Our first international race is in the books! Kearney was also our second (ever!) snow race—a fact that surprised a lot of people. Having learned to mush in southern NJ and with unpredictable winters these past few years, I’ve just mostly ran dry land events. But I’m hoping for that to change! (Climate change be damned…)
As mentioned, this winter has been unkind to mushers everywhere. I was several hours into our drive to the race and it was still over 50ºF—in Canada—with no sign of snow. It wasn’t until I arrived at our hotel (20 minutes south of the race site) that I finally saw snow.
The trail crew for Kearney worked their magic and managed to set things up nicely despite the challenges. And day one was definitely a challenge! The temperature was still well above freezing and the snow was the consistency of mashed potatoes. Our six mile (5.5?) slog was demoralizing for myself and the dogs. Though we missed his power, I was glad I made the decision to run Faye instead of Atlas. He would’ve been sinking up to his elbows with his weight.
Despite having a pretty slow run, I was surprised to see we finished in fifth out of eleven teams. The trail wasn’t just tough for us, it was tough for every team out there. After the first day of racing, a big group of mushers met up for dinner and did what we always do—talked about dogs. I’m grateful to be included in this community, with folks I’ve known since I started back in New Jersey and new friends I finally got to meet in person.
Race day two was like an entirely new trail. The temperature fell below freezing and didn’t come back up, so everything firmed up from the day before. I was worried things would become an ice luge, but the Kearney groomers worked their magic again.
In most two day sprint events, my team runs a little bit faster on day two. I don’t know if I’m just less anxious and hold them back less, or if they just find a groove. Either way, it’s usually by seconds or at most a minute or two. Kearney day two, our time was over five minutes faster than day one. That’s how much the trail conditions improved. It was a pretty white-knuckle run as the dogs whipped me around the twisty, technical trails. We crashed once coming down a hill, but it was one of those calculated falls that I couldn’t avoid. We got ourselves right-side up quick and kept on boogying.
Just as every team struggled a bit on day one, they all improved a bit on day two. We managed to hang onto a respectable fifth out of eleven overall and third out of the six “all breed” teams. I couldn’t be prouder of these dogs, especially after spending so much of the season training in mud.
Next up, we’ll be participating in the ceremonial Seguin Mail Run back in Canada this upcoming weekend. I don’t know how much winter will be left after that, but I’m hanging onto hope we’ll get more time on the sled before spring rolls through.
