Champions' Corner

Dog days of winter

By Jon Little / November 30th, 2009

Distance mushers put in long hours to condition their teams

It seems like the name of the game in distance mushing these days is run longer, run slower and take less rest. Teams that pull it off successfully seem to break through to a new level of fitness that allows them to settle into a kind of cruise control, minimizing injuries and maintaining a happy attitude right through the end of an Iditarod or Yukon Quest.

In order to get to that level of fitness, though, it takes dedication -- the mental as well as physical toughness and precious free time to spend hour upon hour on an ATV, in a dog truck or on the sled, watching sled dogs trot along at 8 to 10 mph. The critical time of year for all that conditioning appears to be October through December. Some of the mushers willing to put in the hours report runs of 50 to 100 miles by November.

For much of the autumn and early winter, you could find them behind the steering wheel of a dog truck with a string of 20 or more dogs hooked to the bumper, driving the Denali Highway or Canol Road. That is a relatively recent development in the world of distance mushing, triggered back in 2003, when Robert Sorlie imported his dogs and training techniques from Norway and won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in only his second effort.

These days, it is the likes of four-time Iditarod champion Jeff King, Sebastian Schnuelle and three-time Iditarod winner Lance Mackey who have adopted and modified Team Norway's approach. Team Norway would boast 3,000 training miles by Iditarod start. And it seems like most everyone competing to win has taken that model, and put their own spin on it.

"People say, 'train the way you're going to race,' and we race very long, and it has become clear that dogs can go on 12-hour runs, provided they're going the right speed with the right nutrition," King said. "So I have been using that as a stimulus for the last several years."

In late November King said he'd been training his dogs essentially around the clock for three days a week (run long, rest a few hours and do it again), followed by two days of very light running, and then two days off.

Schnuelle was doing something similar, but with a numerical goal: 3,800 miles by Iditarod start. "In general, I like to be finished with my "building" up training by Christmas," he wrote in an email in late November. At the time, he was gearing up for the next big numerical hurdle: "I am aiming for back-to-back 100-mile runs with a 4 to 6 hour break in between."

The dogs have to run those distances in races such as the Copper Basin 300 or Kuskokwim 300, Schnuelle reasoned, so they need to do it in training.

Mackey, who now has become the gold standard by winning the last three Iditarods with a characteristically perky dog team, said he isn't quite as wild about those mega-mile training runs. He insists he doesn't operate that way on his home trails. He'll run 80 miles round trip, but often throws in a campout, somewhere in the middle of it, from one hour to five hours, depending on trail conditions and how the dogs look.

But what he does do a lot, is put them in harness.  "I'll run 25 out of 30 days in say, October, but I don't do these long march runs. I'm till going decent speeds; not slow, but not fast," he said. "And I leave the yard at basically the same speed I come into the yard. I track 'em down to 10 or 12 mph right out of the yard."

By the end of November, Mackey said he had a couple eight to nine hour runs, often breaking trail in the hills so the mileage wasn't super high. But he said he gets most of his long miles in during races, such as Copper Basin 300 and Gingin 200, each of which requires some mega runs.

What do these, and other, competitive distance mushers get from the long hours on the trail each fall and early winter? Stamina, mainly. From personal experience, I had 2,400 miles on my dogs before the Quest last year, and I saw them slow down in the final stretch from Mile 101 to the finish line in Fairbanks, while two teams -- Schnuelle and and Hugh Neff -- kept up a steady rhythm, and went on to finish first and second. Neff puts the same kind of 4,000-mile training regimen on his dogs as Schnuelle.

But Schnuelle said there's more to putting on the long miles than simply conditioning. There are other benefits. "All those long training miles and camping out experiences really bond the team.," he said. "It also simulates more what the dogs are going to experience in a race: Multiple, consecutive back-to-back runs in unknown territory.

"Another byproduct is that I personally have become very comfortable camping out anywhere and really have my camping routine down," Schnuelle said. "From the time I pull over to camp, I am in my sleeping bag within 45 minutes," and that used to be an hour and a half.

Yes the dogs slow down, but King said that a team running under 10 mph can win the Iditarod.

Other mushers, like Montana's Jason Barron, back in the Iditarod after a year off, wonder where the dividing line is between a really miled-up team and one that simply marches along. "I think there comes a point, a tipping point, where a certain amount (of long miles) gets them to cope with a long run" Barron said. "But beyond that point, they're just going to march. That's all they're going to do. I'm definitely not looking to do that."