The Musher Meeting

Finally, the mushers arrive in one location for the mandatory 9:00AM 2007 Musher Meeting at the third floor conference room of the Millenium Hotel, Anchorage. 82 mushers, at last count, walk through a gauntlet of media reporters, some with notepads and voice recorders, and the ubiquitous cameras which will now document the 35th running of the Iditarod. Seated at long tables, Mushers are set to work signing packets of mail that will be carried in their sleds to Nome, and meet final demands for veterinarian documents. The meeting comes to order and the business of introducing Mark Nordman, the Race Marshal, and his group of judges, and the supporting cast of volunteer managers that engineer the logisitics of the race are introduced. Roll call is taken, and the names of rookies and veterans in alphabetical order are read.

The race has now begun, even as the mushers sit in the confines of a musher meeting. At rest or in motion, every action with the dogs is now taken seriously. Most of the mushers have completed their final tune-up training runs and allow the dogs to rest and lounge in their dog boxes until the Ceremonial Start on Saturday. However, the strategy of feeding is now becoming more important because the elite mushers are calculating calorie intake to parallel demands. Energy demands will jump from 1500 Kcal on a rest day (like today) to close to 10,000 kcal after the second day of resting. Each musher must decide whether to feed a little extra and allow the dogs to gain weight in the next two days, to maintain calorie intake and weight, or whether to actually cut back on feed and put the team in a slightly hungry status before the start. Some theorize that having the dogs slightly below calorie demand is physiologically better since the dogs will be hungry and ready to ramp up their metabolism on the first real day of racing on Sunday Afternoon.

If you read and absorbed our yesterday update, the reader understands that four champion mushers—King, Buser, Swingley, and Sorlie have taken the stage to demonstrate four possible strategies. However, the field surrounding these four is calculating and motivated, and they took time this morning to remind me, and of course, the readers that the race is always counterbalanced by the intrigue of competition. There is no given winner, no guarantee of success—-that’s why we have a race.

Ric Swenson, the 5X Champion, Iditarod’s most successful musher, won his first Iditarod in 1977. If there is one icon recognized by the entire collection of media, fans, and mushers gathered this morning at the Musher Meeting, it is Ric Swenson. As a generality, his successful strategy is first based on an exquisite preparation of his sled dogs. He is undeniably the master of dog care and the art of patience. He is willing to watch the race unfold, often keeping to the front, but quite willing to run anonymously behind the trail leader, and then seize the moment in the last miles of the race, as he did in his 5th winning race of 1991. He is the paradigm that mushers study. In an individual conversation, he is a fascinating analyst with an interpretive memory of thirty years of mushing experience. He is not easy to calculate or predict, because his curiosity prompts him to try many strategies. Like all great strategists, he will only reveal his strategy by racing. In fact, it’s considered bad manners to ask a musher to reveal their strategy. Watch carefully and we will learn Swenson’s plans to race this year’s Iditarod.

In this list of his students, put on your race checklist for mushers to watch, Mitch Seavey, the 1X Champ, who has been eerily close to the action for the last three years and is ready to pounce on first place again. I saw him briefly this morning and now believe that Seavey will be a force in this years Iditarod. His entire strategy, it seems to me, is focused on controlling events in the last third of the race, and is indifferent to parries in the early going.

Paul Gebhardt, John Baker, Ramy Brooks, Ed Iten, Lance Mackey (the “Incredible Lance Mackey”, yet again, the winner of the Yukon Quest), Dee Jonrowe, Aliy Zirkle, and Jessica Royer quietly mixed with the crowd, confident that their well prepared team could vault to the front. Interestingly, I thought current trail conditions which are known to be hard and fast for the moment and a weather report for an extended window of clear and cold weather, has tempered race strategy. In conversations with these mushers, I came away with the feeling that none of them, despite the temptation, was going to be a rabbit.

Behind the Scenes

TV camera crews held their own meetings this morning, attempting to decipher the overwhelming complexity of covering the event on a 1200 mile playing field. Imagine the planning required to position by small aircraft the crews responsible for documenting the Iditarod?

This year’s biggest problem? The clear and present possibility that race leaders will diverge dramatically in strategy on day three of the race. In fact, mushers I talked to agree that the race will explode at Takotna into a lightning storm of opposing strategies.

Let me explain. It is very possible that we will see two schools of thought. Just for explanation purposes, consider that Martin Buser will be dedicated to a strategy of overwhelming speed. On the other hand, Robert Sorlie will be an exemplar of a slow and deliberated strategy. Therefore, imagine that Buser and his colleagues will land at Takotna or Iditarod for their mandatory 24 hour rest in record time.

Sorlie and his school, to include Paul Gebhardt, for example, might be inclined to proceed well past the halfway point to the Yukon River—-maybe as far as the village of Kaltag.

Remember, Jeff King won last year’s Iditarod by stopping relatively early in the race in Takotna for his mandatory break of 24 hours.

There is a possibility that the leaders of the race could potentially be separated by over 200 miles on Wednesday next week. The possibilities for news coverage are overwhelming, and by Thursday or Friday, when strategies collide again, we may see a front pack advancing to the Bering Sea Coast in a train of equal competitors.

Of course, for the true TV documentarian, this uncertainty is great stuff—-but practically speaking, difficult to organize.

Our camera guys, the work horses of the media team, studied maps and possibilities this morning to make sure they capture the inevitable surges of the front pack. My prediction? This could be the most diverse strategy display in Iditarod History. Expect a strategy implosion about the time our lead pack approaches Takotna early next week. Day one and two across the Alaska Range will likely be calculated posturing, but pay attention on Day 3 of the Iditarod.

Up for Tonight:

Tonight’s annual banquet, Alaska’s biggest social event, will include Mushers, guests, VIPS, and hundreds of fans. Banquet tickets, I am told, are in high demand.

Strategy moves? Starting orders for the Ceremonial Start on Saturday, the real start of the race in Willow on Sunday at 2PM will be formally announced.

A possible insight for the fan:

This morning, our film crew talked about the metabolic rhythm of the dogs after several days of hardening on the trail. Here is my take. These incredible canine athletes will accelerate from rest to over 300 heart beats a minute on the trail. In addition, these canines increase calorie increase from 1500 kcal or less at rest, to over 10,000 kcal per day while racing. Read the following for what it feels like to travel with these super performers:

The huskies instinct to travel is heightened at the turn of light in evening and early dawn.

Every good musher understands this primordial instinct on the Iditarod. In the late afternoon, after lounging and dozing in the arctic sun for six hours, round and full after eating copious amounts of calorie rich food—-beef fat, liver, chicken, specially prepared rations—the musher prepares the dogs for the evening run. The first order is booties, for no husky can travel 150 miles per day on crystallized snow, without them. Some huskies have trained 3,000 miles for this race and have not taken one step outside the kennel without the precaution of booties. It takes a capable musher 40 minutes to boot all sixteen dogs in the team.

Then one by one, with a kind word or a pat, each is snapped back into the tow line until finally, the leaders, looking back at the musher, know all are in harness and it’s time to go. By the third day of the race, the dogs are hardened to the trail, their bodies metabolically adapted to the astounding schedule of 120 to 150 miles a day. Rest six hours, run six hours for 60 to 75 miles, rest six hours, and run again.

Here is the miracle. The dogs waddle slowly from their straw beds, stretch, then at the command of their musher, walk briskly up the trail. Yet, “ How can they ever make it to the next checkpoint, 65 miles away, by midnight?” asks the bystander. The musher, the really elite musher, that has experienced the miracle, calmly, quietly, without a word— waits. In fifteen minutes the dogs are walking faster, and a few whine, hammer the harness. In thirty minutes, the lethargy that comes from sleep and heavy eating is disappearing. A few of the dogs break into a slow ground covering lope. At forty-five minutes after departure, the exquisite fat burning metabolism of the sled dog, the physiological attribute that allows canines to travel long distances for days, is now operating at capacity and the 16 dogs are traveling with power and drive—over eight hundred pounds of biomass propelled by sixty-four pistons.

At an hour, the sun is beginning to set in a pastel blue and pink horizon, and daylight wanes. This is an ancient time for travel, a time to be alert, and with the pack. All mushers have heard the story. A ptarmigan erupting from a thicket of brush, the smell of moose, caribou running in the distance, or a snowshoe hare bolting in the darkness ahead excites the sled dogs into a chaotic celebration of their instinct to travel . The dogs are now trotting with power, then surging when the trail is good into a lope, Some mushers smile, others laugh out loud, at the miracle of the sled dog. The elite mushers expect it. For the next five, six, or seven hours the dogs will travel with unabated enthusiasm, covering ground at an extraordinary rate.

Close to midnight, it is time to close the doors on this raucous party. For fifteen minutes the dogs are animated, full of the run. This is the time the knowledgeable musher offers food and water and quickly prepares a straw bed. The dogs eat enthusiastically, then look their surroundings over, and settle into the rhythm of the trail. The huskies metabolism shifts and heart rates that were at times over 300 drop dramatically as they curl up on a straw bed. Depending on the strategy, the dogs will eat another one or two times in the next six or eight hours, usually a thick hot stew of meat, fat, and specially prepared rations. In a day they will eat over 10,000 kcal, or more than five times their normal intake.

In early morning, musher and team will depart, another powerful run culminating as the sun rises, and then trotting until late morning. The big rest comes in the afternoon sun—a recharge for the evening. With proper training, some luck, and the guidance of a musher whose instincts equal the huskies, a championship team will emerge on the Bering Sea Coast and finish to the front, after nine days resting and running, the Iditarod trail at the old Gold Rush town of Nome, Alaska.