2009 DDDD Results
We got home last night after a 5 hour drive through Wisconsin roads that I have never been on, south and east of Hurley. 250 miles of smooth pavement only to be ruined by the last 10 miles of the worst roads in the nation….Duluth’s. Anyways, we had a great weekend! We arrived on Friday and set up camp in the dark and I took Toivo and Valor on a free run over the course so they could memorize the turns. One of the mushers camping out lost a dog that night so he left his dogs out hoping it would come back. They barked all night so we didn’t get much sleep on Friday. His dog came back the next morning, thanks goodness! 
Saturday morning at the mushers meeting we decided to run the short course for the mid morning categories because of the warm weather. I think it did warm up to 63 degrees that day, way too hot to run any further than 2 miles. Amy Cooper decided not to compete at all because of the temps. There were a few 6 dog teams that looked pretty hot and the dogs were dunked in the big tanks they provided so they didn’t overheat.
Our first race was the 2 dog bikejoring with Valor in lead and Magnus right behind him. The run was almost flawless except where they had the T intersection for the long and short course with a snow fence set up. Valor wanted to go right and not left since we previewed the course last night, so he ran right into the fence. It may have slowed us down only 5-6 seconds though, I don’t recall if we came to a complete stop or not. Our time for 1.5 miles was 4:09.
The second race was the 1 dog bikejor with Valor about an hour after we finished the first race. Valor ran a perfect race making the turn at the intersection with no hesitation. Our time for the same course was 4:39.
The third race was the 1 dog canicross with Toivo about 30 mins after the previous race. I chose Toivo because they did a mass start and didn’t want any aggressive dogs in the chute. When the timer was counting down from 5-4-3-2-1 Toivo knew what was going on and got really excited! He pulled like a champ but I’m not the athlete I used to be so our time was 9:19 I believe, putting us in 3rd.
The second day they start the fastest people first on down to the slowest in each category. None of our places changed, and I think we went faster on the bike and a little slower on the run. I’m pretty sure we set a course record for the short races.
I would like to thank the Wisconsin Trailblazers for hosting an awesome event! I’ve been to hundreds of events around the country and some in other countries and they did a very good job! The dogs did well with the racing atmosphere and we got to meet some very nice people. Everyone was helping everyone get to the line and having positive conversations about racing. I can’t wait till we get some snow, we’re definately hitting up the WI Trailblazer races again!
This week will be a prep for the biggest dryland race in North America, the East Meets West Dryland Champs next weekend in St. Cloud. If the dogs do as well as they did this weekend things could turn out pretty good! Wish us luck!
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