Ok, what happened to that excited anticipation I had for this race when I signed up for it? It must be buried under a list of things to do in the next week, nerves, and sheer exhaustion...
One week from today I'll be packing my checkpoint bags. The mere thought of the race, or the mention of the words "Can-Am" sends my stomach plummeting to the floor. I'm overstressed, overworked, overtired. How many times the thought of dropping out has crossed my mind in the past few weeks, I can't recall, but I know that's not an option unless there's a viable medical reason the dogs or I can't do the race. I've come too far, I'm into it too much. I just have to hang onto my sanity for a little more than a week now and we'll be at the start line with nothing left to concentrate on except the race itself.
I started the season off swearing I was NOT going to be one of those rookies who doesn't finish the race. So many rookies wind up scratching. But with all the sore wrists and sore feet and a few dogs that are just "off" the past week, I've changed my tune and decided we're just going checkpoint to checkpoint and getting as far as we can. Hopefully that's the finish line - but if not, then at least we've gotten the experience and we'll be back next year.
One thing I'll do differently next year: i won't be frantically trying to sew up another few hundred booties and 8 dog coats one week before the race!! On top of that I still have TONS of dog meat to cut up, trail snacks to make, more supplies yet to buy. And lets not forget I've still got to be training dogs. And I'm also trying to tie up loose ends at work to allow myself to take a full week off. Yet the work keeps flowing in faster than I can stay on top of it, so I constantly feel like I'm drowning....
Not sure I'll have time to post one more time before the race. I'll try, but if not I'll be back with a race update after the fact.
If you want to follow the race online with a virtual map, there is a link on my website at www.sibersong.com
I'm off to try and knock something else off my to-do list...
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Greenville 100 Mile Race
We went up to the Greenville 100 mile race this past weekend. 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.
We 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 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 you can probably read about it one of these days in the adventure tales on my website. Needless to say, that run just prior to the race was so frightening and stressful I was actually 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 by a few miles and now was only around 90-94 miles in length, but someone took a GPS out on the race 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. The hills were very gradual (with the exception of a 1.5 mile uphill climb in the middle of the race) 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, 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. Can't imagine what average speed we would have done had I not held them back!
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 use much on a race. I thought maybe she would 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 on 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'd 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 obsessively worried about injuries 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. Without a definate limp on the dogs (other than Piper) 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 on exam.
Still, I decided the safest thing to do would be to scratch from the race at the first radio safety point, about 10-15 miles into the return trip. But by the time we got there Piper's limp had seemed to disappear 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 or so miles away.
Shortly after that darkness fell and temperatures dropped, and the team picked up their pace to something far more normal. 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 first leg, 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 second leg 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 us there.
The Team: McKinley, Magik, Snowy, Piper, Tristan*, Jackson, Anthem, Maja (Tristan was dropped from the team at the checkpoint due to a sore wrist and a stomach virus)
Super big thanks to Peggy Kipp for coming along as my handler on this race!!
We 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 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 you can probably read about it one of these days in the adventure tales on my website. Needless to say, that run just prior to the race was so frightening and stressful I was actually 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 by a few miles and now was only around 90-94 miles in length, but someone took a GPS out on the race 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. The hills were very gradual (with the exception of a 1.5 mile uphill climb in the middle of the race) 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, 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. Can't imagine what average speed we would have done had I not held them back!
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 use much on a race. I thought maybe she would 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 on 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'd 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 obsessively worried about injuries 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. Without a definate limp on the dogs (other than Piper) 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 on exam.
Still, I decided the safest thing to do would be to scratch from the race at the first radio safety point, about 10-15 miles into the return trip. But by the time we got there Piper's limp had seemed to disappear 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 or so miles away.
Shortly after that darkness fell and temperatures dropped, and the team picked up their pace to something far more normal. 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 first leg, 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 second leg 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 us there.
The Team: McKinley, Magik, Snowy, Piper, Tristan*, Jackson, Anthem, Maja (Tristan was dropped from the team at the checkpoint due to a sore wrist and a stomach virus)
Super big thanks to Peggy Kipp for coming along as my handler on this race!!
Monday, February 5, 2007
February Blues...
We just returned yesterday from the Stratford Nighthawks Races up in Stratford NH. Considering the issues I've had going on with the team the past week or so, I guess we did ok. We came in 4th place with the Top Purebred Team award (and frankly, I wasn't trying to do anything but have a training run out there! I held the dogs back a lot on the runs.). But overall I didn't feel the team did that well and I finished the race on Sunday with a heavy heart.
To backtrack...earlier in the week I had taken the dogs up to Pittsburg to do some back to back runs. When we got to Pittsburg around 8:30 am the thermometer in my dogtruck that tells the outside temperature read -25 and I did a double take - I've never before seen the thermometer read anything that low. It was so cold out that it hurt to breathe (possibly it just affects me that way because of the asthma tho...)
The dogteam was running AWESOME! Trail was nicely packed, plenty of snow for sinking a hook, definately in far better shape than anything we ran on last year around here. Those dogs were just cooking. They averaged 10-11 miles an hour for the first 20 miles of the run. I was thinking, 'wow, here is the dogteam I've always dreamed of!'
Then Snickers started limping. Since Snic is the type of dog that would run despite pain and not show any signs of it, I figured something must be pretty painful for him to be limping, so I unhooked him and put him in the sledbag for a free ride home. Even carrying a 45 pound dog and a 40 lb bag of dogfood in the sled hardly slowed those dogs down much - we were still averaging 9+ miles per hour the remaining way back to the truck.
But in the last 8 miles of the run 2 more dogs started limping: Anthem, who had had a minor wrist injury at eagle lake started favoring his wrist again, and Jackson started favoring a front leg (for some unknown reason - I never did figure out what was bothering him).
I pulled back into the parking lot ready to pack up and head home and forego the second run. But I convinced myself it was worth it to hang around and take a smaller team out later for another run - those dogs that weren't injured needed those back to back runs to prep for the upcoming races.
By the end of that second run (which I cut short for various reasons), I had 4 more injuries: two that showed themselves when I checked the dogs over after the run, and two that appeared the next morning. Add to that the fact that Kadee is still favoring a leg from an injury at the Eagle Lake race and is probably out for the remainder of the season, and that makes for more than half the team favoring something or another.
Most of the injuries seemed very minor and any pain or limping was gone within 24 hours. I consulted with various other distance mushers on how long to rest the dogs, whether or not to head up to Stratford and run the race, or whether the whole team just needed a long rest. After two days of agonizing over it I decided to drop down to the 6 dog class at Stratford and run 6 dogs I felt were in good shape, and possibly go out after the races and run very short runs with some of the dogs exhibiting very minor injuries (which I didn't wind up doing, again for various reasons).
The 6 dogs I chose to run at Stratford were Magik, Snowy, Tristan, Maja, Dawson and Matsi. Both Snowy and Tristan had questionable injuries from earlier in the week - Tristan had seemed to have a sore wrist when I first examined him on Tuesday but then later was fine. He hadn't been limping or favoring the leg at all, and I wondered if it truly was a sore wrist or just him being a cranky yearling after a very long run. And Snowy had come out of the truck favoring a leg on Wednesday but after moving around on it she stopped favoring the leg so I attributed it to some muscle stiffness.
By halfway through the 26 mile race on Saturday I knew something wasn't right. Snowy wasn't being herself - she was working off and on, yet I couldn't seem to find anything wrong with her. Tristan seemed fine, but wasn't working as hard as normal, and same thing with Dawson. Unfortunately it was an extremely hilly race and having only 3 of the 6 dogs really working made for what seemed like an agonizingly slow run on those hills. After the race I discovered Dawson was apparantly still bothered by some healing pad problems, and Tristan whined when I checked the wrist that had seemed to bother him on Tuesday's run. I guess it wasn't yearling crankiness after all.
I tended to injuries, massaged alygval into Snowy's shoulders and legs (even though I couldn't figure out exactly what her problem was), wristwrpped the entire bunch, and decided to see how they felt the next morning. On Sunday I ran both Snowy and Tristan around on a leash to see if they showed any signs of being bothered - but they were fine. Tristan's wrist was not bothering him that morning, and Snowy wasn't favoring anything or showing any signs of pain at all. Still, I made sure to massage each of them prior to the race, and to boot Dawson and put on some ointment.
I hoped all of that would help, but Sunday's race went about the same as Saturday's did. I suspect our times weren't all that bad, and we certainly beat a few people on the race at least, but all in all I didn't feel we did even close to as well as we should have done if my team had been 100%. We were more like 50% out there, or less.
So now I have a decision to make this week: do we do the Greenville 100 on Saturday, or do I pull out of the race? I'm going to run the dogs on a few short runs the next few days and see how they do. Some of the dogs with minor injuries have now had a week off to recover, and hopefully they'll be recovered enough to run without reinjuring themselves. But if I feel based on the runs this week that they can't do 100 miles without making matters worse then we'll have to pull out and just concentrate on healing up for Can-Am, despite the fact that we could really use that Greenville race as a warmup.
It's discouraging to get to this point in the season and have this many injuries - and to feel like had I had a bit more experience at this I might have been able to prevent some of them. A lesson learned, the hard way. :(
To backtrack...earlier in the week I had taken the dogs up to Pittsburg to do some back to back runs. When we got to Pittsburg around 8:30 am the thermometer in my dogtruck that tells the outside temperature read -25 and I did a double take - I've never before seen the thermometer read anything that low. It was so cold out that it hurt to breathe (possibly it just affects me that way because of the asthma tho...)
The dogteam was running AWESOME! Trail was nicely packed, plenty of snow for sinking a hook, definately in far better shape than anything we ran on last year around here. Those dogs were just cooking. They averaged 10-11 miles an hour for the first 20 miles of the run. I was thinking, 'wow, here is the dogteam I've always dreamed of!'
Then Snickers started limping. Since Snic is the type of dog that would run despite pain and not show any signs of it, I figured something must be pretty painful for him to be limping, so I unhooked him and put him in the sledbag for a free ride home. Even carrying a 45 pound dog and a 40 lb bag of dogfood in the sled hardly slowed those dogs down much - we were still averaging 9+ miles per hour the remaining way back to the truck.
But in the last 8 miles of the run 2 more dogs started limping: Anthem, who had had a minor wrist injury at eagle lake started favoring his wrist again, and Jackson started favoring a front leg (for some unknown reason - I never did figure out what was bothering him).
I pulled back into the parking lot ready to pack up and head home and forego the second run. But I convinced myself it was worth it to hang around and take a smaller team out later for another run - those dogs that weren't injured needed those back to back runs to prep for the upcoming races.
By the end of that second run (which I cut short for various reasons), I had 4 more injuries: two that showed themselves when I checked the dogs over after the run, and two that appeared the next morning. Add to that the fact that Kadee is still favoring a leg from an injury at the Eagle Lake race and is probably out for the remainder of the season, and that makes for more than half the team favoring something or another.
Most of the injuries seemed very minor and any pain or limping was gone within 24 hours. I consulted with various other distance mushers on how long to rest the dogs, whether or not to head up to Stratford and run the race, or whether the whole team just needed a long rest. After two days of agonizing over it I decided to drop down to the 6 dog class at Stratford and run 6 dogs I felt were in good shape, and possibly go out after the races and run very short runs with some of the dogs exhibiting very minor injuries (which I didn't wind up doing, again for various reasons).
The 6 dogs I chose to run at Stratford were Magik, Snowy, Tristan, Maja, Dawson and Matsi. Both Snowy and Tristan had questionable injuries from earlier in the week - Tristan had seemed to have a sore wrist when I first examined him on Tuesday but then later was fine. He hadn't been limping or favoring the leg at all, and I wondered if it truly was a sore wrist or just him being a cranky yearling after a very long run. And Snowy had come out of the truck favoring a leg on Wednesday but after moving around on it she stopped favoring the leg so I attributed it to some muscle stiffness.
By halfway through the 26 mile race on Saturday I knew something wasn't right. Snowy wasn't being herself - she was working off and on, yet I couldn't seem to find anything wrong with her. Tristan seemed fine, but wasn't working as hard as normal, and same thing with Dawson. Unfortunately it was an extremely hilly race and having only 3 of the 6 dogs really working made for what seemed like an agonizingly slow run on those hills. After the race I discovered Dawson was apparantly still bothered by some healing pad problems, and Tristan whined when I checked the wrist that had seemed to bother him on Tuesday's run. I guess it wasn't yearling crankiness after all.
I tended to injuries, massaged alygval into Snowy's shoulders and legs (even though I couldn't figure out exactly what her problem was), wristwrpped the entire bunch, and decided to see how they felt the next morning. On Sunday I ran both Snowy and Tristan around on a leash to see if they showed any signs of being bothered - but they were fine. Tristan's wrist was not bothering him that morning, and Snowy wasn't favoring anything or showing any signs of pain at all. Still, I made sure to massage each of them prior to the race, and to boot Dawson and put on some ointment.
I hoped all of that would help, but Sunday's race went about the same as Saturday's did. I suspect our times weren't all that bad, and we certainly beat a few people on the race at least, but all in all I didn't feel we did even close to as well as we should have done if my team had been 100%. We were more like 50% out there, or less.
So now I have a decision to make this week: do we do the Greenville 100 on Saturday, or do I pull out of the race? I'm going to run the dogs on a few short runs the next few days and see how they do. Some of the dogs with minor injuries have now had a week off to recover, and hopefully they'll be recovered enough to run without reinjuring themselves. But if I feel based on the runs this week that they can't do 100 miles without making matters worse then we'll have to pull out and just concentrate on healing up for Can-Am, despite the fact that we could really use that Greenville race as a warmup.
It's discouraging to get to this point in the season and have this many injuries - and to feel like had I had a bit more experience at this I might have been able to prevent some of them. A lesson learned, the hard way. :(
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