Monday, November 28, 2011

Not sure

how I allow myself to get dragged into silly debates and get upset by comments from.....  well bite my tongue, time to move on as they say.
 Going to be a poor winter for getting to races/events witth the load at work and getting the house finished, Gutter and down spouts are done Plumber has a deposit in hand with the electrician and furnace guys going to stop in for same and discuss final details, after they are done I will need to do the Sheetrock, trim, flooring misc. finish work.. how does this relate to Seppala training ? well living in an unfinished house project and feeling every time we spend time with the dogs is not getting the house done and this becomes a wicked cycle of run dogs a lot neglect house , Focus on house neglect running dogs. and then work is looking like a 6-7 day a week deal for the next 6 months so might as well focus work at home and Job, and focus on lead dog training and small team short passenger or loaded sled runs, an aspect that can be worked on from home and that takes less time compared to loading em all and running conditioning miles, with no race plan for the year (other then 1 or 2 one day events we will try to do if not stuck working) and we want to do the Mush for a cure again this season (march)  a focus on leader training and related team discipline along with heavy pulling works to the best advantage.
 The 2012-2013 season will be soon enough, and our pups the A and B litters will be 2 and 3 year olds with enough race experience to come out running and not just learning the ropes as has been our focus to date.
 Our one event to date in our type of  distance  was Mush for a Cure (Fund raiser for breast cancer research, 22 mile run on the same trail the Beargrease is run on.
http://www.beargrease.com/trail_maps/Beargrease_Marathon_Trail_Narrative.pdf Leg 6 - Trail Center to Devil’s Track
63.5 miles
Again, the route has changed for 2009. While the checkpoints are the same, we
have more than doubled the length of this leg compared to prior years. Teams will
leave Trail Center Lodge and travel northwest the length of Poplar Lake and then up
the trail to the vicinity of the Gunflint Lodge, out on to Gunflint lake before heading
crossing over to Loon Lake. After running the length of Loon Lake, teams will rejoin
the route they came up, taking the X-Trail to the campground on the west end of
Devil's Track Lake. Then it is about 5 miles across the frozen lake to the checkpoint
down to Devil’s Track. At 63 miles, this is the longest leg of the race, with 5 lake
runs totaling close to 20 miles. Past speeds in this vicinity would predict fastest
times for this leg of about 6 hours, while the median will likely be in the 6:30 to
7:00 range.


MFaC is run in the reverse of the Beargrease and runs 1/3 of this section.
 It is not a race as no times are kept, but the dogs do not seem to notice this and we  do some positive musher PR and good will spreading, Shellys grandmother is a breast cancer survivor and we run in her honor.
 We feel it  is a great venue to test the dogs and we keep our own times by simply taking photos at the start and finish.
 Not a race but we did hear comments about the performance of the team.. one comment from a recreational siberian driver was " You did pretty well, finished up with the Alaskan teams didn't ya"
 Yes we did,  Thanks.
  So we left a good impression of the dogs I think. and garnered enough donations to the cause to win a door prize (we were like 14th highest total or something like that, No booby prize anyway LOL)