The
Journey Continues
Sheep Mountain 150
January 2, 2007
A good breakfast before the start
This year’s Sheep Mountain 150
was an interesting race. Typically I have several runs on the sled
before my first race. In previous years I’ve even driven to
Sheep Mountain and trained on the race course before the race. This
year snow was a major issue and Zack had to reroute the race to avoid
glaciation on Squaw Creek. With the wet fall there was a lot of moisture
in the ground and with the hard freeze many creeks that normally flow
under the ice were frozen to the bottom. The water has to go somewhere
(the law of gravity) and typically flows over the top of the ice and
freezes there creating a massive piece of ice. Gravity being what
it is, the surface of this ice slopes downhill. I don’t know
about you, but watching your dog team slide down an ice sheet (with
the sled sliding even faster) is not the type of activity to warm
the cockles of your heart. Major kudos to Zack and his trail committee
– the conditions were very challenging to put in any kind of
trail and they did an excellent job.
Selecting the race team was fairly
simple – since I started with 17 dogs that is not a good sign.
We are still trying to get Dijon healthy and in shape to run Iditarod.
His is not reacting to the thyroid supplement as he should, and
was not running further than 15 miles at race time – he was
out. Bass was recovering from a shoulder injury and he was out.
Thyme sliced her pad pretty bad in October. If I double bootie (fleece
under cordura) she runs fine, but in the dog lot or at the truck
she carries the injured leg. So Thyme was out. Keiko has a sore
hip that has been bothering her off and on all year and she needed
more time to recover, so Keiko was out. Rom has a sore spot in the
meta-tarsal of his left rear foot, and that was bothering him. He
can still run on it, but since I didn’t really need him, why
should he. So of the 17 dogs I’m training for Iditarod, that
left Lycos, Rosemary, Mocha, Throttle, Platinum, Sisco, Dukat, Dash,
Jewels, Basil, Picard, and Balu for the race team. I started with
Lycos and Rosemary in lead and off we went.
Parking at Sheep
Mountain (Click photo to enlarge)
The 2004 and 2005 races started in the
parking lot for Sheep Mountain and then off into the ditch at the
side of the Glenn Highway. This year he started us at the airstrip
west the lodge going the opposite direction, then the trail swung
up onto some ski trails Zack maintains, behind the lodge dropping
into the ditch much later. It was a great start, particularly for
someone who is trying to remember where his feet go on the runners.
Kudos again!
I had planned to train the dogs on hills before the race, but circumstances
left me with a choice to either train the aerobic system with long
back to back runs, or train the muscles for the hills, but not time
enough to do both. I chose the aerobic system and the climb up Belanger
Pass showed the result. It was a slow climb with several rests for
the dogs on the way up. The dogs are in good enough shape that I think
the problem was more mental than physical, but it was real nonetheless.
But whenever we hit a flat spot the dogs kicked up the pace and were
cruising nicely.
Take Off (Click
photo to enlarge)
The snow cover was pretty thin with brush
sticking up out of the snow. Rosemary wasn’t fond of this and
after 20 miles I moved her back and put Basil in lead. On the backside
of Belanger pass, instead of going left around Syncline Mountain,
we went right to the East of Table Mountain and over Cameron Pass.
Between Table Mountain and Cameron Pass we paralleled a frozen creek
(the trail committee keeping us off the ice wherever possible). Then
we dropped onto the creek for a short distance and there was a long
narrow body of open water – maybe 10 feet long and 1 to 1 ½
feet wide. The trail went to the right of the water, but the ice sloped
down to the hole. When the trail was put in the ice was solid, but
under the stress of several teams it broke at a weak spot. Lycos and
Basil started to follow the trail but saw something they didn’t
like. They ran down to the open water and jumped across it to a broader
area of ice on the other side. The team followed and I crossed the
open water at a sharp angle with only the runner tails dropping into
the water. My right foot went in ankle deep and thanks to Basil and
Lycos I avoided a pretty good bath. At Eureka the buzz was about the
teams that slid into the water parallel to the long axis and got much
wetter. We may not be the fastest team on the trail, but I’ve
got some really nice leaders.
Eureka - Leslie,
Lexi & Eric
Of course after I complemented Lycos
and Basil on the wonderful job they did keeping me dry they had to
show me they were still dogs. On the second loop in the dead of night
we dropped into a small drainage and Lycos and Basil started to run
downhill. I stopped the team and there was an open stream about a
foot across and 3 or 4 inches deep. The leaders balked at crossing
the stream (after jumping across that much worse one) and we tangled.
I got wetter undoing the tangle and leading the dogs across that than
I did in the bad hole. Life ;-)
Rosemary didn’t eat after the first 50 mile run and I told her
if she didn’t eat after the second I would drop her. She is
a poor eater, even at home. She ate half of her dinner after the second
50 miles and I left with her, but she didn’t like the narrow
brushy trail and started to pull back on her neckline. I didn’t
want to haul her so I returned to the checkpoint and dropped her.
I was the next to last person to leave Eureka and there were not many
people to help me turn the team around. Picture a football field with
teams parked diagonally down the field and trails down both sidelines.
We got turned around and were going down the wrong sideline in the
right direction. I had Platinum and Dash in lead. I called a haw and
the dogs crossed the open field to the other side and went down the
outbound trail. I was so proud of my leaders!
Listen to the teams howl at the Eureka checkpoint
The third leg was pretty slow. After last years Iditarod I’m
very conscious of the dog’s weight and trying to get calories
into them. Then we had a cold snap in October and I didn’t increase
calories fast enough and the dogs got a little thin. I focused hard
on calories for the race and lost track of their hydration. Nothing
serious, but not optimal. That combined with the lack of serious hill
training made for a pretty slow third lap – or at least until
we hit the top of Belanger Pass coming home. The dogs recognized where
they were and knew where the finishline was. That long steep climb
on the first leg became a rocket propelled descent with a pumped up
dog team going home on the last leg. Nothing in the English language
would dissuade them and On the thin snowpack my brake only mixed the
underlying gravel. Suffice it to say that even Disneyland doesn’t
have a ride that exciting!
We finished last again, but we finished and with none of the slow
plodding over the last hills that we saw last year. The aerobic training
definitely helped. Now if next year I can get some hill training in
addition to the aerobic training we might actually move out of the
basement.
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