Lindner hopes to make waves in 2007

KASILOF, Alaska — When word got out this past summer that 2006 Iditarod champ Jeff King converted his own Goose Lake into an exercise pool for his racing dogs, several other stories emerged of mushers who’ve gone to similar measures to keep their canine athletes fit through the offseason. One of those mushers is Sonny Lindner, the savvy veteran from Fairbanks who not only loves being with dogs in the great outdoors but is also capable of racing to the front.

Lindner, who won the inaugural Yukon Quest in 1983, says he’s been swimming his huskies every summer for the past few years - ever since he read an article in “Mushing” magazine about dog conditioning guru Arleigh Reynolds’ devising a pool for that purpose.

Lindner never quite got a chance to actually talk to Reynolds about his dog pool, but he liked what he saw in the photos that accompanied the story. Lindner, who has made a career in construction, used those pictures as blueprints and built something that looks a lot like what he saw in print.

The two men live relatively near each other, but each is notoriously busy.

“I always meant to go out and take a look, but never did, so I just built one like the picture,” Lindner said. “It looks just like it from the air. I have no idea how he really did it.”

While King’s idea was to string about 15 dogs at a time between two boats so the dogs can swim laps around the lake for 90 minutes, Lindner’s game plan is much more compact. About eight dogs jump into his 7-foot-deep pool and get a workout for about 45 minutes.

“They’re just treading water in the pool, but they tread or otherwise they’ll sink,” Lindner said, pointing out that treading water for close to an hour is hard work. Having a backyard pool is convenient, with one drawback being the need to constantly shuffle groups of dogs into the pool and monitor it constantly. It’s a daylong effort, performed about three times a week. The benefits? The dogs immediately are comfortable running a long time on dry land once Alaska weather turns cool enough in September. “We started right out with two hour runs, but going real slow because they haven’t had the impact on dry land that they got in the pool. So you’ve got to retrain their muscles, their shoulders and so on,” Lindner said.

(A two-hour run going slow might be 12 to 20 miles, but it depends on a musher’s definition of the word “slow.” Sprint mushers who fly around at 18 to 25 mph consider all distance teams to be slow, but a distance dog team will travel typically between 5 mph and 15 mph, depending on conditions.)

Other dog drivers who’ve used melted snow (also known as lakes and pools) in the summer to keep their dogs fit include mushers from Switzerland who raft their dogs out in a lake to swim back to shore. Charlie Boulding uses a slough between his homestead and a small island to swim his dogs on Alaska’s Tanana River. And Lindner recalls stories of mushers from Ruby and other parts of the Yukon River having their dogs swim alongside fishing boats in the summer. “Emmitt (Peters) and those guys downriver, those guys used to swim their dogs a lot,” Lindner said, also recalling stories of Joe Redington Sr. having dogs paddle around in a lake.

Lindner’s summer dedication and the steady development of his team over the past three or four years should bode well for 2007. The growth doesn’t show up in the stats - scratches in 2004 and 2005 and a 13th-place finish last year - but he’s been building a program, and was one of the happiest mushers on the trail last year. His team really moved and was happy all the way, and he has lots of leaders to choose from as they all turn a year older and more seasoned for 2007.

The scratch in 2005 was for health reasons: Lindner wasn’t feeling well. His premature finish in 2004 was musher error. “I had a team that was plenty fast but I made too many mistakes,” he said. Like what? “Going too fast.” One of the toughest disciplines in distance racing is saying “slow down” and “time for a break” when the dogs are excited and moving fast. But energy must be conserved in a race of 1,100 miles.

A few years before that, Lindner was helping Rick Swenson by running Swenson’s younger dogs, seasoning them for racing years ahead.

Now Lindner has his own kennel, and the preparation is done. “I don’t have a puppy team anymore. I’m going racing. It’ll be fun,” he said.

He’s got one other little boost: 15 of Susan Butcher’s best dogs. Lindner has long been friends with Butcher and her husband, David Monson. When Butcher fell ill with leukemia last year, she placed a few of her dogs on Lindner’s team. She and Monson were thrilled with their performance. The two families vacationed in Hawaii together after Iditarod and before Butcher’s last visit to the hospital before she died of leukemia in September. “When I came back, they decided to give me the racing team they had put together if things had gone better, that they hoped to put together and have David race,” Lindner said. “There’s some real nice ones in there. I think I’ll have a pretty good spread. They look good now, anyway. They look like weight lifters. Now it’ll be about getting them loosened up and stretched out and getting some long runs on.”

Jonrowe comes up short at triathlon
The 2006 Ironman World Championship on Kona, Hawaii, is notorious as the most grueling triathlon in the world. The waters off Kona were as choppy as ever, and DeeDee Jonrowe fell 10 minutes short of completing the competition, missing the two-hour 20-minute cutoff for finishing the 2.4-mile swim.

The race on Oct. 21 also consisted of a 112-mile bicycle course and 26.2-mile marathon. Jonrowe participated in part because she is drawn to distance running of the human variety in addition to her sled dog racing, but she also raced as a cancer survivor. Aside from grueling physical training, Jonrowe was busy in her offseason speaking at various events related to cancer.

Jonrowe finished fourth in the 2006 Iditarod and is obviously no longer on the rebound competitively after fighting breast cancer. She’s in the hunt again to win.

It appears that neither Jonrowe nor Lindner cares for merely treading water.