We finally were able to race close to home, so very nice to sleep in your own bed! The weather was very warm this weekend, in the upper 30’s to low 40’s, almost too hot for dogs. Good thing we only had to race 4 miles!
Saturday’s race was beautiful, sunny and clear skies with little to no wind. Great spectating weather! Our run didn’t go so smooth though, we came up on our 1:00 team within the first mile. Toivo and Magnus were running lead with Ari and Seppo in wheel. [singlepic id=153 w=320 h=240 float=right]The dogs tried to pass on the inside but they punched through the deep snow causing Magnus to tangle on his neckline. Then we tried another pass which succeeded only to have Ari slam on the brakes on a short downhill causing another tangle and me taking the sled right into the woods to avoid running over the dogs! Finally we got back up and going again only to have Toivo looking at all the cutoffs! He wanted to take the short way back since he knows the trail system pretty well, silly dogs. I think we stopped at least 6-7 times, not good for a sprint race! I think we ended up in 6th place in the sport class for the first day.
Sunday’s race went much better, even though the trail was chewed up and in terrible shape. All the dogs must have punched through at least a half dozen times, no one was hurt though! Jaana did an awesome job, she’s going to be a superstar! The run was almost perfect, Toivo only stopped once at the main cutoff making me set the hook down and steer him in the right direction. Seppo ran lead with Toivo and had a rock solid performance, he’s going to be doing more lead from now on!
We moved from 6th to 4th posting the 2nd fastest time of the day for our category. It was fun to have a hometown race, thanks to all that made it happen and thank you VERY much to my friends that came out to help. William, Seth, and Laddie!
