Stats
4th place (13 minutes behind 3rd place, 14 minutes in front of 5th place).
38 hours and 47 minutes total run time; 24 hours and 2 minutes total rest time.
Average Speed 8.2 mph
Cumulative Race Miles 319 (though the GPS recorded something closer to 330).
When I narrowed down my team to the final 12 dogs, a special two-year old named Ringo, didn't make the final cut. Matt and I worried though, that the vet check prior to the race might reveal some injury or illness that we didn't catch. So we brought Ringo as the alternate: lucky dog number 13.
And as luck would have it, another boy named Sultan had a sore/stiff shoulder that we had not noticed and a vet did. Sultan was out and Ringo was in.
Ringo has given me some problems in past races. I didn't think he'd make it very far in the Beargrease, but he's still one of our kennel favorites, and I was happy to have him along for as long as he would run.
Hitting the trail was a relief. There is so much anticipation leading up to the race. Once we were finally on the trail I could just let go of all my worries and anticipated problems. Leg one from Two Harbors to Finland was easy—and fast. Too fast. The trail had just been pummeled by over 40 teams in front of me and gravel and rocks stuck up through the snow. I stood on the drag pad the entire run and still clocked in at 10.7 mph. I was aiming for under 10. On some of the steeper downhills, I couldn't get the brake to dig in deep enough and we screamed downhill until the gradient eased and we slowed a bit.
At the Finland checkpoint, I noticed several teams had stopped briefly and gone on. My plan was to rest two hours and then continue, so we did.
I left with the team headed for Sawbill about 9:30 p.m. Again, the trail and the team were fast, and I continued braking the entire 30 miles to Sawbill. My speed came down to under 10 m.p.h. and we pulled into the checkpoint sometime after midnight. A team of volunteers helped me to my spot in the woods. This was an unassisted checkpoint and I set about taking off booties, laying down straw and lighting up the cooker to heat water and melt snow. Once everyone was fed, I sat with my back against a tree, turned off my headlamp and waited. An hour later it was time to get everyone ready to go again. Unfortunately one of my girls had a swollen wrist and I had to leave her in the vet's care at the checkpoint.
It was almost 4 a.m. and a bunch of us decided to leave the checkpoint at the same time, but each team had to wait for the volunteers to help us out of the woods and back to the trail. Somehow I ended up on the waiting list. My team was going crazy by this time. I tried to keep Cha-cha from chewing on the gangline, but by the time volunteers came for us, she had chewed the line down to the bare cable. I was not about to switch out line at that point, so we left.
Snow fell heavily by the time I was on the trail and it seemed to be piercing me in the eyes. The light of my headlamp reflected off of each flake and soon my eyes were exhausted trying to decipher whether there was an uphill or downhill ahead. By 7 a.m. I was able to turn off my lamp and the world turned to a calm grey.
I was all alone out there. I passed one team on this leg and saw no one else. Just me and the dogs. We continued on down the Lima Grade toward Trail Center and I began to feel very tired. I slipped my hand through a loop of rope on the sled and dozed off. Every time we hit a bump (which was probably every few seconds), I'd jerk upright, and then doze off again. This continued for some time—me bobbling around on the runners, the dogs pushing on. By the time we reached Trail Center I actually felt somewhat refreshed.
I took the trail one leg at a time. My personal motto became: "Don't count your finish line until you've crossed it." Meaning, never get overconfident. When the race is going well, great, but that doesn't mean you'll finish—that's what I kept telling myself.
Once at Trail Center, I thought about the leg ahead, the "loop to nowhere" as mushers call it. When I left Trail Center, I had a moment of uncertainty, worried my dogs wouldn't take the right trail like in the Mail Run. Another musher had left just ahead of me and as I approached his team, which had stalled on the trail, I thought mine would simply go around the side and pass. I think my leader Judy saw the trail going underneath his dogs and simply wanted to follow the trail, so she did, right through the middle of his team. Luckily, he helped me untangle the two teams and go on by and down the lake.
The trail heads from Trail Center toward Gunflint Lake, careening down huge hills and around 180-degree turns. When we reached Loon Lake, by then in the dark on Monday early evening, we saw a head lamp in the distance and my dogs picked up speed until we finally passed that team on the other side of the lake. But by the time we neared Devil's Track, one of my dogs, Nancy, wasn't pulling and I finally put her in the sled bag to ride out the final ten miles of that leg.
At Devil's Track, I was over half-way done on the trail. I left Nancy behind. She had gotten a sore elbow and wrists after the technical stretches of trail on the loop to nowhere. With ten dogs I headed back to Sawbill.
As the sun rose, the team slowed down. With a smaller and more tired team, the hills felt bigger. I underestimated our run time for the leg by at least an hour. At Sawbill, Matt asked me if Jenny Greger (another rookie in the race with a strong team) and I had been playing leap frog. "I never saw her," I told him. Turns out she had been gaining on me and came in two minutes behind me. She kept going right out of Sawbill and on to Finland. I stopped and rested my team for 3.5 hours.
I left Sawbill with 9 dogs, and here is where my rookie boy, Ringo comes back into the spotlight. I was as surprised as anyone that he was still part of the team, and as we left the checkpoint and started up the Heartbreak Hill grade, Ringo suddenly started yipping. It was more of a howl and his whole body convulsed as he single-doggedly started pulling everyone upward. That whole run to Finland, every time we approached an intersection or needed a burst of energy up hill, he rallied the team. There was a cohesiveness about the team in that leg; everyone just understood what they were supposed to do—they gelled. It was the best run of the race.
We pulled into Finland, took the team off to the side, watered and snacked them. I ran into the bathroom, grabbed dry socks and readied the team to leave. I left Gabby behind there. I could just tell that she had done enough.
The hills leaving Finland must be some of the steepest and longest on the trail. A few miles out of the checkpoint, I had stopped to check on a dog, and Colleen Wallin passed me. This is the point in the race where everyone's race strategies converged. I knew Colleen and I had been running at a similar pace, and I could see that now. Frank Moe had left Finland not long before me, and about halfway to Two Harbors, Colleen and I (who had been leap frogging and running together a bit) passed him.
At Two Harbors I took a two hour nap. I had a leave time of 1:19 a.m. and Colleen was only two minutes ahead of me. Frank was not far behind and Jenny Greger was just behind him. The first and second place runners, Nathan Schroeder and Ryan Anderson were two hours ahead of all of us, so this final run would determine 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th place for the four of us.
But just when its going well, things fall apart—it had been this way for almost 300 miles. I was down to four males and two females and I couldn't run any two males side-by-side. Well, I thought I could, which is why two of them got into a tussle in the checkpoint. Then Matt tried to lead my team to the left on the trail (back to Finland) and we're all screaming at him to go right. By the time I left the checkpoint, I was already more than two minutes behind Colleen. And the dog I had put in lead next to my veteran leader Beezus, was not going to work. I stopped and tried Ringo.
This could be the point in the story where I tell you that Ringo stepped it up and led us to the finish, but he did not. He looked back at me like "I have absolutely no desire to be in lead." What I needed was an extra piece of gangline, but Matt had scavenged through my sled, eliminating any extra weight so I could get to the finish faster. I started stringing extra necklines together until I had a spot for a single dog just behind the leader and then I took the cord off my mittens and used it to tie Judy back in lead next to Beezus. Finally, we were moving down the trail.
At that point, I didn't expect to catch Colleen. I just wanted to stay in fourth place. "Don't count your finish line..." I kept telling myself.
The hills were relentless the entire way. Somewhere we took a wrong turn and ended up on a plowed road, but we managed to find our way back to the trail. At one point, I thought I was close to the finish and got really emotional, just so happy to be there with the team and impressed with how amazing these six dogs were that I had with me. But then the hills kept coming. Finally, we pulled into Billy's Bar on the outskirts of Duluth just after 6 a.m. And wouldn't you know that our oldest dog, Judy Blume, who has been living on our couch for the past eight months, only getting off of it to train for the races, and our youngest dog, Ringo, who we thought would only last two or three legs, were among the six finishers.
Will I do it again? Probably. Though a 300-mile race without so many hills looks awfully tempting. But hills, like pain, are easy to forget.
4th place (13 minutes behind 3rd place, 14 minutes in front of 5th place).
38 hours and 47 minutes total run time; 24 hours and 2 minutes total rest time.
Average Speed 8.2 mph
Cumulative Race Miles 319 (though the GPS recorded something closer to 330).
When I narrowed down my team to the final 12 dogs, a special two-year old named Ringo, didn't make the final cut. Matt and I worried though, that the vet check prior to the race might reveal some injury or illness that we didn't catch. So we brought Ringo as the alternate: lucky dog number 13.
And as luck would have it, another boy named Sultan had a sore/stiff shoulder that we had not noticed and a vet did. Sultan was out and Ringo was in.
Ringo has given me some problems in past races. I didn't think he'd make it very far in the Beargrease, but he's still one of our kennel favorites, and I was happy to have him along for as long as he would run.
Hitting the trail was a relief. There is so much anticipation leading up to the race. Once we were finally on the trail I could just let go of all my worries and anticipated problems. Leg one from Two Harbors to Finland was easy—and fast. Too fast. The trail had just been pummeled by over 40 teams in front of me and gravel and rocks stuck up through the snow. I stood on the drag pad the entire run and still clocked in at 10.7 mph. I was aiming for under 10. On some of the steeper downhills, I couldn't get the brake to dig in deep enough and we screamed downhill until the gradient eased and we slowed a bit.
At the Finland checkpoint, I noticed several teams had stopped briefly and gone on. My plan was to rest two hours and then continue, so we did.
I left with the team headed for Sawbill about 9:30 p.m. Again, the trail and the team were fast, and I continued braking the entire 30 miles to Sawbill. My speed came down to under 10 m.p.h. and we pulled into the checkpoint sometime after midnight. A team of volunteers helped me to my spot in the woods. This was an unassisted checkpoint and I set about taking off booties, laying down straw and lighting up the cooker to heat water and melt snow. Once everyone was fed, I sat with my back against a tree, turned off my headlamp and waited. An hour later it was time to get everyone ready to go again. Unfortunately one of my girls had a swollen wrist and I had to leave her in the vet's care at the checkpoint.
It was almost 4 a.m. and a bunch of us decided to leave the checkpoint at the same time, but each team had to wait for the volunteers to help us out of the woods and back to the trail. Somehow I ended up on the waiting list. My team was going crazy by this time. I tried to keep Cha-cha from chewing on the gangline, but by the time volunteers came for us, she had chewed the line down to the bare cable. I was not about to switch out line at that point, so we left.
Snow fell heavily by the time I was on the trail and it seemed to be piercing me in the eyes. The light of my headlamp reflected off of each flake and soon my eyes were exhausted trying to decipher whether there was an uphill or downhill ahead. By 7 a.m. I was able to turn off my lamp and the world turned to a calm grey.
I was all alone out there. I passed one team on this leg and saw no one else. Just me and the dogs. We continued on down the Lima Grade toward Trail Center and I began to feel very tired. I slipped my hand through a loop of rope on the sled and dozed off. Every time we hit a bump (which was probably every few seconds), I'd jerk upright, and then doze off again. This continued for some time—me bobbling around on the runners, the dogs pushing on. By the time we reached Trail Center I actually felt somewhat refreshed.
I took the trail one leg at a time. My personal motto became: "Don't count your finish line until you've crossed it." Meaning, never get overconfident. When the race is going well, great, but that doesn't mean you'll finish—that's what I kept telling myself.
Once at Trail Center, I thought about the leg ahead, the "loop to nowhere" as mushers call it. When I left Trail Center, I had a moment of uncertainty, worried my dogs wouldn't take the right trail like in the Mail Run. Another musher had left just ahead of me and as I approached his team, which had stalled on the trail, I thought mine would simply go around the side and pass. I think my leader Judy saw the trail going underneath his dogs and simply wanted to follow the trail, so she did, right through the middle of his team. Luckily, he helped me untangle the two teams and go on by and down the lake.
The trail heads from Trail Center toward Gunflint Lake, careening down huge hills and around 180-degree turns. When we reached Loon Lake, by then in the dark on Monday early evening, we saw a head lamp in the distance and my dogs picked up speed until we finally passed that team on the other side of the lake. But by the time we neared Devil's Track, one of my dogs, Nancy, wasn't pulling and I finally put her in the sled bag to ride out the final ten miles of that leg.
At Devil's Track, I was over half-way done on the trail. I left Nancy behind. She had gotten a sore elbow and wrists after the technical stretches of trail on the loop to nowhere. With ten dogs I headed back to Sawbill.
As the sun rose, the team slowed down. With a smaller and more tired team, the hills felt bigger. I underestimated our run time for the leg by at least an hour. At Sawbill, Matt asked me if Jenny Greger (another rookie in the race with a strong team) and I had been playing leap frog. "I never saw her," I told him. Turns out she had been gaining on me and came in two minutes behind me. She kept going right out of Sawbill and on to Finland. I stopped and rested my team for 3.5 hours.
I left Sawbill with 9 dogs, and here is where my rookie boy, Ringo comes back into the spotlight. I was as surprised as anyone that he was still part of the team, and as we left the checkpoint and started up the Heartbreak Hill grade, Ringo suddenly started yipping. It was more of a howl and his whole body convulsed as he single-doggedly started pulling everyone upward. That whole run to Finland, every time we approached an intersection or needed a burst of energy up hill, he rallied the team. There was a cohesiveness about the team in that leg; everyone just understood what they were supposed to do—they gelled. It was the best run of the race.
We pulled into Finland, took the team off to the side, watered and snacked them. I ran into the bathroom, grabbed dry socks and readied the team to leave. I left Gabby behind there. I could just tell that she had done enough.
The hills leaving Finland must be some of the steepest and longest on the trail. A few miles out of the checkpoint, I had stopped to check on a dog, and Colleen Wallin passed me. This is the point in the race where everyone's race strategies converged. I knew Colleen and I had been running at a similar pace, and I could see that now. Frank Moe had left Finland not long before me, and about halfway to Two Harbors, Colleen and I (who had been leap frogging and running together a bit) passed him.
At Two Harbors I took a two hour nap. I had a leave time of 1:19 a.m. and Colleen was only two minutes ahead of me. Frank was not far behind and Jenny Greger was just behind him. The first and second place runners, Nathan Schroeder and Ryan Anderson were two hours ahead of all of us, so this final run would determine 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th place for the four of us.
But just when its going well, things fall apart—it had been this way for almost 300 miles. I was down to four males and two females and I couldn't run any two males side-by-side. Well, I thought I could, which is why two of them got into a tussle in the checkpoint. Then Matt tried to lead my team to the left on the trail (back to Finland) and we're all screaming at him to go right. By the time I left the checkpoint, I was already more than two minutes behind Colleen. And the dog I had put in lead next to my veteran leader Beezus, was not going to work. I stopped and tried Ringo.
This could be the point in the story where I tell you that Ringo stepped it up and led us to the finish, but he did not. He looked back at me like "I have absolutely no desire to be in lead." What I needed was an extra piece of gangline, but Matt had scavenged through my sled, eliminating any extra weight so I could get to the finish faster. I started stringing extra necklines together until I had a spot for a single dog just behind the leader and then I took the cord off my mittens and used it to tie Judy back in lead next to Beezus. Finally, we were moving down the trail.
At that point, I didn't expect to catch Colleen. I just wanted to stay in fourth place. "Don't count your finish line..." I kept telling myself.
The hills were relentless the entire way. Somewhere we took a wrong turn and ended up on a plowed road, but we managed to find our way back to the trail. At one point, I thought I was close to the finish and got really emotional, just so happy to be there with the team and impressed with how amazing these six dogs were that I had with me. But then the hills kept coming. Finally, we pulled into Billy's Bar on the outskirts of Duluth just after 6 a.m. And wouldn't you know that our oldest dog, Judy Blume, who has been living on our couch for the past eight months, only getting off of it to train for the races, and our youngest dog, Ringo, who we thought would only last two or three legs, were among the six finishers.
Will I do it again? Probably. Though a 300-mile race without so many hills looks awfully tempting. But hills, like pain, are easy to forget.