Champions' Corner

Big risks can equal big results

By Jon Little / January 7th, 2010

January races put ideas, dogs to the test

Not every race is about going all out to win, but just because you aren't in the hunt for first, it doesn't mean you don't get the fun of taking risks.

I love racing sled dogs for many reasons, but two key reasons are the thrills of the unknown -- training run daydreams are made meaningless by the reality of racing -- and taking risks. The two are related.

Mushers risk new run/rest scenarios, new harnesses and sled designs and other gear in races. A lot of that is tested out in training environment, but the only way to find out if an idea is any good is in the actual heat of battle.

At this year's Knik 200, I knew I could not field a contending team with what I have in the dog yard: A pool of 13 yearlings and 4 adults. Faced with the race's 12-dog limit, and my mission of testing as many yearlings as possible in their first-ever race, I put together a team full of fun risks. I opted to run as many yearlings as I felt I could get away with. Ten of them were a year old and had never raced. That left two slots, one taken up by a reliable seven-year-old named Keno, and, the other, taken by a four-year-old named Wolf who was hit by a car a year ago and undergone invasive surgery to fuse all the bones of his rear right foot below the tarsus (ankle). The surgeon had warned me that Wolf may never be a sled dog again.

Sled dogs have a knack of bucking the odds.

But, essentially, I had 11 unknowns and one dog, Keno, anchoring the team. It was a risk that raised eyebrows at the mushers' pre-race meeting but I was confident that a conservative pace would at least allow me to finish. I have three yearlings doing well in lead and the plan was for each to share lead with one of the two veterans the entire way.

The Knik 200 typically is a fast race, but this year it was as if the trail breakers had sprayed a coat of Teflon as they staked out the route. It was hard packed snow and ice all the way, and temperatures dropped to the 30-below range down on the Yentna and Skwentna rivers. Cold air is like nitro to sled dogs. Without deeper snow to grab the runners and warm temperatures to make the dogs back off, faster teams rocketed to the halfway point of the Skwentna Roadhouse roughly seven hours, some faster.

Micah Degerland, running a team from Ray Redington's kennel based right on the shore of Knik Lake, won with a lightning fast run and without dropping or packing any dogs. It was incredible.

Based on past experience both at Knik and other flat, fast races such as the Kuskokwim 300, I knew that a yearling team in reasonable shape could easily make it to Skwentna without stopping. But they'd likely run out of gas on the way back. To avoid that scenario, I packed half a bale of straw, a cooler of hot water and a sack of Momentum kibble. We'd travel four hours, pull over for a meal and a nap, and get going again.

An enforced break gets calories in and their heart rates down. We stopped for exactly two hours, to the minute. I do this a lot. Taking a two hour break early in a race really does wonders for the dogs, while taking a two hour break near the end of a race does almost no good at all. Of course, you cede any chance of winning by taking extra rest in a race as short as the Knik 200, but winning wasn't my goal. (At least four other teams pulled over within 10 miles of my camping spot.)

My young dogs gobbled up a soupy meal and napped. I ate a frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drank hot tap water from my thermos, a little tradition.

The only drawback from giving energetic yearlings a nap right before sunset on a cold day, was trying to slow them down once we re-launched. It was a fast three-hour run the rest of the way to Skwentna roadhouse.

We'd run four hours, rested two hours, run three hours and now would rest six hours and 28 minutes at the mandatory layover. I was trying to keep my team fresh and strong. I did that. But there was another result from the short runs and frequent breaks. It wasn't my intention, but my young team was being trained to run even faster.

Knowing that, I set out to run the entire way back without stopping except for snacks and breaks for dipping snow and pats on the back. I rode the drag the whole way, getting used to the sound of plastic scraping on ice.

My team is no stranger to six hour runs, so the return trip of 7 hours and 40 minutes wasn't much of a stretch. It was fast enough that they were closing on the finish line by the time they realized what was going on.

I leaned heavily on Keno, the seven year old, having him run in lead the middle 100 miles, having him sniff our way through places such as Flathorn Lake, where the trail was hardest to follow. Wolf, the dog recovering from surgery, led the first four hours and the final leg; and I swapped out three yearlings with them. Breaking the race into roughly four legs (four hours, three hours, three hours and four hours), I swapped out leaders and rotated wheel dogs at most of those breaks.

The net result was overall very positive. The young dogs had a good time, got stretched by racing a 200 miler (which is technically closer to 85 miles each way), developed a taste for passing other teams, and got valuable camping experience in checkpoint situations (noisy, busy, close to other dog teams). I got to see them at faster speeds than I typically train, and was able to dial in who is fastest and slowest among my yearlings; Wolf performed well, showing that even with a fused foot that forced a change in his gait, he can still run at fast speeds for a distance team. And I saw the value of keeping their speed down.

Another observation: This team ran to its absolute limit by going so fast over the roughly 170 mile race. Teams coming in at a slower pace behind me, such as Karin Hendrickson, had tons of gas in the tank. Her dogs were ready for more. That's good, since her dogs will need that energy in the 1,000-mile Iditarod.

The only way my yearlings could go 1,000 miles is to run slower, a lot slower than the 12-plus mph pace they enjoyed in the Knik 200.

I could have taken another risk: Running the team straight to Skwentna without a break to compete for first place. It is tempting, but I didn't consider it for a minute. I know what would have happened. Yearlings don't have sufficient stamina. If I hadn't taken that two hour break on the first day, I would have been forced to take a much longer and much less enjoyable break -- not of my choosing -- on the second day somewhere near Flathorn Lake.

Not all risks are worth taking, at least not more than once. I know from experience, and from watching these dogs all season, what this team can handle.