This was the second time I skijored in an organized, timed event. The first was last year when I skied with Walter in the same race. The race is open to skijorers and dogsledders and is a fundraiser for the Alaskan Malamute Help League. This year's race was somewhere around 5.1 to 5.3 kilometers, shorter than last year's race which was advertised as being about 5 km but turned out to be 7+ km. Click here to see coverage of the event on the local news.
Lucy was my race dog today since her stamina is much better than Walter's. I wasn't sure if she'd be in an "oh boy yeah let's run!" mood, or a "hmmm, what is that...? It smells interesting... oh wait what's that on the other side of the trail, that smells interesting too..." mood. Luckily for me she was mostly in a running mood. She ran really well, not trying to sniff the crisscrossing deer paths too too much, maybe thanks to the fresh dusting of snow muting some of the enticing smells. We got passed by about 5 other teams, and I pulled over, stopped, and held her for all of them, and she was totally fine. I would have tried a running pass if the trail had been wider, but given the actual trail width she probably would have inadvertently got in the way of the passing team which no one would have appreciated. :-)
Right from the get-go my skis felt s.....o s....l........o............w. Given the mild temperatures I probably should have rewaxed with violet instead of blue. But, I talked with someone else who had used blue and didn't feel slow, so who knows.
I only fell once, and we only got tangled once when she stopped to sniff something and it took me a minute to unwrap the line from my leg.
Another thing, I was a bit apprehensive about two ditches that were part of the trail. Previously on recreational outings I totally wimped out at the ditches, taking off my skis and walking down and back up. Well this time I thought what the hay, let's go for it, and for each ditch we had just enough momentum going down to manage to come back up without tooooo much trouble.
I had a feeling she would be really slow coming down the homestretch because it has a clear view of the parking lot at the end, and on recreational outings she always slows down there and stops to sniff *everything*. Well, she was slow there, but it was because she was pretty pooped by that point. It felt like forever coming down that homestretch, but the encouraging, cheering crowd kept it fun. Now, if the hot dog barbeque that was set up near the finish line had been operating during the race and if the wind had been blowing right, the homestretch may have been a different picture. ;-)
We ended with a time of 28.5 minutes, placing 11th out of 17 one-dog skijor teams, an average of about 11 km/h. This seems a bit strange given that last year with Walter, we averaged about 10 km/hr. Strange because with Walter we took tons of breaks and I thought he ran slower than Lucy. Go figure.
Skijoring being the first class to race, the dogsledders headed out after and all the events were finished several hours after our race. So, we headed out after for a quick casual ski. J. hitched Sammy and Walter together for part of it, with Lucy and I following, and I was happy to see Walter running ahead well without me. Then we hooked up Lucy and Walter and went home. Having Lucy and Walter run together was much easier today than previous outings on my skate skis since only one dog was fresh. If I can just manage to stay on my feet for the first few hundred meters until the dogs burn off their craziness, then skate skiing with the both of them together should be a doable thing.
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