Happy Earthlings, Tasty Dip and Tough Dogs
3:00 p.m.
by Tyrell Seavey
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Ultimate Iditarod's coverage of the 2006 Iditarod sponsored by:
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I sent out a feeler last night in my Autobahn article asking for comments etc. about the website. I am writing these updates to try to help people with as many questions as possible so I figured a few diehard fans would send me a question or two and I would know what you were interested in. I got home from class today to find 44 emails from 5 countries and 22 states waiting for me. Although they were mostly questions about the race, which I will answer in upcoming articles, there were also a couple stabs at the world peace question and a bean dip recipe from my mom.
The most recurrent question was how do the
mushers feel on the race? What is going
through their minds right now? That is a
really good question. With all the facts
and numbers floating around in cyberspace it is really easy to overlook the
fact that these are people, men and women, we are talking about, and that their
success or failure rides solely on 16 animals that they must nurture and love
to the finish line. I have run the
Iditarod twice and I can say that I have just about experienced the entire
spectrum of available Iditarod emotion.
My first race was tough. I felt
like I had to live up to a very high standard and finish with 13 dogs just like
our three previous puppy teams had. By a
third of the way into the race I was running 12 dogs and not having a good time
at all. I was dropping dogs due to minor
injuries, and at the rate I was going I would run out of dogs long before
In 2005 I had a blast. I am not the kind of person to make the same mistake twice. I learned that you cannot dwell on every little problem in your team and you are better off ignoring the minor problems and focusing on your team’s strengths. Also, never think about how much further you have to go. It is too easy to convince yourself that you will never make it. Instead, focus on how far you need to go today, one run at a time, baby steps. There was never a time when I felt like I wasn’t going to make it or I wasn’t going to be competitive last year. Not because it was never a possibility, but because I simply chose not to consider it. I ended up in 16th which was quite a bit better than I expected and of course that success helped my outlook during the race.
This whole “life lesson” section was a long way around to a short answer… I musher can feel as good or as bad as they want to feel. That is one reason why experience is such a big factor. You will never see Martin Buser, no matter how bad it gets, moping around whining about his dogs our his hand or anything else, because he knows that that kind of attitude hinders the dogs and it will eventually get the better of him too.
I will
combine the next two questions which were… What is the terrain like? How is Rachael Scdoris doing? Rachael is doing well. She has again made it through the tough trail
(Skwentna to Nikolai) and I would say she is much better off than last year. I don’t have any first-hand information about
her condition, but I doubt she is complaining. The reason why everyone says this part of the
terrain is easy is a combination of two factors, first the fact that they are
out of the
The front of the race is progressing predictably. The idea now is to get to the 24 hour mandatory rest in Cripple on the least possible rest. This is the first of several shakedowns. If the team stays strong into Cripple expect them to leave stronger. I will throw a few more answers into the next updates.
On a closing note, I thought I’d include two of the better suggestions for world peace…
“World peace could be accomplished if we settled our differences
by making heads of states run 1100+ miles along the Iditarod trail.
They could discuss matters at checkpoints and eventually they'd be too
tired to argue much.”
I like this one… no one would
have enough energy to disagree.
“No suggestions for
"world peace", so the back country of
A good choice for the meantime.