Race Season in Minnesota

Per the usual, everything feels like a whirlwind. Our race season is already almost over and it feels like it just started!

Anna raced her first John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon. This race honors the indigenous mail carrier Eshquabi (whose white name was John). Eshquabi delivered mail for around 20 years from Two Harbors to Gichi-onigamiing (Grand Portage). Although the race has shortened over the years due to climate change and low snow, the mushers still kick out 300 miles on beautiful Minnesota trails.

Anna heading out of the Skyport checkpoint

This race was new to us in so many ways. In Alaska, mushers take care of everything on their own when they come into a checkpoint. The only purpose of a handler is to bring the drop bags to the musher (if that is even allowed) and to sit by the team as the musher sleeps. In Minnesota and other lower-48 races, the handlers do all of the dog care as soon as the musher arrives. Skylar and Olivia helped me handle this race, so we had plenty of hands on the dogs! There was a steep communication curve for Anna and me since we've never raced like this before. By the end, we got our systems down where Anna comes into the checkpoint and gives us any dog updates, then she grabs her meal and starts to wind down for rest. An hour before she was due to leave, Anna woke up and started getting ready for the next leg while we prepared the dogs.

There is a large part of me that really misses the Alaska style racing, but the dogs get much better care when multiple hands can be on the dogs, not just a sleep deprived musher.

Anna placed 7th and received the rookie of the year award, meaning that she was the first rookie to cross the finish line! This race has been in Anna's sights since she started helping out at Sawtooth Kennels in Kitchibitobig (Grand Marais) many years ago. She said that the trail was technical and wild! A wee fox escorted her team on the last leg, nearly all the way to Gichi-onigamiing!

A beautiful 7th place finish with Lambo and Porsche in lead

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I finished the Gunflint Mailrun on Saturday. It is a 64-mile sprint race on some of the Beargease route out of Kitchibitobig (Grand Marais). We went into this race knowing that the other teams would have much speedier dogs, so it was just going to be a fun run for me. Sprint dogs look a lot more like hounds than huskies. Short coats, sleek bodies, and big chests for deep lungs. Our dogs were selected and bred to run long distances and carry significant loads, so they have long hair and shorter legs. I always claim to be a "slow musher", and this race revealed that! This trail was technical and hilly, so I ran with my dogs as much as I could up the hills. I am so proud of them for keeping a good pace through the whole route! We placed 8th of 10 mushers. Back of the pack, but a fun ride for us!

Anna telling me to put my GPS in my pocket at the start of the race so I don't lose it on the trail!

I was lucky to have Diggins with me on this race. We have been adventuring together for the past 5 years in the snow! She and I decided that this was her last race. She is now officially retired! She is not injured, nor will I be selling her. She simply hates camping out in the snow! She rarely races anymore since she is not friendly to the vets, so we had one last hurrah together, and now she will help us train leaders and be a couch dog. I love her so much, and I will miss racing with her, but I want to do right by what she wants.

My team running on Poplar Lake heading to the Trail Center checkpoint

We might have one more race in our future, the UP 200! After race season is over, Anna and I might kick out a couple of fun adventures with the dogs in the BWCA.

Onward!