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Journey Continues
October 2, 2006
"Do what you love, love what you do, and deliver more
than you promise." – Harvey Mackay
The big news this week is that
a respected local academic publisher has asked to see my manuscript.
That doesn’t mean that he will publish the book, but he has
seen the proposal and is interested enough he wants to see more.
That means that I need to buckle down and finish the silly thing.
According to the publishers web site, when they have the manuscript
it goes before a committee and typically it takes 6 months to make
a decision. Of course I can continue to submit to other publishers
/ agents during that time. This is a very big next step and I’m
pretty excited about it.
Fall training is a time of changes. I
start in mid-August watching the temperatures closely. I won’t
train over 58 degrees, and am not comfortable over 50. It seems odd
but the warmest lows of the year are in August. Some years on cloudy
nights the low can be over 60 degrees and we don’t train. Because
of that I start training at 5AM so that I’m done before the
sun comes over the mountains and the day starts to warm up. My neighbors
would not appreciate my loading noisy dogs at 4 am, so I load the
night before and the dogs sleep in their boxes. As the season progresses
the high temperatures drop, the sun comes up later, and the runs get
longer. I try to balance all of this with the need to sleep (both
myself and my help) and gradually move the start time later and later
until we are starting at 7am. This Sunday we took the next step and
loaded the dogs at 7am (noise ordinance) to meet at the track at 8:30.
It sure was nice to go to bed Saturday night and not worry about the
loading dogs.
The next change will come in
a couple of weeks when we start camping with the dogs. The basic race
mode is a 50 mile run (about 6 hours) followed by a 6 hour rest and
another 50 mile run. This continues until the race is over. To train
the dogs, as we get to 20 mile runs (currently we are at 13) we will
pick an evening, run 20 miles, rest 6 hours (camp beside the truck),
and run 20 more miles. As the dogs get in shape the length of the
runs will increase. Our first race this season is the Sheep Mountain
150, http://www.sheepmountain.com/alaska-sled-dog-race.shtml,
December 16 and 17. The race is three 50 mile runs separated by 5
hours mandatory rest and we need everybody to understand the routine
by then. Just for chuckles, I’m 28th on the Sheep Mountain sign
up list, just like Iditarod. I wonder if there is a message there.
Fall is our rainy season and this season
has been much wetter than usual. We have a lot of fine particles in
the soil from all the glaciers and the dogs run through the mud in
the dog lot churning it into a slurry that takes a long time to dry.
If you think of corn starch or talcum powder mixed with water you’ve
got the consistency right. Every dog in the muddy area has a pallet
with a plywood top so they have a dry place to lie besides their house.
Every few days I scrape the mud off the pallet for the worst offenders.
Both the dogs and I are getting a little tired of the mud and eagerly
watching the snow work it’s way down the mountain side.
I’ve seen the first injuries of the season. Last week Keiko
came up sore in the right rear leg and Dijon was sore in the left
front. Manipulating the sore legs didn’t reveal the problem
and I think both dogs had sore feet from the wet and mud. Keiko recovered
and ran Sunday; Dijon is feeling better today but will miss the next
few runs to be sure. Marti suggested that I use some zinc oxide (Desitin)
on his feet and it seems to have helped.
We are training on dirt trails and back dirt roads at Beach Lake and
on Fort Richardson. With all the rain we have some substantial puddles
across the road a couple of which go over the foot pegs on the 4-wheeler.
Sunday we ran a new trail and Jeff King swimming his dogs has nothing
on us now. The water was belly deep on the big dogs and COLD. I had
Lycos and Throttle in lead. Lycos doesn’t mind water, but by
the second puddle Throttle had had enough. She tried to run along
the side, but this one had steep sides and trees up close to the edge.
Then she pulled back on her neck line not wanting to go, but Lycos
kept her moving. This is part of what fall training is all about,
finding the weak point with your dogs and working on them.
As we were running to the puddle we passed two gentlemen off the side
of the road with their young retriever at their side. My dogs pass
distractions pretty well and I’m half asleep watching the world
go by when I notice Lycos and Throttle have passed the gentlemen and
doubled back to say hi to the pup. The poor gentlemen back off this
ten dog string and Lycos and Throttle keep coming. Lycos goes nose
to nose to the pup, completely ignoring me. I jump off, run up, grab
my leaders and straighten the line back out, more than a little embarrassed
at their behavior. Dogs!
Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
© 2006 All rights reserved
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