A few pics from the Gin Gin 200 this past weekend. What a race! A few of the highlights: 1) I finished! Woot! Thats one qualifier down, two to go for the Iditarod. My next race is an even bigger challenge and starts this Saturday - the Copper Basin 300. But this Gin Gin was no freaking joke! Holy wow was it cold, at times -30 and possibly colder with wind chill. One of the legs was 85 miles, which was the longest single push I have done personally and also was a lot to ask of the dogs. I ended up resting my team for a couple of hours in the middle of that run both coming and going. 2) Northern lights - AMAZING!! We had a perfectly clear sky with a full moon that was so bright that I mostly did not use my headlamp. Just when I was out there in the middle of a freezing run, hungry and tired at 2am and honestly asking myself why am I doing this again?! I look up and see the most amazing display of the aurora. It filled the entire northern sky. A wonderful and vibrant display of color and they were dancing all over the sky. Just really something. Even better than I pictured in my head. And a real moral booster as well. 3) Comeraderie. It was nice meeting the other rookies, some of whom Ive corresponded with online. Given what we have all been up to this year, its like you have an instant bond and friendship with these people. 4) Lack of sleep. This was the most challenging part of the race. I drew #16 which meant I started at 6:14pm on Friday night. I ended up finishing the race at 10:30am on Sunday morning with essentially no sleep in there. The first night was not too bad, but the second night I was asking myself if I was really seeing those northern lights or whether they were a hallucination! I dozed off momentarily several times on the sled - not good, but managed to stay upright-ish. 5) Dogs. Really unbelievable to see these incredible athletes. Imagine running 6-minute miles in a marathon and then doing 3 marathons straight, then waking up and running 3 marathons again, with an extra marathon in between somewhere..I mean its just incredible. My team performed for the most part very well. I worked hard to take good care of them, including resting them on the trail during some of those longer runs.
Posted on: Mon, 05 Jan 2015 23:45:51 +0000
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