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The 2007 Wilderness 100 Race
I travelled up to Greenville Maine on February 9th to run the 2nd Annual Wilderness 100 race. Wasn't sure we were
going to make it there due to a lot of minor injuries in the dogteam the past few
weeks but the dogs seemed to be healing ok and made it thru some shorter runs during
the week prior to the race without further issues, so I figured we'd give it a shot.
I also had a nasty stomach virus going thru the kennel all week - 3 of the dogs on
the team still had it.© 2007 Jaye Foucher I had a very scary nightmare of a run just prior to the race that involved a steep downhill with an S-curve and huge glaciar-like ice patches; I had very little control down that hill due to the ice and wound up tipping the sled as we hit the bottom of the hill, smacking my face on the ground hard enough that I lost my grip on the sled and almost gave myself a concussion, and I lost the team in the process. Lots more to that story and run that made it even more scary, even after I managed to recover the team, but I'll save that for another adventure story! Needless to say, that run just prior to the race was so frightening and stressful I was actually quite nervous about getting back on the sled. My handler told me I was probably suffering from a touch of PTSD (post traumatic stress...) and I believe she was right. I still wasn't sure the dogs could handle 100 miles with their recovering injuries but figured if nothing else we would get to the checkpoint and take it from there. The race committee announced at the driver's meeting the night before that the race course had been shortened a few miles and now was only around 90-94 miles in length; someone took a GPS out on the race, however, and measured it at exactly 80 miles. So it was much shorter, which in a sense was better for my team this particular weekend. It was a wide and easy course for the most part. Most of the hills were gradual climbs, with the exception of one, and the trail to the checkpoint was more downhill than up. I was trying to keep the dogs slower than they wanted to go by riding the drag brake for much of the race, worried about reinjuring them, and was really holding them back on the downhills. Despite that we averaged about 9.7 miles an hour into the checkpoint (from what I can figure), arriving almost a full hour before I'd anticipated. I rode in on Sue Ellis' heels - she had caught up with me about 8-10 miles from the checkpoint and couldn't shake me the rest of the way in. McKinley and Snowy led for about the first 15-20 miles, then Snowy just didn't seem happy up there so I put Magik up with McKinley. I am truly amazed this season with McKinley. I had worked with her a lot in lead her first season in harness but since then she never seemed to have the speed to lead the larger teams and was quite a "squirrel-head" so I stopped putting her up front in favor of better leaders. Then this fall I decided I needed more leaders to fall back on so I started working with her again from time to time, but I never in a million years thought she would become a leader I would rely on in a race. I thought maybe she would wind up leading more later on in the 250, when our pace was slower. But then with Kadee injured and out for the remainder of this season I started throwing McKinley up in lead a bit more and to my surprise she's proving to be one of my faster, more driving leaders. The dogs didn't rest well this time in the checkpoint. They just weren't tired enough, and many of the other teams were restless and noisy and keeping the whole checkpoint awake. About 3/4 of my team did eventually lie down, but 40 minutes before our scheduled departure time I looked out on them and the majority of the team was sitting up or standing, looking around. I had thought to take more than our required layover (only 2 hours on this race - my actual layover was more like 2:30 with the start differential) to rest the dogs, but since they weren't resting I decided we might as well leave at our scheduled time. We pulled out of the checkpoint strong with McKinley and Magik in lead - no problems leaving this time. However within a few miles out of the checkpoint I started to see issues. Piper was limping pretty noticably, but I could not figure out what was bothering her when I stopped to check. I had little room in my sledbag for carrying a dog and didn't relish the thought of doing the next 35 miles with a dog in the bag and my gear strapped on the outside of the sledbag to make room. On top of that there were 3 more dogs on the team whose gaits seemed a little off: McKinley, Snowy and Anthem. All were dogs who had had minor injury issues or limps in the past few weeks. All 3 had been thoroughly checked by both myself and the race vet at the checkpoint to make sure they weren't bothered again by their injuries and they had seemed fine, but now out on the trail I kept thinking their gaits weren't right. Whether this was because I'm now overly worried about it and was imagining things or whether they actually had problems, I couldn't tell. We were dragging along at what felt like 4 mph. I kept trying different leaders up there to see if we could pick up the pace. Finally I put Anthem up there with Magik and he got things moving at a better clip. But I was completely worried about whether the dogs were up to the run back and whether finishing the race would reinjure them and knock us out of doing the 250. Unfortunately, without a definate limp on the dogs I couldn't tell for sure if I was imagining problems or whether they truly existed. I stopped a few times to check wrists and shoulders but all dogs seemed pain-free (or at least weren't complaining). I decided the best thing to do would be to scratch from the race at the first radio safety point, about 15 miles into the return trip. But by the time we got there Piper had actually stopped limping and seemed to be doing fine and I still wasn't sure whether I was imagining the "off" gaits on the other 3 or not. So I made the decision to see if we could get to the 2nd radio safety point which was another 10 miles away. Shortly after that darkness fell and temperatures dropped, and the team picked up their pace. By the time we got to the 2nd radio spot Piper was doing fine, the others didn't seem to be having any problems, and so I felt we could actually continue on. We finished the race at 9:13 pm in 14th place (out of 15 racers). Our pace on the 2nd run was faster than our 2nd run at Eagle Lake but still 2 mph slower than we had done on the outbound trip, however with all the issues we had I was not at all discouraged. In fact, after being a hairsbreadth away from scratching during that first 10 miles of the return trip I felt like it was a major accomplishment to even have finished the race at all, and the minute I signed into the finish line I ran up and kissed and hugged and thanked every dog for getting me there. The Team: McKinley, Magik, Matsi, Weyekin, Snowy, Piper, Tristan*, Jackson, Anthem, Maja (*Tristan was dropped from the team at the checkpoint due to a sore wrist and a stomach virus) | |
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