KNIK, Alaska, Jan. 8, 2007 — It was a typically mixed bunch taking off from this historic village on a 200-mile sled dog race through Joe Redington Sr.’s backyard trails, and a typical amount of surprises. Loose dogs, cold temperatures and, yes, more than a few wrong turns made the Knik 200 another wild ride in 2007.
The outcome was predictable, but the way it occurred was not: Jeff King won his second Knik 200 in two years with a team that rolled through the night like a freight train for the first 100 miles to the warm, friendly Skwentna roadhouse. He eased off the gas on the way back to the start/finish line, only to be passed by another fast-moving team: Mine. My dogs were firing on all 12 cylinders the entire way and would have happily loped to the finish line in first place, had I not said “haw” at a “Y” in the trail with about a half mile to go.
I took a wrong turn following trail markers that lined the way into another musher’s dog yard, only to see King’s team trot on by on the correct trail as I turned my confused dogs around and began to untangle them. King’s face actually fell. He winced and frowned in sympathy. He has won dozens of races, while I, much like Dallas Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo, muffed a play at the finish, costing me a chance at my first major victory in a distance race.
It hurt, but the truth is I entered the Knik 200 at the last minute to take a hard look at my team by asking them to run each 100-mile leg nonstop. I was convinced they had the conditioning to run strong the whole way, and they proved me right. My goal was to finish with all my dogs and somewhere between first and 10th place. So aside from that aching feeling of missing out on first place at the last minute, I’m very happy with my dog team and looking forward to working with them at the tough Kuskokwim 300 on Jan. 19.
Thirty-six teams embarked on the race, which starts at Knik Lake, historically the first checkpoint on the Iditarod trail, and follows rolling hills through birch forest, punctuated with a few lake and tundra crossings, for about 30 miles before dropping down a steep snow ramp onto the frozen Susitna River. Mushers then turn left up the Yentna River, past the Yentna Roadhouse and on to Skwentna, where they take a six-hour layover and head back the way they came.
For some of the teams, this race was a major trek. One musher, up from Juneau, took off with only eight dogs instead of the 12 she was allowed, and made it to Yentna, where she opted to scratch and run home. That would amount to a 120-mile round trip, a serious training run by anyone’s measure and a big accomplishment to a team that had run no farther than 42 miles all season.
That’s the nature of distance races: There’s a winner, sure, but there are a million other small victories and losses for every team entered. Take Paul Gebhardt, who set out to win the Knik 200. One of his younger dogs strained its shoulder less than a third of the way to Skwentna. Once he put that dog in the sled to carry it to the halfway point, Gebhardt knew he’d no longer be in the hunt for a win. Then things got more frustrating. While switching out leaders, one of his best dogs trotted free of the tugline and just kept going on up the trail. Fortunately, the dog ran toward Skwentna, instead of back the way they’d come, and Gebhardt gave chase with the 10 remaining dogs in his team. Snowmobilers found the dog, tied it off a stump, only to report back to Gebhardt that the energetic dog had pulled so hard against its tether that the rope broke, and the dog was free again. A snowmobiler again roared off up the trail and found the dog again, this time holding on and waiting until Gebhardt trotted up. Gebhardt lost about an hour in all that finagling, he figured. It’s worth noting that Gebhardt had the second fastest time on the second 100 miles, once his team ironed out its wrinkles.
My run was blissfully smooth most of the way. My goal was to run steady but not too fast for the first half of the race. Dogs can run an amazingly long way if they’re running a little slower than they want to go. I passed a few teams and was just quietly letting the team set its own pace as night fell and temperatures dropped to about 20 below on the Skwentna River. Running without a headlamp under a three-quarter moon, I turned back to see the bright blue LED that I was sure belonged to the headlamp of Jeff King. It was obvious that King was gaining on me, so I flicked on my own headlamp. There was no point in playing cat and mouse. I knew he’d started in the high 20s, and my bib number was 19, so he’d gained 20 minutes on me already. He slowly, slowly reeled me in, and as I pulled over to let him pass, we exchanged compliments. His team rolled by at a beautiful gallop. He remarked that mine had been noticeably difficult to reel in. A couple of times at Skwentna, King praised my dogs, and each time I was a little bit puzzled. After all, it was King who held a half-hour lead with 100 miles to go. That’s not insurmountable, but it is sizeable.
King shot out of the checkpoint after his mandatory six hours at a few minutes after 2 a.m., with all 12 dogs. I was next at 2:38 a.m. and I, too, didn’t leave any dogs behind at the checkpoint. My mission was to start at a conservative pace and let the dogs warm up. We had eight to nine hours of nonstop running ahead of us. At the same time, Sebastian Schnuelle was just six minutes behind me leaving Skwentna, and Melanie Gould another 10 minutes behind Schnuelle. Fifteen minutes is not a significant buffer on a 100-mile run, where the dogs might slow down because they get tired, or one might get sore and need to be packed. What none of us knew was that had happened to King. He packed one of his favorite leaders shortly after leaving Skwentna.
Meanwhile, I, Schnuelle and Gould cruised along in the darkness without headlamps, the trail illuminated by the moon. Once in a while, I’d see Schnuelle flick on his headlamp to make sure he was following the “K200″ trail markers. He was slowly catching up, and after three hours of running, near Yentna, he trailed me by two minutes or maybe less. That’s where I told the dogs, “Sorry guys, but we’ve got to shift it up to a higher gear. I want to stop and toss you all a piece of salmon, but I’m not going to do it if it means Sebastian catches right up to us. We need a buffer.” The trail was hard, fast and wide open - a blue highway of snow and ice shimmering in the cold moonlight. You could see about a mile ahead and a mile behind, so I kept up the faster pace right out of the Yentna River and onto the softer, less traveled snow of the Susitna River. Parking around a bend in the river, I finally delivered on my promise of a salmon snack, still thinking Schnuelle would be upon me if I didn’t do it quick. Then I saw a flash of King’s LED headlamp up ahead as he exited the Susitna, and that definitely caught my attention. It was 7 a.m. and I counted off 15 minutes before I was at the same place I saw King’s headlight. Intrigued by gaining 15 minutes, I started paying more attention to the trail ahead than the trail behind.
King then had a tough time finding his way back over the wind-blown Flathorn Lake, where many of the trail markers had been knocked down. And we both took a wrong turn in a small bay of the lake before hitting the tree-lined major trails back to Knik.
As daylight dawned in the hills, I finally saw a dog team climbing one of the ridges ahead of me. I was starting to have some serious fun. I looked down and saw 12 dogs still rolling along without a hint of fatigue, so I gave them an occasional whistle to maintain our speed. It didn’t take long for King to see me, and he sped up. We kept about a minute or two apart for about 15 miles, and we both figured that would be the way we finished.
Along the way, I got some unexpected assistance from wildlife. A raven followed King’s team, swooping down to snack on the occasional deposits left by one of his dogs. My team would surge toward the snacking bird, which flew off, repeatedly, in the direction of King, and my dogs gave chase. A trailside mother moose and calf gave my dogs another slingshot effect. Sled dogs always speed up at the sight of animals near the trail.
Still, King maintained his distance.
Then, with maybe five miles to go, I figured why not give it everything. I asked the dogs to gallop with all their energy. And they did. We caught up to King quickly and surprised him. He quickly pulled his sled to the side and my dogs made a clean pass.
It was a satisfying couple of minutes roaring along in first place and it didn’t take long before I saw signs of civilization: buildings, roads and cross-trails. I’ll never forget reaching that “Y” intersection, where my dogs wanted to go straight ahead on an unmarked trail, but I saw orange-topped trail markers leading to the left. I hesitated, and made a clear-headed, calculated decision to turn left and follow the markers. King was by then at least two minutes behind me. I guess I had more time and could have stopped and studied the choices more slowly. I’d recommend that to any racer finding himself in the same situation. It’s better to waste a few seconds and make the right call.
By the time I realized I was heading into a dog yard, I was done for. My confused team didn’t want to turn around and had gotten tangled in its traces.
And that is how I wound up passing King, only to wind up finishing three minutes behind him, trading a big smile for a brief bout of major disappointment. It actually didn’t take very long to shake off that feeling, because I still was looking at a powerful team running nicely at the tail end of a tough 200-mile run.
King joked at the finish that it wasn’t a bad day for Team Cabela’s, finishing first and second. And I couldn’t disagree. Keep in mind that he’d packed a dog nearly 100 miles and struggled to find his way over Flathorn Lake. He earned that victory just as much as I would have if I’d been able to overcome that last obstacle. But that’s racing.
Disappointments hurt, but they have a way of building character and teaching valuable lessons, so long as you accept responsibility and open yourself up to learn. After the race, King noted something I say often: He learns something new with every race he runs. I’ve long studied the outgoing trail by looking behind me to burn into my memory what things should look like on the way back home. I’ve never done it out of the starting chute, however. I guess King has learned the hard way - especially at a trail-crazy area like Knik where countless mushers have crisscrossing paths - to pay attention to the home stretch as he departs the starting line. Now I’ve learned that, too. It’s a lesson I’m not likely to forget.