| The
Journey Continues – 2007 Race Postscript
April 12, 2006
You
pay God a compliment by asking great things of Him.
– St. Theresa of Avila
It has been a month since the scratch and it's an odd feeling. For
the first two weeks I could walk and care for the dogs, but if I
wasn’t horizontal my leg and foot would swell enough I couldn’t
get my shoe on. That put a real crimp in my activities. I had forgotten
just how bad daytime TV could be ;-).
Everything is healing, although slower than I would like. By May
it should all be just a fond memory. My one regret is that I've
missed driving the dogs in a beautiful spring season and missed
the new Taiga 300.
What about the team? Of the 15 dogs at Don’s cabin, Bass is
turning 10 this summer. I’ll let him train with the team in
the fall because it would break his heart not to, but I won’t
ask him to race again. He could convince me that I’m wrong,
but I don’t think so. Last year Balu got some minor frostbite.
This year he did it again, in spite of his belly coat. He is only
7, but with his thinner coat I won’t ask him to run another
Iditarod. Leslie has adopted him and Balu is living the life of
Riley and is the first dog in the team she is building.
Rom didn’t make this year’s team, and I had to drop
Keiko in Skwentna because she was working too hard trying to keep
up. These are good dogs and both finished last year’s race,
but that was a slower team. They are both up for adoption. That
leaves 13 dogs as the core of next year’s team.
Back in 1969 I graduated with a BS in Physics and was working towards
a Ph. D. Viet Nam was hot and heavy and graduate school deferments
had been cancelled. I tried to go to graduate school anyway and
was drafted halfway through my second year. This looked like the
end of my doctorate dream. I enlisted in the Air Force 2 days ahead
of my induction date and served almost 5 years. I became a combat
crew navigator in the KC-135 and did a short tour in Viet Nam. After
the war, congress mandated a reduction in force and I took and early
out to go back to school. In 1981, just shy of my 34th birthday,
I graduated from the University of Washington with a Ph D in theoretical
physics. Getting drafted to serve in Viet Nam didn’t end my
dream, it just postponed it. On the positive side, if I hadn’t
been drafted I would never have met Marti and I would have missed
the most wonderful woman in my life.
I look at this scratch the same way. It seems like a setback, but
it hasn’t diminished my desire to run the race again and eventually
get good at it. I learned a lot from this year’s race and
I believe I’ll be a better musher and a better person because
of it. You learn so much more from your failures that you ever do
from your successes.
So what happened? Looking back, I think my problems stemmed from
not being in sufficient physical shape. After last year I knew I
had to do better, and I started exercising more last summer. By
October I was up to 6 mile walks 4 days a week, doing back stretches,
pushups, and stomach crunches. In November I went from 30 to 40
hours a week training and caring for the dogs to 50 to 60 hours.
Something had to give and I started exercising less. By the start
of the race I was in better shape than the year before, but not
good enough for this years trail.
I am surprised that I did so well through the Happy River Steps.
They scared the foo out of me, but we didn’t crash. It was
the challenging trail after the steps that started my problems.
Remember that we had 10 mushers scratch in Rainy Pass because of
this section of trail. I didn’t break anything there, mostly
due to luck, but worked harder than I ever had before. In a race
of this type you don’t really recover until well after the
race. Physical conditioning is like money in the bank – if
you spend it now you don’t have it later. I think that is
what happened here. From Rainy Pass on I seemed to be getting less
and less capable as I became more tired and beat up. It was a slow
process culminating just past Don’s Cabin. I really believe
that if I had been in better shape when we started (more money in
the physical bank) that I would have performed better after Rainy
Pass and probably finished the race in style.
So where do we go from here? Let me make it clear that this is not
a request for more money from my current sponsors. You guys have
been great and have made this wonderful journey possible. I thank
you from the bottom of my heart. But while you have covered my race
expenses, we have been paying the mortgage and other living expenses
out of our savings and retirement. After two years that money is
gone.
Two years ago I thought I could make a living writing books, like
Don Bowers, and telling race stories, a la Karen Ramstead –
two people I highly regard. After further research I find that these
are some of the most rewarding activities I can imagine, but neither
pay minimum wage. I’m searching for national corporate sponsors,
but you only have to look at Lance Mackey’s sponsor list to
see how hard that is.
Another option is to find a job that will both pay the mortgage
and allow me the time to train and race. With a Ph. D. in physics
and years of experience in petroleum exploration geophysics, GIS,
remote sensing, acoustics, and artificial intelligence there are
many possible positions, but so far they have been on the East Coast,
the West Coast, or the Gulf Coast. I keep thinking there has to
be a way to take advantage of my experience with the dogs and tourism,
but I haven’t found it yet.
I am a big believer in Norman Vaughan’s “Dream big and
dare to fail”. Norman moved to Alaska at the age of 68 bankrupt
and divorced. He managed to pull it all together, competing in 13
Iditarods and lived to be 100. I’m nowhere near as bad off
as he was when he moved here, and need to run 11 more races before
I catch up with him. That should give me enough experience to get
good at this. ;-)
I’m also a big believer in Dr Peale’s “The Power
of Positive Thinking”. God has been guiding me, helping me,
and taking care of me for almost 60 years. I have no reason to believe
that He is going to quit now. Right now I don't see it, but I believe
that God has a plan. I believe that continuing to run Iditarod and
tell those stories are part of that plan. I just need to be patient
and let God show me how.
Keep ‘em Northbound
Eric
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