Iditablog.com – Iditarod 2012 News & Coverage

Many people picture Iditarod mushers as extremely tough Neolithic cavemen types who drive a team of half-wild wolves through sheer force.  Others picture superman driving a team of genetically enhanced dogs that can leap of tall building in a single bound and pull a heavy sled while running up a vertical wall of solid ice.  Neither picture is correct; and that is the true magic and wonder of this race.

Iditarod drivers are normal everyday people from all walks of life, who do extra ordinary things with dogs that range from exceptional animals like Munch and Solomon to rescues from the pound.  Admittedly the pound dogs don’t win, but they get the job done.  So let’s say you want to run this race, what would that take?  Not surprisingly, it is a lot like the skills needed to live life.

The first thing that comes to mind is winter dog driving skills.  These include how to care for the dogs, how to care for yourself, how to handle the sled, how to pick good camping spots, how to find shelter when necessary, etc.  These are all skills anyone can learn, but they must be mastered before you try Iditarod.  When it is ok, anyone can do it – but when it isn’t…

For example, let’s say that you live in a northern tier state and a good friend from Florida who has never seen snow wants to drive up in January to experience winter.  Most of the time that isn’t a problem.  The roads are typically bare and dry.  You buy a good parka and boots and drive on up.  But what if a winter storm builds and blocks the way.  Does your friend have the winter driving skills to go through that?  These are skills that anyone can learn, but they must be learned to live in the North Country.

The next is much harder.  You need to know your limits and the limits of your team.  What can you handle and when do you call it quits.  This is just as important for veterans as it is for rookies.  The first rule of survival is to recognize that you are in a survival situation and not just barrel ahead until you and the dogs perish.  Just because Lance Mackey went through the coastal blizzard to Koyuk in 2009 doesn’t mean that you could.  In fact, no less than Jeff King turned around and went back to Shaktoolik because he didn’t trust his dogs not to quit on that trail and he didn’t have enough supplies with him to camp and wait out the storm if they did.  Both men made the right decision for their teams.  This can be the toughest part for a rookie to master and may well mean you have to scratch..  In the above example, if you friend knows enough to stop and wait out a storm they don’t have the skills to handle (or turn around and go home), then tell them to come on up.

Finally you need coping skills.  Not just to fix the things that break or adjust to the things that go wrong, but the dogs feed off the mushers attitude like you would not believe.  They read us like a book.  If we are happy, our dogs are happy.  They can be sick, or tired, or injured and not able to perform at the level you desire, but if you can convince yourself that you and they are winners anyway, they will believe you.

But if you break your sled, or have to drop a key dog, or somebody passes you with a snowmachine and tears up the trail and you get angry and upset, the dogs will get stressed and not perform at the level you know they are capable of.  Then you get more distressed, and the dogs get more depressed.  This vicious cycle continues until you get happy, or you scratch.

So the answer is that anyone with a positive attitude who is willing to put in the time and effort necessary to learn the appropriate skills and has the moxie to reach deep inside when things get tough and keep a smile on their face can finish this race.  It might take more than one shot depending on conditions, but you can do it.  Like Jodi Bailey said “It’s not how often you fall, but how often you get up and can still smile, that makes you a winner.”

Keep ‘em Northbound

-Eric

As we waited patiently for the 24-hour layover holding period to end, we made you a podcast. Josh, Greg and Loren gathered to discuss the current race status, we read your emails, and we talk with 2011 Iditablog Contributor, Musher Eric Rogers. We also learned that if participating in the Iditarod, Greg would choose his layover position strictly by which checkpoint has the best food.

Don’t miss our next live broadcast, tomorrow – March 10th at 7pm AKST.  We’ll be taking your calls & voicemails.

Feel free to email us with topics or questions you’d like to hear us discuss on the next episode… the email address is: podcast@iditablog.com, send us a twitter/facebook message or call the voicemail box at 253-778-MUSH.

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We’re into the period of the race where teams take their mandatory 24-hour layover, which according to Iditarod rules can be taken at any point during the race. Usually we see lots more variety, especially with those in the lead on just where exactly the layover is taken – when and where to take your break can play into race strategy. This year however has been different, with all of the race leaders taking their layover in the same spot – the village of Takotna. It means we won’t see nearly as much “leap frogging” on the leaderboard where one musher appears to be ahead, but really isn’t because they haven’t taken a layover when other teams behind them have completed the requirement already and are free to race as they wish.

Coming out of the 24-hour layover is also where teams make up for the starting differential from the beginning of the race when they left the starting line in 2-minute increments. A musher who began the race earlier is now going to have to wait longer before being released from their 24-hour layover.

You’ll find two charts below, the first one is a list of the mushers in Takotna in order of when they would be able to leave assuming they plan on completing their 24-hour layover in Takotna. The second chart is a list of all mushers and the length of each layover depending on their starting order.

Click below for Table 2, with all mushers and the length of each layover
Continue reading…

Pat Moon at the North Hope Race. Photo by Vita Black

Pat Moon admits he didn’t have high expectations when he entered the International North Hope Sled Dog Race in Russia. He’d never won a race before. In fact, he’d never finished anywhere but at the back of the pack. Last year at this time he was in an Anchorage hospital with a broken hand and concussion after hitting a tree in the infamous Dalzell Gorge on the Iditarod Trail.

When Terry Hinesley, Race Marshall of the Seney 300 (as well as the North Hope race), suggested he run a race in Russia, Pat agreed. He thought it would be a great two-week way to see Russia. His expectations quickly changed when he got there. He realized the eight-day stage race was not a camping trip; it was a competitive race. He and his Russian racing partner found themselves in second place early on. Pat said, “As time progressed throughout the race and my times were getting better and better and better, my expectations went up to ‘Let’s see if we can win this thing now.’”

On the seventh stage, during a night run, Pat was able to overtake first place. The last stage was one of the best dog runs Pat has ever experienced. As in most stage race, the leader starts last. Pat was able to pass all the teams easily and build up his lead going into the final sprint stage. He is now the proud owner of the Russian International Championship Cup.

“It’s not that I’m the greatest musher in the world, because I’m not,” Pat said. “It’s just the guy I ran with had really good dogs and I got paired up with a team that was willing to win.”

Running a race in Russia came with unique challenges, Pat said. Although he theoretically could have brought a team in, he would have had to bribe “almost every government official known to man.” So he was paired with a Russian musher and his team, using equipment he wasn’t familiar with. (None of the sleds in Russia have drag mats, so Pat needed to use his heel to slow the team down.)

Communication, both with his racing partner and the dogs, was a daily challenge. “The first couple of days were a learning experience because I’d never dealt with these dogs before. They don’t know me; they surely don’t understand English. I don’t speak enough Russian to figure out how to make them to in any direction.”

In spite of the communication barrier, the Russian people showed him amazing hospitality, Pat said. “The Russian people could not have been more hospitable to us,” he said. “Anything that we asked for, if they didn’t have it immediately, they would go out of their way to find it.” One of the volunteers even sewed an Iditarod patch onto a sweatshirt that Pat wanted to give to his racing partner’s son.

Although Pat loves distance races because he enjoys being out for extended periods of time with his dogs, he admits that he loved the stage stop format. He appreciated being able to sleep in a bed at night, and the format was definitely fan friendly. Most important, the dogs got to sleep in their dog truck every night, which put much less medical stress on the dogs.

Pat reports that his health is better than it’s been in a long time. Although chemotherapy was not effective, as of last report, his cancer had receded. “I have a unique outlook with the cancer,” he said. “I figure it’s probably going to kill me at some point, but I’m not going to put a whole lot of effort into thinking about it.”

What’s next for Pat? He’s considering running the Yukon Quest, the Grand Odyssey Race in France or the Femundlopet. Fans can follow Pat at his website.