It’s so hard to write about races when you aren’t at them. Travis and I have talked this over and are, all-in-all, happy with the fact that we didn’t run. The thing is, when you show up at a race it’s really hard to hold your team back. It’s not just the dogs who get excited: the mushers do to. When you go to a race, you race. You have trained all season for this, so you run a little harder than you would in training. That’s the nature of competition.
If Travis had run the Copper Basin, he would have tried to improve over his 5th place finish of last year. Conditions, it sounded like from the few mushers we talked to, led to more muscle strains in the shoulders. Allen and Aliy even dropped dogs due to shoulder problems. Shoulders are tricky in dogs. In general they are much more difficult to work through and for a dog to recover from. Even if a dog can recover in time to be on the Iditarod roster, the dog has a much greater chance of re-straining the muscle while out on the trail. So the question always has to be: what is your goal?
Dallas and Mitch Seavey have routinely made it a point of not competing in the races leading up to Iditarod. They aren’t interested in the little fish — they want the big fish. Over the last three years, this strategy has payed off, Dallas won the Iditarod in 2012 and 2014, and Mitch won in 2013. Perhaps not attending races during these marginal snow years has benefitted their kennels by allowing them to train when and where they want, thus keeping their dog teams in better shape. Having a dog team that is healthy and ready to rock in January is easy, having that same exact team in March is trickier. Undoubtedly, a dog picks up an injury along the way and suddenly you have to start making substitutions to your main team. The careful pairing of dogs you’d worked hard to accomplish is suddenly thrown slightly off. Everything changes.
On the opposite end of the spectrum you have Aliy Zirkle and Allen Moore who, each season, run numerous races leading up to the Iditarod, including the Yukon Quest. They too, are doing well for themselves. I, personally, am glad to see them race. For one, they have an awesome crew that does great blog posts giving insightful updates during the race. If you haven’t already bookmarked their kennel website, make sure to check it out here.
Everyone trains differently. Everyone races differently. It’s hard to know what or if there is a right way.
But this year’s Copper Basin was interesting for a few reasons. We now know that even without one of their great leaders, Dingle, SP Kennel is still ready to rock in the 2015 Iditarod, with Allen taking 1st place and Aliy taking 6th.
Ray Redington put up one hell of a fight for second place and, for a good part of that last run, I think many people watching the tracker were thinking that Ray would pass Allen. It didn’t happen. Unlike Allen & Aliy, however, Ray will be heading off to the Kusko 300 in a few short days so it’s hard to say how many A-team dogs Ray left sitting at home. We’ve had the privilege of visiting Ray’s kennel a few times over the past year: he has a lot of really nice, well-built dogs.
We also saw Ryne Olson put on an impressive performance, taking third place. She isn’t signed up for Iditarod this year, but will be part of a very impressive field of rookies in the 2015 Yukon Quest. She’ll be up against Ray Redington Jr. who’s experience will be tough to beat as well as Jason Campeau who took over Apex Kennel last spring. Not to mention all the veterans: Joar Ulfsom, Jeff King, Brent Sass, Allen Moore, Lance Mackey — just to name a few. (Gosh, seeing all those names got me excited about Quest!) Having learned from Aliy and Allen, she know what it takes to run a competitive team and, now flying solo, she certainly proved she has what it takes. Expect her to do well in the years to come.
Two minutes behind Ryne in 4th place was Nic Petite. Nic put on a really strong performance with a young team. Out of the twelve dogs he started with nine were yearlings. A yearling is just what it sounds like — a year-old dog in their first season of training. Two of the three adults were originally dogs that came from our kennel. If you visited us before the Fall of 2013, you might have remembered them: Levi and Carhartt — big, happy, dogs who love to eat. They were great dogs but unfortunately Travis didn’t feel they fit in. Nic seems to be doing very well with them.
Rounding out the top five was Ben Harper. Ben ran a great race. It’ll be exciting to see how he does during Iditarod. He is going to be great competition for Rookie of The Year.
One of the things that has really intrigued me about the Copper Basin is that 8 of the top 10 finishers are training outside of South Central Alaska. They are all up north “near” Fairbanks. I use near loosely because, in Alaska, nothing is all that close. If you want to be really picky, you could say 9: Nic has spent so much time on the road chasing snow that it’s hard to say where he has done a majority of his training but I think it probably has been in the Copper River valley. It should be obvious, but if you want to succeed as a musher you need good training conditions…
Someday we will buy property up in mushing country where there is snow… but for now I listen to the rain hit our metal roof in a gentle lull as I get ready for bed and dream of snow.
