2010 Yukon Quest Vet Check

Having Fun..

With Mike out training the Quest race team, I decided to have some fun. Everyone one needs leaders and there is only one way to get them... Training... Esther got a try today and did very well. Who's next?

Born to Run!!

The race dogs had the day off, and before I got started on chopping more meat, we each ran a puppy team. Stinson already wants to lead and got her wish yesterday. There is absolutely no harness breaking to do with these pups. They know exactly what to do and are desperate to GO!! How do we ever force these poor things to run???? HA! They were born to run...

Yesterday we loaded up the team and trucked them down to the Nordale Road bridge over the Chena River. It's only 15 miles or so away from here. So why the trouble of loading everything in to the truck to get to the same trails we can run to straight from our yard?? Well, we live just off the Quest trail and our team will have to run right by home on February 6th when we start this year's Quest. Although we've been running teams home from all different directions recently so the dogs aren't as used to any one turn, that means we have to run by lots of different places that they know go home. We wanted to simulate the race and see how they'd do. When our friend Paige, who is running the Quest 300 this year, asked if we'd give her a tour of the sometimes confusing trails through our backyard before the race, we had a chance to do the whole run with another team, giving a race feel. We left Nordale at about 1pm, a very similar time to when I'll be coming by there, 20 miles from the start in Fairbanks. I stopped just before we got close to home, about 20+ miles in to the run, to tell Paige that we were getting close... Well, all this build up is just to tell you that Stump and Merlin didn't even hesitate at any of the turns that lead home. They listened perfectly and we had a pretty enjoyable run the rest of the way out to Angel Creek Lodge where Sue and Cody picked us up. We, of course, had a beer and a burger at the lodge before heading home with a truck full of very good dogs!

Off to town...!!!

We got a little snow overnight!!
Sue and I both took teams out today for completely different runs...



By chance, we got back to the kennel at the same time.

Still need to get the drop bags closed up today and dropped off tomorrow, but the hard part is done and we are relieved!!

Quest Drop Bags

Sue and I spent all day filling up drop bags. We're done except for closing them up tomorrow and bringing them in on Saturday!!







Now we can go run dogs tomorrow...

Meat

A little fun with pictures from the last few years of dealing with MEAT.

Hope Phish doesn't mind...

1/20/2010

Sue and I both took a break from dropbag preparation this morning to take a team for a run.
Phew, did we need that!!
It was almost 30 degrees warmer up in the hills today and I relaxed in the sun with the dogs for a while to enjoy the view-


ALASKA RANGE

DENALI

Back to cooking, sorting, bagging, and bagging.
Hoping to get close to finishing tomorrow!
-Mike.

Hey there. Is this thing on??

In an effort to keep ya'll more informed on the efforts of TeamTsuga, we're going to try this bloggy thing. Let us know what ya think.

How about a video from last week's Copper Basin 300?

I've got a full write-up about my race on our website www.teamtsuga.com/journal/10cb300.html

We are knee-deep in Quest drop bag preparation right now but are still finding a little time to run the team and play with puppies. I'll try to get some puppy videos soon-

Thanks for checking in and we'll work hard to keep this thing current.

-Mike.