Champions' Corner

The well timed pit stop

By Jon Little / January 28th, 2010

Young dogs benefit from a short break in a long race

Every race teaches something new, and my last, the Tustumena 200, was no exception. I learned that an energetic but reasonably well miled team of mostly yearlings can run a long way, as long as they get to pull over for a quick, well-timed break early on.

I guess that's not such a new idea, since it is exactly what I'd practiced a couple of weeks earlier at the Knik 200. But the T200 is a very different creature from the Knik race. It's got relentless hills, and it is every inch of 100 miles each way. (The fact that race leaders this year ran the first 100 miles in little over 8 hours was nothing short of phenomenal. But risky. I'll get to that later.)

One of the mantras in distance racing is "race how you train." That is, only do in races what you do in training, whether it is the gear you wear, how you feed, the rope you use, or -- what I'm getting to -- how long your dogs run before a break. My 19-month-olds had done quite a few 50 to 60 milers leading up to the T200, and one nonstop 85-miler in the Knik.  

I figured they'd easily run about 58 miles since they do it in training. So that's where I pulled over, took off their booties and put straw down. It was in the flats after we'd crossed Caribou Lake, which is the rough halfway point in the 100 miles of trail in this out-and-back race.

I mixed the two gallons of water my team had packed through the hills with about a half-serving of their Momentum kibble, about 18-20 cups among 14 dogs. They gulped it down and drank the broth. Then I sat back and watched about 10 dog teams run by as the last glow of daylight faded into night in our two-hour pit stop. My team got about an hour's nap, subtracting time spent feeding and rebootying.

Some of the teams that passed me while I camped also packed straw, but all were either going farther, or in the case of one musher, opting to go the full 100 miles before bedding down the team at the mandatory eight-hour layover.

A few other teams bedded their dogs down about 70 miles into the race, but I wondered why they broke a 100-miler into a 70 and only 30, when there is a mandatory eight-hour layover at the halfway point anyway. My dogs ran five and a half hours, rested for two hours, then ran just over four hours to the halfway point, where they rested eight hours. That set them up for my main goal: Expose them to their first 100-miler nonstop.

They took off from their break in good spirits and, thankfully, at a slightly subdued pace. Yearlings are not known for being subdued, until it is too late. I realized that we were firing on all 14 cylinders as well as maintaining a moderate pace, kind of a half trot and lope. At this pace, I guessed, I may not drop a single dog and all 11 yearlings on this team would see another race from start to finish.

So I watched them carefully and made sure I was ready to pull over and camp again if they needed it. Despite a team-wide lethargy at a snack break at the five-hour mark, which happened to be about noon on a sunny day, I clapped my hands and asked them if they wanted to keep going. Yearlings are easy to get excited. They said yes.

Despite slower going, and the need for reliable older leaders, the dogs powered on and they were able to make the run in 10 and a half hours, all 14 of them, an hour slower than our run time in the first half. But it wasn't far off the pace. Race leaders made the second 100 miles in just over 10 hours.

 I talked to one of the top drivers in this year's race, who noted that they probably would have been more competitive had they slowed their dogs a little more on the first leg. It would have given them more speed on the second 100 miles.