Black and Blues Win Another

The Black and Blues pulled me to victory in the Don Bowers Memorial 200 race this past weekend!  For me and the other Iditarod teams entered, the DBM was intended to be a training run and it served the purpose very well.  Reto and I both fielded 12 dog teams with the plan to run 5 1/2 hours, rest 3 hours on the trail, and then run 5 1/2 hours enroute to Joe May's 1/2;  my plan for the run home was to rest 1 hour on the trail.  I don't always execute my "plans" that well, but in this case we did it perfectly posting a slightly faster run enroute to the finish.


My only disappointment with our run was needing to drop three dogs. The trail for the first half of the race was much softer than our dogs are accustomed to (Two Rivers trails are rock hard due to minimal snowfall), so Adams, a large male who must have been hiding a sore front end before the race, faltered after 35 miles. The trail was punchy and he clearly was not comfortable with it so I put him in the bag and carried him 65 miles to Joes place!  Shy Girl, who started at lead, also did not look like her usual self and had a slight swelling on her metacarpals so I dropped her at Joe's.  Then Cody, a hard driving team dog, had difficulty with the warm temperatures enroute to Morgan's cabin so I carried him in and left him with the good people there.

The trail was wonderful respite from our concrete hard trails here in Two Rivers and really offered a great ride. Mt. McKinley hovered over us to the north and a full moon lighted our route the second day. Wonderful volunteers assisted us at all the start, finish, and checkpoints and most the mushers were happy and low key. 

The "Prize" for first place was an original Don Bowers Iditarod Drop Bag!  Don and I ran the 1999 Iditarod so I'm sure I may have seen that bag before :)  As I ran the race I recalled the many times Don elaborated on the coming trail to we back of the back rookies (including Matt Hayashida running a Buser puppy team).  I could always count on Don to give me tips and alert me to the challenges ahead.  I am certainly glad Don's spirit of teaching continues on with this race.