Jim's November Training Journal

November 1, 1998
We have been running about twelve miles for the past several days.  The dogs are starting to do quite well on that trail.

We mixed up the teams a bit so that the same dogs aren't running together all the time.  The dogs did well with the new arrangements.

Java and Bam Bam have pulled shoulder muscles from the slippery clay mud we have been running on.  We will give them some time off to make sure that they're muscles are fine.  I think we will give all of my dogs two or three days off to give them a little break from the intense training that they have been doing for the past month.

November 5, 1998
We gave the dogs a three day break, and today they were ready to go.  Danny and I wanted to try a different trail to prevent the dogs from getting so bored.  We tried to make a loop through a large swamp, but the four-wheeler, Danny, and myself broke through the ice in part of the swamp and got stuck...not once, but twice!  Needless to say, we were both we and cold after that run, and we didn't do it again with our second team.

Java is still getting some time off, but Bam Bam is ran again today.  We discovered that his shoulder is fine, and that there is a little sore on one of his feet.  We have been treating it with some ointments, and tonight I put a bootie on it to protect it a bit.  He may get tomorrow off to help it heal.

No snow yet, and the weather is actually seeming to be warmer than it was in mid-October.  Hopefully that will all change soon.

November 6, 1998
My dogs have reached the 200 mile mark!  It took twenty-three days to get the first hundred miles on the dogs.  It took only thirteen to double that.  I guess that's proof that the dogs are running farther and that training is getting more intense.

November 8, 1998
A dusting of snow was on the ground, and the trees were covered in frost when Danny and I trained this morning.  The dogs seemed a bit more excited than usual when we started to hook up  Perhaps it was the snow, even if it was just a little bit.  Their excitement carried over into their running, and they did extremely well today.

We saw a cow moose and her two calves near the end of my first run.  These moose were at a safe distance and didn't care that we were running by.  However, we are always on the lookout because moose have been known to charge dog teams.

The weather is getting colder again.  Maybe it's here to stay this time.

November 9, 1998
We returned to the swamp again today.  Luckily, the recent cold weather has thickened the ice, and we were able to do both of our training runs in it.  It was new trail for the dogs, and so that was fun for them; but for Danny and I on the four-wheeler, the ride wasn't very smooth.  Imagine a MicroMachine toy car trying to drive across a frozen sponge, and that's about how it felt to us.  Our minds were taken off the bumps, however, when Danny saw a caribou cross the trail in front of us.

We put Mocha up in lead with Cuda on the way home.  She did extremely well up there, and that, of course, is good to see.

November 12, 1998
The ground is white!!!  It snowed about two inches or so on Tuesday night, so my last two training runs have been on a soft cushion of snow.  Last night it cleared off, and the temperature dropped to one or two degrees below zero.  That was the temperature when I started my runs today.  It was a big change from the warmer, rainy weather we had a couple weeks ago.

We are still running in the swamp.  With the cold weather, I'm not too worried about falling through, but we still bypass one of the places where Danny and I got stuck last week.  The dogs are enjoying the cooler weather and the snow and have been doing quite well.

We are hoping for more snow here, but if we don't get it within the next few days, we are going to go somewhere where there is.  We are ready to be on sleds.  It is kind of necessary, actually, because the Copper Basin 300, my first qualifying race, is less than two months away.

November 14, 1998
Yesterday I did a different kind of training with the dogs.  Instead of running them, I spent several hours working with the dogs' feet.  Caring for their feet is an important part of training and racing because every step of the Iditarod and the sixteen to eighteen hundred miles of training before is made by those feet.  Getting their feet looked at and cared for is something that my yearlings are not used to at all.  Many of them really didn't like the experience, and that is why it is important for me to start working with them now.  It will be much easier to care for their feet in the Iditarod if they are used to my checking them.

Today, we were back to the usual four-wheeler training and back to the usual old trail.  It is getting kind of boring, but all things considered, the dogs are doing extremely well on it, even if they have been on that same trail over half a dozen times in the last twelve days.  We will probably return to it tomorrow again, but that will be the last time.  We will find some completely new trail for them to run on after that.

November 17, 1998
There is still not enough snow to run on, and we are getting really tired of the same old trails.  So today, Danny and I put all my dogs in the truck and went to a road not far from the kennel.  We hooked the teams up to the truck, and they took turns pulling and riding.  Each team did a twenty mile run.  It was really strange to be running dogs and sitting in a warm truck listening to the radio and drinking a pop.  It sounds comfortable, but I really appreciate sled running now!

The dogs did very well today.  They perked up a bit on the new trail, and were able to keep and excellent pace throughout the run.  I know have well over three hundred miles on my team.

In other news, I checked feet yesterday, and the dogs did much better.  They are getting used to it, and some of them even seem to kind of like it.

Thursday, November 19, 1998
Yesterday, we again ran down the road with the teams hooked up to the truck.  They did even better than they did on the day before and didn't seem very tired at the end of the run.  They are starting to get into shape.

We put Java back in the team for a bit during yesterday's runs, but he is still sore.  He has been out of training too long to come back into the team, so he will run with some of our young puppies this year and run with next year's yearling team.

Last night, it began to snow, and by the time I woke up this morning, there was a good four or five inches of new snow on the ground.  Danny took the snowmobile out and did a little "grooming," and I think we will actually do a run where the dogs pull sleds tomorrow.  We've been waiting for this for quite a while!

November 20, 1998
A SLED RUN!  Actually, two sled runs, each twenty-five miles in length.  The last time I actually drove a dogsled was in March.  It had been too long, but the wait ended today.  Danny and I hooked up two sleds, one behind the other, split my dogs into two teams, and ran both teams for twenty-five miles.  The dogs did extremely well.  They, too, were very happy to be on snow.

We had to double-sled because we don't have a lot of snow, and we wanted to make sure we were going to be able to control the dogs.  Things went just fine, and we are planning to continue running with both sleds until the conditions improve a bit.  It is so much nicer on sleds!

Sunday, November 22, 1998
The temperature was a comfortable zero as Danny and I took off on our first run.  We were once again double-sledding behind a twelve dog team on a twenty-five mile training run.  Like Friday, we ran both teams, and also like Friday, the dogs did great.  However, we were even faster today!  Our first team did the run in two hours thirty-four minutes.  That was a minute faster than our best time on Friday.  Our second run took two hours twenty-seven minutes.  That was a great run!  The dogs are really starting to get into shape.  They have nearly four hundred miles on them now.  They are starting to look less like a team of inexperienced yearlings and more like a team of young adults.

Tuesday, November 24, 1998
We again ran for twenty-five miles.  We have been running on the same road that we did the truck training on, so the dogs are getting a little tired of it now.  However, they still did quite well on the runs and finished still going strong.  Today, Tyrell drove the second sled.  He likes to make the driver of the front sled go into the road ditch by braking on corners so we had some fun out there.

The dogs have been going through a pretty rigorous training program for the past month, and they are ready for some time off.  I wouldn't mind a bit of a break either, so I'm flying to Seattle to visit family for Thanksgiving.

Sunday, November 29, 1998
I returned early this morning from a wonderful Thanksgiving in Seattle.  It was great to see my family for a few days.

This afternoon, Dallas and I ran twelve of my dogs twenty-seven miles.  There has been a lot of fresh, wet snow recently, and the trails were pretty slow.  However, it is good for the dogs to practice breaking trail.

December is just around the corner now, and things are getting more and more busy around here every day.  Before I know it, Christmas will be here.