BEDHEAD SLED DOGS

Big news around here lately, Kaylee and I will be moving to Great Falls, Montana in about 1 week. This is a move home for us as we are both born and raised there, although we haven’t lived there for over 7 years. She accepted a new Vet Tech position at a great clinic that is really modern, uses all the new Vet technology (MRI, CAT scans) and has some great Doctors on staff, so that means we are all packing up and making the move!

Although I haven’t been posting I am still getting Grody in harness every other day but the runs just are not the same when you are hurried (we have so much to do before we move) or have other things on your mind (packing, working on trailer lights, finding a place in Great Falls, MT to live with dogs, packing!).

So Kaylee and I decided that we would pack our entire house up and just leave out 1 box of food to eat up for 2 weeks, and 1 personal box for our cloths, toiletries, etc. To last me 2 weeks I picked out 4 shirts, 3 pairs of pants, running gear, a tooth brush and….harnesses, foot repair goo, skijoring belt, lines, dog jackets, etc. When I realized the dogs had more stuff in my box than I do it was a moment of realization..now I know my life has gone to the dogs! At least I have my priorities straight!

Besides the moving stuff, I have found out that I am not totally geared up to be running dogs in this weird pre-winter, cold but little snow weather. I was out bikejoring this last weekend and even though we really haven’t gotten any snow in Rapid City there were a couple of spots in the high hills that had about a1.5 inches of loose, fluffy snow. I realized that there were times that even with the back break locked up, and me feathering the front break, with a jazzed up dog, I was on the verge of reckless. It’s a weird time right now, in a lot of places there is not enough snow here to be on skis or sled, and to much to be on bike or scooter.

A word of caution to folks the in the same boat…it gets pretty easy to over run the conditions between seasons and a great run can to to a tough run real fast. Bigger teams on 4 wheelers or larger wheeled rigs I don’t think have this problem but man…I took a biff yesterday, overrunning the conditions on a trail (dark out, rough footing, going downhill, trying to see by the beam of my headlamp, crusty icing crud on trail) while canicrossing, and was humbled when Grody drug me a good distance. Nothing hurt except my ego, but still, watch yourself out there!

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This morning Grody and I went out for our last East Meets West speed work tune-up. From here until we race we will just be running some maintainance miles.

Our goal was to blast a fast 3 miles and see what�kind of mile splits he could run over that distance. The work out went really well this morning, we bikejored 3 fast miles, totaling a workout time of 10:15, averaging roughly 17.5 MPH, or 3:25 miles! Not bad for 1 dog over 3 miles.

I was wondering if Grody would be able to run sub-4:30 miles for 1.7 miles at competition and now I have my answer! I am totally the weak link in this partnership!

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This morning at 5:15 AM Grody and I arrived at a forest service road that we planned to have a little time trial or our East Meets West race distance on. We canicrossed out 2 miles as a warm-up, rested about 3 minutes, did a little lollipop loop so we were pointed towards the car, and let er have it. The road was wash-boardy and pot-holy and this close to our race I was not wanting to spraining an ankle or bust myself up anymore than I already am. Also there were some pretty gnarly downhills I had put the brakes on for as it doesn’t take much to bite the dust canicrossing on a down-hill. So I actually wasn’t able to open up like I wished I could have but all-in-all, I felt pretty good about the run. Our returning 1.7 mile uptempo was run in 7:55, so an average of 4:40 miles. I plan on giving him a couple easy days of free running before we hit it again as he has had 3 tough workouts in a row now.

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Today was our first real day of adding in speed. For the first time this year I pushed the pace, trying to sharpen us up for the East Meets West Dryland Challenge. We ended up bikejoring the 3.5 miles very hilly miles in 16:30, a good pace for the terrain we were in in. Our Pro-Class Canicross race is only 1.7 miles, so I am backing off the longer runs and keeping our 3-4 milers in the 14-18 MPH range.

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Grody and I got out for a 6 mile bikejor this morning in some crisp November morning temps, 22 degrees when I harnessed him up. I usually always take my GPS to monitor speed, distance, averages, etc. although today I forgot it. Finding mile splits was easy enough though since we were running on 1 mile section roads in the country. I ended up forming a big rectangle in the section lines, out 2 miles, left for 1 mile, left for 2 miles, left for 1 mile.

We had a couple goals for the run, one was working on a couple commands I haven’t reinforced very much yet this season, haw-over and gee-over. The other was just to get in a good solid 6 miles, running tough, with no rest. Even while holding him back with the breaks the entire run I we completed to 6 miles in 27:30 and his overs were flawless. We only have 2 more weeks before Brainerd and there we only run 1.4 miles, 2 days in a row, so he is conditioned well past his race distance and ready. The next two weeks my focus with him will be shorter runs with more speed and intervals to get him primed for the fast, short stuff at East Meets West.

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