the final team that headed up to the race with me was:

(That's actually how they were hooked up at the start, from leaders to wheel dogs).

Diesel came along as an extra, in case someone didn't pass a vet check or in case I didn't like the look of Jackson's feet at the last minute.

I had 3 yearlings on the team - not what I'd planned on, but some of my more experienced adults just weren't up to racing because of foot injuries. I felt the yearlings could handle it as long as I kept it fun and happy for them and didn't push too hard. I wasn't going to this race to be competitive anyway. In fact I only had two goals in mind: to finish it, and to not get the red lantern. :P

We left Friday morning around 7 am to make the 8 hour drive to Eagle Lake. Before leaving I checked the weather forecast once more for that area and was freaked to see that they were now predicting a foot of snow to fall between Friday night and Saturday night along with high gusting winds. So I might be facing blizzard conditions at times, and at best a really slow and ungroomed trail. Although a cooker wasn't required gear on this race I threw mine in the dogtruck anyway, and packed a few extra emergency supplies to put in my sledbag just in case we got stuck out there or had to take an extended break.

My stomach was churning with a combination of excitement and nerves for most of the drive - the definate downside of driving 8 hours by yourself to a race is that there's just nothing and noone to distract you! But once we got to Eagle Lake and I had plenty of things to occupy my time my stomach settled down and I was quite calm. We had our vet check done on Friday afternoon, and all dogs passed with flying colors. Headed over to the driver's meeting after that where we learned the massive snowstorm had been "cancelled" and only high winds were now predicted along with a low of negative 8 overnight during the race. Eagle Lake had gotten a few new inches of snow on Friday morning so the trail would be in pretty nice condition.

Race morning dawned with sunny skies, frigid temps, and heavy winds. Had to be careful what I put on the ground or it would blow away pretty quickly. As I was getting something out of my dogtruck a gust of wind came along and blew the door shut on me, slamming me in the back of the head - an incident I promptly forgot about until after the race when I discovered a bruised and sore spot on the back of my head. Guess that explains the off and on headache I had during the race!

There was way too much time to kill at the start. Mushers were required to be there at 7 am, but the race didn't start until 11 am. I had plenty of time to adjust the new claws I had just installed on my sled brake that week and fix the cord on my drag mat which was about to unravel itself. I also spent about 15 minutes scratching my head trying to figure out exactly how to close my drop bag. I had envisioned using duct tape but 1) duct tape doesn't work very well in bitter cold temperatures and 2) duct tape apparantly doesn't stick at all to burlap - or at least not in the extreme cold. I tried tying the bag like you'd tie a trash bag but it was too full (possibly a little rookie bulge going on there?) Finally I went over to Mike Ellis and asked him how I was supposed to close the bag - his answer: cable ties. Wow! Why didn't I think of that?

(Little did I know that we were allowed to use big plastic bins to send our gear to the checkpoint instead of the more traditional drop bags... would have been much much easier.)

By about 9:30 am I was bored silly and pacing around my truck. I'd run out of people to chat with, things to get ready, and wound up sitting in my truck listening to music, wishing I had a book to read. What a strange way to start a race!

I figured on about 45 minutes to get the dogs ready. I was scheduled to leave at 11:18. I dropped the dogs around 10-ish to give them a little bit of baited water. Laid out the harnesses and booties. Watched the clock hands tick by.... around 10:20 I started harnessing up and bootying. But apparantly I totally miscalculated the amount of time needed to do this because they were fully ready to go about 15 minutes later and we were left with a half hour still to kill before hooking up. I wasted the rest of the time taking more photos of the dogs, making one final bathroom trip and adding my last layers: hat, neckie, handwarmers, etc.

FINALLY it was time to hook up. Can't say I was ever in any danger of being late to the starting chute on this race! The odd thing too was I never got nervous again. Not even when heading to the starting line. I was more nervous starting the Can-Am 60 last year I think.

I believe I forgot to mention that this was the first time I'd been on the runners this year, so taking off and heading out on the trail was not only a mix of excitement at finally starting the race but also the thrill of finally being on the runners again. We passed my good friend Tenley (who was the assistant race marshall) helping out at a road crossing shortly after the start, and she waved and cheered and yelled something that I can't remember but I'm sure was encouraging! :-)

Then we were out onto a snowmobile trail. Kadee was in lead, but not being herself. She was holding back and had a slack tug, which is very unlike her. Took a few miles before it occurred to me that maybe the issue was the booties she was wearing. Kadee rarely needs to wear boots because she has excellent feet. But I had booted absolutely everyone on this race because of the temperatures and just to be safe. I gave her a few more miles hoping she'd settle in and ignore the boots, but finally I couldn't take it anymore and ran up and took off her boots. The minute I did that, she started pulling and running faster, so that definatey was the problem. Lesson #1 learned on the race: some of these dogs need to practice wearing booties more even when they don't need them!

I thought the dogs kept up a pretty decent pace on the first half. The race trail was a lot of hills - didn't seem quite as hilly as the Can-Am trail, but close. The snow was kind of punchy and I was reluctant to let the dogs run at normal speed down the hills in that kind of snow and risk injuring wrists, so I held them back somewhat. There was at least 5 miles of plowed dirt road on the race trail; the trail boss said 5 miles but it felt closer to 10 or more. Needless to say those sections were pretty fast running. I was riding my drag brake pretty hard on the plowed downhills trying to slow the team, but there's only so much good it does on what amounts to a dusting of snow. A lot of teams on the race really ate up runner plastic on those sections. I was sorry I didn't send spare runner plastic to the checkpoint, but it's impossible getting the screw off that holds the runner plastic on in zero temps so I had no clue how in the world I was going to change them, thus I left the plastic home. Lesson #2 learned was a tip from another musher: don't use a screw to hold the runner plastic on. There is something else you can use instead that will hold the runner plastic on but is easy to get off (and I can't think of what it's called now - blame it on the bump to the head...)

I lost quite a few minutes on the first half of the race with teams who had problems passing mine. I can sympathize with those mushers as I've had leaders with passing problems in the past; I am thankful that these days my dogs are well accustomed to passing other teams and that any issues aren't going to come from my dogs.

I was hoping to get into the checkpoint in about 6 hours but it turned out to be more like 6:35. Still, I wasn't too far off on my estimation. We arrived at 5:55 pm, and were led to a very windy spot on the edge of a parking lot. Not really an ideal resting place, but I guess when you're towards the back of the pack you unfortunately lose out on the good spots!

I think I did pretty good with my first ever checkpoint routine. :-) First thing I did was to hook down the leaders with a leader hook and unhook the neckline between them and shut off their leader lights. Then I removed booties on my way back to my sled and drop bag. I fished out a meat snack for the dogs and pulled my little cooler out of the checkpoint bag. The cooler was already filled with kibble, so I just had to pour in the warm water they'd brought me. While that was soaking I gave everyone a meat snack and some scratches and kisses and lots of praise for doing such a good job on the way in.

So far so good... to an onlooker, I might have even appeared experienced at this up until this point. :P

I then fed the dogs their water/kibble mix. They gobbled it up and looked for seconds - no bad eaters in my crew!! After I picked up bowls I laid out the straw and unhooked tugs. I figured I'd Algyval and wristwrap and check feet after they laid down, but this didn't work out so well. Lesson #3: maybe I should put on the wristwraps and foot ointment BEFORE laying out the straw, because once the straw was down they all made their beds and curled into tight little balls and it wasn't easy putting on wristwraps after that.

I had put the wristwraps on the ground and was about to start putting them on on when the checkers came over to do a bag check. We went thru the bag check and afterwards I went to put on algyval and wristwraps but instantly discovered two problems:

Lesson #4: don't place your wristwraps on the ground if there are high winds....

Lesson #5: duct tape handwarmers to the Algyval bottle because even carrying it in an insulted cooler with handwarmers thrown in does NOT keep it from freezing solid...

I decided even without the Algyval I was going to wristwrap the dogs, but when I picked up the pile of wristwraps I thought, "This pile seems too small." Sure enough, I only had wristwraps for 5 dogs, not 10. I looked all over that parking lot - my wristwraps are bright yellow and not hard to miss even in the dark. The parking lot was surrounded by snowbanks, so I figured if they had blown away they wouldn't have gone over the banks and they'd still be somewhere in that little parking lot, but I didn't see them anywhere. I had no idea if I just miscounted and only packed enough wristwraps for 5 dogs instead of 10, or if they indeed blew away. At over $3.50 apiece I was bummed to think that 10 of them might have blown off. (Later on I found out that I had indeed miscounted and only brought 10 wristwraps, not 20. Doh!)

So I just chose 5 dogs to wristwrap and left it at that. I put dog coats on my two girls that don't have their full winter coats at the moment, cleaned up my sled area, grabbed the supplies I wanted to bring inside with me, and was in the lodge within 50 minutes of pulling into the checkpoint. Not bad for my first time!

The checkpoint was boiling hot inside. The minute I walked in I had an asthma attack from the temperature difference. After taking care of that I laid out all my wet gear by the fire beside everyone else's and went looking for food and hot water to make my coffee (I'd packed a can of it in my checkpoint bag - of course!) I was pretty hungry and had two bowls of stew and some cookies and pastries, and god knows how many cups of coffee. I found the whole checkpoint part to be a blast! Sitting around with all the other mushers, exchanging stories and talking about training, meeting new people whose names I recognized but had never actually raced against or even met before.

I had been afraid that maybe when I got there I'd be reluctant to go back out and run another 54 miles after only a few hours rest, but in reality I could hardly wait to go out and run again. I wasn't at all sleepy.. I was wired in fact. And yes, I was already wired BEFORE I slammed back as many cups of coffee in 2 hours that I possibly could... :P

I went out and checked on the dogs once and they were all curled up in little balls sound asleep. I was thrilled to see them adjusting that well to their first checkpoint and ignoring the activity around them.

Finally around 9:25 I threw on some extra layers and then went outside to start getting ready to leave. We were scheduled to pull out around 10:25. I packed up my sledbag again and cleaned it out some, then repacked all the stuff I was leaving behind back in the checkpoint bag to be returned to me later. I gave each dog another snack, took off dog coats and wristwraps (some of which the dogs had already pulled off) and put booties on all but a few dogs. By this time a few checkpoint helpers had come over and told me I had 7 minutes to go. I told them I was going to run into the lodge to pee and would be right back. I went in the lodge, had them fill up my thermos with hot water (coffee mix already in there), had once last bathroom trip, put on the last of my gear and went back to the sled. The guys said I had been in there longer than 7 minutes so I was beyond my leaving time and could just hook up and go. I hooked up tuglines, undid the leader hook, turned on leader lights, the guys helped lead the team to the trail, and we were off!

But Kadee did not want to go. She kept hanging back, and I was having a hard time slowing the team down on the plowed road, and the point dogs kept tangling themselves up in the lines because of that. The 3rd time I had to hook down (not easy on a plowed road - but gotta love that Critterwoods hook!) and untangle them I said, "Enough is enough!" Anthem had been screaming to go when I was hooking back up, so I swapped him with Kadee figuring he would do a better job. Sure enough, he took off running.

Kadee's gait on the return trip looked odd to me at times. She wasn't exactly limping, but at times I'd look at her and think that something seemed a little off. Then other times she seemed perfectly fine. Her tug was tight, she was pulling, and seemed happy enough, so I figured maybe she was just a little stiff after the checkpoint nap.

Anthem and Magik in lead didn't set quite the pace I would have liked. I pretty much had to ride the drag the entire return trip to keep the back end of the team from running over the leaders. I debated trying someone else up there with Magik but decided it might wind up being the same speed, and I knew Anthem may not be the fastest but he wouldn't quit so was probably a good choice for leading what was likely to become a tired dogteam towards the end.

The winds at the checkpoint had been blowing so hard they were rattling the lodge windows, but once out on the trail they weren't as bad and we were protected a bit by the trees. But on some of the plowed roads at the tops of hills those winds would come gusting through at what had to have been 40-50 mph. I don't know what the wind chill was but someone mentioned at least 25 below... I would believe that and more actually. I know the base temperature was below zero to begin with, even without the wind. Yet I was never super cold - just a little chilled in one area of my chest where the anorak zipper is and where the wind would seep through that zipper, and I can't say my feet were exactly toasty either. But overall I didn't find it to be uncomfortable at all. Whenever I had to snack dogs or fix tangles or do anything else that required removing my overmitts my hands would get a tad numb, but a few minutes back inside the mitts and they were fine. I think the coldest moment was when I decided to pee. The winds had died down quite a bit by then, but just as I was about to pull my pants back up a gust of wind blew through. YEOW! Talk about air-drying!

I took it pretty easy on the return trip. Didn't do much pedalling or poling unless I was getting cold and wanted to warm up - my back was bothering me and pedalling really hurt at that point. I also stopped quite a few times - twice to snack dogs, twice to give the dogs some scratches and kisses and encouragement, and a few times just to sip coffee from my thermos. I knew when I left the checkpoint that I was most likely going to accomplish my 2 goals: to finish and not be last, so I decided to take it easy with the dogs on the run back, not push them and just try to make it fun, so the dogs would come off their first long race with a very positive experience.

I never saw a soul out there other than the guys at the occasional safety check spots. Did not pass any other teams, no teams passed me. Saw lots of moose tracks but thankfully no moose. The only wildlife we saw was a suicidal bat who kept swooping over the team and almost became an unplanned trail snack.

I was so proud of my dogs on this race. They really really held up well. Towards the very end the yearlings were getting a little bored and mentally tired - I could tell because they started dipping for snow a lot, but if I stopped to let them eat snow, thinking they were thirsty, they just stood there. The dipping was apparantly just because they were tired of running and were looking for a distraction. The team slowed down quite a bit the last 10 miles, and at that point I started pedalling and poling a lot to help them out.

We pulled into the finish line as dawn was appearing on the horizon, at 6:19 am. As I was on the last few miles of trail the feeling of elation at having done this race and finished it was just incredible. I can only imagine what it will feel like to be approaching the finish line of the Can-Am 250 in another 5 or so weeks!

We had been told the finish would be at the town offices. I got to a road at the end of the trail where there were 2 guys standing with their vehicle lights on. I figured these were the guys who would radio down to the finish line "Bib #10 coming in!" I pulled up and told the dogs to go Gee onto the road and said to one of the guys, "Where do I go - down this road?" He said, "Nope, you're here. You're done." I said, 'What???" He said, "We had to move the finish line. This is it. This is the end of the race. Congratulations!"

Wow, what a letdown. No finish chute. No announcer. No finish line banner. No spectators. No other mushers. No vets. No bag checkers. No dogtruck for that matter. No hot water for my poor dogs who deserve a nice meal after running all night long. Nothing but 2 guys at a road crossing.

I asked him, "Where is everyone? Are they down at the town offices?" He answered, 'No, pretty much everyone went home to bed."

Geez. I had had this vision of it being like every other race finish line - you know, with people around, maybe even clapping or cheering! :P Of course I've also never finished a race in the predawn hours so perhaps I shouldn't have expected others to still be around. Guess that's what happens when you're at the back of the pack. How depressing...

The race marshall (who was one of the 2 guys at the finish line) rode with me on my runners down the road as we searched for my dogtruck, which Tenley was going to leave at the finish line for me - I figured it was down where the original finish line was, but luckily we found the truck parked on the side of the road about a quarter mile away. I wound up just tossing a meat snack to the dogs, then putting them in the dogtruck and throwing all the gear in as quickly as possible so I could head back to Fish River Lodge and get some water to properly feed the dogs. The race marshall pitched in and helped me with all of that, which was a blessing. I knew it was going to be really tough to convince them to get out of their dogboxes once they got in, so I wanted to get there as fast as I could. Lesson #6: don't do this race without a handler again.

I did manage to convince the dogs to get out of the truck at Tenley's and got a nice hot meal into them. I also took this time to give a pretty thorough exam to all the dogs. At this point two minor injuries showed themselves: Tristan was holding up a foot. He had split that toepad earlier in the week and even though it hadn't opened back up it was obviously bothering him again. And Kadee was favoring a rear leg, but I couldn't seem to isolate where the problem was so when I went to the awards ceremony later that morning I snagged a race vet to come look at her. The vet thought she might have a slight sprain, but by the end of the day she wasn't even limping anymore so hopefully it's not that serious. She'll get a good 10 days off from running, just to be sure.

Other than that all dogs were fine and in way better condition than I expected. When we finished the race they were all still standing while I unharnessed and unbootied. I think only one or two even sat down. Nobody lay down at all. I felt that was a really good sign that they were still that perky at the end. And after about 3 hours of sleep in the dogtruck I dropped them to let them pee, and most of them were looking alert and not all that tired.

My own injuries included not being able to move very well due to extreme pain in my lower back for the rest of the day. I was slightly sore in other muscles too and seemed to have pinched a nerve in my arm temporarily. I thought I was in rough shape until I discovered that some of the other mushers had similar aches and pains and stiffness. Guess it goes with the territory.

In the end, we definately accomplished my two goals for this race: we finished, and we finished 16 out of 24 racers (18 that finished - 6 scratched). In addition, I finished with all 10 dogs, happy and standing and not wiped out. I'd like to have averaged a slightly faster pace, but that's something to work on for future races I guess.

I also finished the race feeling way more confident about our ability to run the Can-Am 250. I know we can do it now. I know the dogs can do it. I know I can do it. Now it's just a matter of nothing going seriously wrong out there!

I had such fun doing this race and for some reason I didn't really expect that. I didn't expect to find staying up all night and running without sleep to be "fun", but it was! The checkpoint felt almost like a musher party, the trail was beautiful, I wasn't at all bothered by the cold or running without sleep overnight, and I didn't find 100 miles to be all that long of a distance to run. It really gave me a lot more confidence about whether or not I'm cut out for my mushing goals and dreams.

Big thanks to Mike Ellis for all his advice and to Mike & Sue for letting me stay at their camp multiple times to train, to Rhonda for babysitting the extra dog I brought with me, to the twins and Whatleigh for loaning me gear, to the twins and Gail and Corina for watching the dogs I left behind, to Tenley and Wayne for being my "host family", and to Tenley for being my cheering squad throughout the race. :-) Hopefully I didn't forget anyone there....

And last but not least: to the 10 beautiful dogs that worked their asses off and did such an amazing job on their first long race. I am so very very proud of them.

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