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A Dog Mushers'
Year: by Jim Gallea Introduction Just as corporations and the government have fiscal years, dog mushers have racing years. The end of one racing season is the beginning of the next. In the words of Erik Pack at the end of the 1995 Race to the Sky in Montana, "Today is the first day of next year's racing season." Taking care of the dogs is a 365-day a year job that requires a tremendous amount of commitment and dedication. Dogs are fed, played with, cleaned up after, and checked over on a daily basis. Dog mushing takes on the form of a full-time job, even though very little money can be made by running sled dogs. During the summer months, sled dogs undergo various levels of training and activity depending on factors like summer climate, training strategy, and the amount of time that the kennel owners can spend running dogs. (Summer is usually a time when most dog mushers try to work extra hours to make racing during the winter possible.) Some kennels regularly exercise their dogs as a part of summer tour businesses. Other mushers are able to spend time recreating with their dogs during the summer. In fact, a few lucky mushers are able to fly their dogs to South America during the North American summer and run on snow during the months of July and August. Other kennels don't have a formal training plan for the summer months. This can be due to weather. For example, mushers such as myself and Doug Swingley who live in the Rocky Mountains often can't do much training during the middle of the summer because the temperatures are too high. On the other hand, some mushers simply believe that they want the dogs to have a few months of "summer vacation" away from an intense training schedule. However, not training the dogs in the summer doesn't mean that the dogs don't get lots of exercise and attention. Every dog musher that I know spends considerable time playing, jogging, biking, or hiking with their dogs, and the dogs play with each other and entertain themselves by watching the antics of the world around them. And the bottom line is that no matter what the mushers do in the summer, at least a few hours every day are spent doing chores and being with the dogs in the dog yard. Once the mornings begin to turn cold and the long summer days begin to shorten, extra hours at work are scaled back, harnesses, traces, and four-wheelers are prepared, and training for races like the Iditarod begins. As we have been writing about in our training updates, fall training is a time for building strength in the dogs' muscles and tightening up joints, ligaments, and tendons. Strength builds speed, just as with humans. Mushers usually start training a group of about 30 dogs, the best sixteen of which will compete in the Iditarod. The runs start out at just a mile or two and are gradually increased to fifteen or so miles by mid to late October. Snow is usually quite scarce during the months of August, September, October, and, in some places, November. Therefore, training is not done with the dogs pulling traditional sleds, but instead, the dogs pull four-wheelers or carts that are typically much heavier than actual winter snow sleds. This added resistance is a key part of building strength, speed, and a good work ethic.
The months of September and October are also a time of preparation for the winter and the racing season ahead. Wood for fires is cut and stacked, human and dog houses are inspected and repaired as needed, and summer projects are finished or put aside for next year. Many mushers spend time hunting to secure food for themselves and/or the dogs. Moose, elk, deer, caribou, antelope, grouse, ptarmigan, duck, and even bear and beaver grace the tables and the dog food dishes of many mushers. On the large rivers in Alaska, locals set up giant fish wheels to catch salmon swimming up the rivers. The salmon are typically dried or smoked to preserve them. Fish has been a staple food for natives and their dogs for centuries. In fact, with the disastrously low salmon runs in the last few years, one of the concerns has centered on getting enough food for the sled dogs that live along the rivers. In the fall of 2000, several tons of dog food were donated and dispersed to the kennels on the rivers to offset the lack of salmon. Seal, walrus, and whale are also traditional foods for many Alaska natives and their dogs, and these animals are still legally hunted by natives living in parts of Alaska. Another major aspect of winter preparation focuses on the gear and equipment used by mushers. Because training runs are not as long during the fall, more time is available for other tasks in the kennel. Dog sleds are pulled from their summer storage and inspected. Damage from last season is repaired. New ideas and technology is revolutionizing the gear that mushers use, and dog sleds are no exception. Old sleds are refitted with newer, stronger, lighter materials. (The technological marvel of hockey sticks, for example, are becoming a popular, strong, lightweight alternative to wooden or aluminum stanchions.) New sleds are built that incorporate new materials and concepts into tried-and-true design specifications.
Harnesses for the dogs are inspected and repaired, and each harness is checked to make sure that it is the proper length and fit on the dog and to ensure that the required reflective tape (as a safety precaution) is present. Ganglines, the all-important lines that connect the dogs to the sleds, are inspected. Mushers often make new ganglines for use during the month of January and in races, and then repair and maintain these lines for use during fall and early winter training of the next season before switching to a new set. Dog booties, the tough cloth boots that protect the dogs' feet on long runs and in races, are either ordered from one of a handful of companies, or they are sewn. Dog coats and wrist wraps are also prepared. The mushers' parkas, pants, mittens, boots, socks, and hats that will fend off frostbite and wind are also inspected and pulled from their summer storage in the back closet and placed by the door in anticipation of an early winter. Fall is often one of the favorite times of mushers because of the excitement and anticipation that accompanies all of these activities. These preparations signal the coming of snow and cold--the two essential ingredients for mushing (besides the dogs, of course). Late Fall As the training runs begin to get longer in late October and early November, the dogs' muscles and joints are solid and their endurance is growing. The training strategy changes from slower runs and hard pulling to faster runs with a little less intense pulling. The runs at this time of year usually range in distance from about fifteen miles in late October to nearly thirty or so miles by late November. Snow at this time of year depends on location and the weather. In Alaska, teams are often using sleds by early November, but in recent years, this date has been pushed back into December, and some places in Alaska have had such little snow that mushers would put their dogs in the "dog truck" and travel for hours and hours to reach areas with snow. However, this year appears to be different, and Seavey's Iditarod Racing Team on the Kenai Peninsula is reporting enough snow to do runs with sleds starting about October 20. In the Lower 48 in places like the Montana Rocky Mountains, snow is usually a month behind Alaska. First runs on snow with dog sleds is consistently on or before December 1. In fact, the latest that the Gallea family and Snowcrest Racing Sled Dogs have ever started sled training is December 3.
No matter when the first snows do stick to the ground and signal the arrival of winter, the first snows are usually not enough to allow for sled running. For safety and control, a good base of a few inches of packed snow must be on the trails before the sleds can be used. This is due to the fact that sleds can be damaged by rocks and logs not covered by snow, and, more importantly, the brakes and snowhooks (anchors) used to slow and stop the teams depend on snow to perform their jobs, just as boat anchors depend on the mud at the bottom of the ocean to hold them in place. For this reason, a "limbo" period often exists between fall "dirt" training and sled training. Many times, this period lasts for a week or less because plenty of snow begins to fall soon after the first snows. At other times, this period can be even a month in duration. During the transition from dirt to snow, mushers often employ their great ingenuity to allow them to continue training without interruption. When the ground freezes and is covered with a light coat of snow, it becomes very slippery, and the powerful dogs are able to pull the four-wheelers over this ground with the brakes locked. Wrapping chains around the tires for extra traction helps, but when the ground gets covered with an additional inch of snow, the tire chains become useless, but not enough snow exists for the sleds to be used. To solve this problem, two things are often done. Mushers will hook their teams to their trucks, and the dogs will run by "pulling" the trucks. I would like to point out that the dogs don't actually pull the truck in the same way they pull the four-wheelers. Instead, we carefully apply the accelerator to allow the engine to move the truck at a speed about one mile per hour slower than the dogs normally go, and the dogs do the rest. The second solution is a bit less dramatic, but equally effective. Snowmobiles can run over just a small amount of snow without problem, so mushers hook the dogs to snowmobiles, and a similar situation to four-wheeler training results. The dogs are plenty powerful to pull the snowmobile, and the large rubber track of the snowmobile is a much more effective brake under those conditions. Once Thanksgiving passes, and most mushers are safely able to use dog sleds, the real work of training begins. Winter My family has often described running the Iditarod in terms of actually having to run four Iditarods to get to the finish of just one race. This doesn't mean that it takes us four tries every time we want to finish the Iditarod. What we mean is that four challenging aspects exist in getting a team to the finish line in Nome. The first "Iditarod" is the training for the race, which consumes half a year of time, but is especially intense for the last three months leading up to the race. The second "Iditarod" is the preparation of all of the gear and equipment and 2,000 pounds of food and supplies required for the race. The third "Iditarod" is the 2,500-mile drive to Alaska (we live in Montana) and the week of last-minute details leading up to the day of the start, and the fourth and easiest "Iditarod" is the race itself. It's the easiest because the other three Iditarods are finished, and you don't have to worry about them any more.
In order to effectively simulate racing, we must first decide on our basic plan for how the team will run the Iditarod. Iditarod rules do not require that mushers and dogs rest for a specific amount of time each day, and only three rest stops are required. This doesn't mean that the mushers and dogs run constantly with the exception of those three required rests. Rather, these rules make strategy a key element of the race, and they require a musher to be able to "read" his or her dog team to know when to run and when to rest. Even though the dogs are some of the best athletes in the world, they can't run an 1,100-mile race without good rest, excellent food, and unsurpassed care. Strategy in the Iditarod requires that mushers determine a schedule of running and resting that allows them to make good progress down the trail, but maintains the dogs' energy levels, attitudes, and enthusiasm. The Iditarod has been won and lost because of these very critical decisions. The general philosophy that most race strategies go by is that the dogs can run for six to eight hours without becoming too tired as long as they get an approximately equal amount of rest following the run. A strategy of running for six or seven hours followed by resting for six hours or so and then running again and resting and so on follows this philosophy, and is the most common "rule of thumb" followed when determining an exact race strategy. (A strategy of twelve hours running and twelve hours resting is mathematically equivalent, but twelve hours of running without rest tires the dogs out more and is therefore less efficient than the six "on" six "off" strategy.) The training runs during December, January, and February, all reflect this general strategy for running the Iditarod. During the three weeks of December, the runs are typically thirty to fifty miles long. Some of the runs are "out and back" runs that return to the kennel, while other runs are made into camping trips where the dogs will run forty or so miles, stop and rest for a few hours, and then run an additional forty miles back to the kennel. The camping trips are good for allowing the dogs to practice camping out on the trail, resting as a team, eating trail meals, and learning that rest stops are a time to rest, even if they are not tired, because another run is soon to come. Camping trips simulate the running and resting rotation of the Iditarod very well. By the end of December, the dogs will be doing longer continuous runs, and also will start to incorporate these runs into the camping trip format. Since the dogs racing pace typically averages somewhere between 10 and 12 miles an hour for much of the Iditarod, six to seven hours of running covers about 70 miles. For this reason, the longer continuous runs are usually about 70 miles in length--again simulating Iditarod racing. 140-mile long camping trips (run 70, rest for about six hours, and run 70) are another excellent race simulation because those trips not only cover the same distances as in the Iditarod, but they also simulate the running and resting strategy. Another interesting fact about the 140-mile runs is that the average distance a winning Iditarod team covers in a day is very close to that same number. In my opinion, this is why reigning Iditarod Champion Doug Swingley from Lincoln, Montana, integrates the 140-mile camping trips into his winter training so extensively. The long runs for the dogs mean even longer days for the mushers. First, the amount of time spent feeding and caring for the dogs is the same no matter what is happening in training, and second, a around 30 dogs must be trained on those long runs, and two runs are usually required on the musher's part in order for all 30 dogs to be trained. Most mushers have family members, friends, or even a hired hand (called a handler) to help with the feeding and care of the dogs and the training runs. However, one of the essential aspects to mushing is a strong bond and respect between the musher and dogs. The result is that the musher needs to spend as much time as possible with the dogs, and needs to gain as much familiarity with the dogs as possible. This means that the musher who will be running the team in the Iditarod often does a majority of the training alone and gets very little time for other tasks during the peak of training in December and January. The inherent result of the musher spending so much time with the dogs and on the trail is that the musher trains him or herself for the long days with little or no sleep that will be encountered in the Iditarod. Mixed in with the long training runs and camping trips are shorter "fun runs" to keep the dogs fast and happy (and to allow mushers to get a little sleep). Some of these fun runs are just short training runs, but others are small races that mushing clubs and organizations put on for the express purpose allowing mushers and dogs to get together and have a good time. Additionally, most Iditarod teams also want to do at least one preliminary race of at least 300 miles during the month of January. This race is another example of excellent simulation of the Iditarod, but is also a good chance to sneak preview other competitors' teams, evaluate your own team, and find any weak areas in the team that should be addressed in the final training before Iditarod. For my team this year, we will do a few of the fun races and then travel to Oregon in the beginning of January to race in a new "stage" race called the AttaBoy 300. The race has seven different heats that vary in length from 35 to 55 miles running on seven consecutive days. We will treat this race as essentially another "fun run," but because the heats are on consecutive days, this will be excellent stamina and mental fortitude training for the dogs. As my long preliminary race for my team, we will run the Seeley Lake 200 race (200 miles) at the end of January and then continue on literally from the finish line for an additional 250 miles. This will give me an overall training run of about 450 which I can structure toward simulating our first 450 miles in the Iditarod. This is the first time we will have done this type of a run as our peak training run, and I am very excited about the possibilities. Gearing Up for the Iditarod As January comes to a close, and the dogs' endurance and attitudes are at the levels needed in the Iditarod, the training is scaled back slightly. The distance and intensity of the training runs is not changed, but the frequency is decreased. The dogs' endurance and physical fitness is maintained but not increased. The reason is that the training for an athletic event like a marathon or a long distance sled dog race should peak a few weeks before the event. This allows the athlete to scale back on training and build up the energy and resources needed for the race.
This scaling back comes at just the right time for Iditarod mushers, because the food and supplies required by the teams during the Iditarod must be shipped out ahead of time. Approximately 2,000 pounds of dog food, human food, extra booties, spare sled parts, extra gloves, socks, mittens, and survival gear must be prepared, organized, and bagged according to which of the 18 checkpoints each set of items is needed. This is the second "Iditarod" by my family's analogy. Every piece of meat sent out on the trail is cut before packaging, every kibble of dog food is weighed into bags, every meal of the musher's own food is pre-cooked and vacuum sealed in thick plastic bags that hopefully won't leak, every dog bootie is inspected for holes and grouped with three others to make a complete set for one dog, which is then wrapped in the VelcroTM strap from one of the booties to keep the set together. At least 20 sets of booties are counted out for each checkpoint. Batteries for our lights, hand warmers for our mittens and boots, matches to light our stoves, tissues for runny noses, vitamins for the musher and the dogs, and countless other small items must be opened and removed from their original packaging and then repackaged in the quantities needed on the trail. Attention to detail is everything because no roads traverse the Iditarod Trail, and no chance for resupply is available except for what the mushers get ready at this time. Two and a half weeks prior to the race start, the "Food Drops" are taken to a warehouse in Anchorage that serves as Iditarod's distribution center for all of the supplies from all of the mushers. After the Food Drops are done, mushers take a sigh of relief and relax for an evening. For mushers like myself and my family, one last major task remains prior to Iditarod. The sleds and equipment needed at the starting line of the race as well as all of the food and supplies needed for two weeks before the race must be loaded into the dog truck. The mushers warm clothes and personal gear must also be loaded, followed then the best sixteen dogs of the thirty or so that were initially trained. All of this must be safely transported 2,500 miles to Alaska.
This is the third Iditarod for my family. The trip takes four days, and we must stop every few hours to let the dogs out of their kennels to stretch, eat, and go to the bathroom. The roads are icy and snowpacked for most of the way, and the weather can change dramatically and without notice as we go farther and farther north along the Alaska-Canada Highway. Pre-Race Events After arrival in Anchorage, a list of activities precedes the start of the race. Teams must undergo extensive examination before being cleared to start the race. The dogs are all given blood tests, ECG's (electroenchaphalograms to check their hearts), and complete physical examinations to make sure they are in the best possible shape. However, no such tests are require for the musher. The teams are usually run on short training runs once or twice in the week prior to the race to ensure that they remain flexible and fit. All of the gear and equipment and sleds that will go out on the race are checked over by the mushers one last time to make sure no repairs or improvements need to be made. Two days prior to the race, mushers spend an entire day in meetings regarding race rules and policies, trail conditions, and the like, and then spend the evening at the pre-race banquet held in the largest arena in Anchorage. Through all of this, mushers are constantly looking over and caring for their dogs, getting the entire team mentally prepared for the next several days. Mushers also try to maximize the amount of time spent sleeping during these days, but rest at times is understandably hard to come by. The Race
When all of the training has been done, when all of the gear has been checked, rechecked, and checked again, when all of the food and supplies await the mushers on the trail, when the race trail crews have marked the 1,100-mile course across Alaska, when all of the dogs are barking and ready to go, only one thing remains to be done. It is considered to be the Super Bowl of sled dog racing, and the starting line is a scene to behold. Seventy some teams from around the world are assembled in downtown Anchorage ready to start something that will forever change the lives of all involved. Mushers have worked extra hours to pay for it, sacrificed time with friends and loved ones to prepare for it, and worked through sleepless nights to get to it. It is the Iditarod, and it is the dream of all those who run in it. I won't spend too much time talking about it here because we will give you a first-hand account as it happens starting on March 2, 2002. However, I think that you, the reader, already have an appreciation for what it takes to get to the starting line, and I think this appreciation allows you to understand the drive that we, the mushers, have to get to the finish and have a fun time in doing it. The Iditarod is our lives, and the race symbolizes the rewards for honesty, hard work, and determination. Enjoy the ride. Post Script--Spring
When the Iditarod concludes every with the last musher crossing the finish line, a feeling of letdown often accompanies. The event which mushers work so hard toward is over. However, the end of one racing season is the beginning of the next, and mushers return home optimistic about their teams for next year and eager to train the puppies that were born over the previous summer. The spring is a time for recreation and family camping with the dogs. The puppies begin to work in harness and follow in the footsteps of their parents, grandparents, and scores of generations of sled dogs who have pulled over the last 6,000 years. Sleds, harnesses, and equipment are cleaned and carefully put away for the summer, and new litters of puppies are planned and bred. The mushing year begins anew.
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The purpose of training for any athletic event is to practice for the event
itself. The more closely that training simulates the event, the better
prepared for the event the athletes are. From December on, mushers train
with this philosophy. The fall training is obviously essential to get the
dogs to the point where race simulation can begin, and many important lessons
can be taught during fall training that will pay off dividends come the starting
line. But competitive long-distance sled dog racing requires an incredible
amount of endurance, speed, stamina, mental fortitude, and discipline.
This is the real work of training an Iditarod team, and it begins not long
before the winter equinox.
