This past weekend, the dogs and I competed in the Midnight Run. This race is an 80 mile race that starts in the evening and finishes the following afternoon. Midnight Run was the first mid-distance race I ever really learned about, and I was enthralled with it immediately. Nine years later, we were signed up and headed to the start line.
Of course, for me, no race start ever seems to be smooth. The day before the race, my glasses snapped in half. I spent the morning tearing apart my house looking for my backups – thankfully, I found them, and even though they weren’t up to my current prescription they were better than nothing. Then, as I am about to head to the race start for my assigned parking time slot, my truck went CLICK CLICK and nothing. Try again. CLICK CLICK. I had gotten an oil change the day before leaving, and they told me my battery was at the end of its life and ready to be replaced. I can’t afford any extra expenses during race season, so I just made a note of it for my next mechanic appointment. Well, I somehow accidentally left one of the exterior dog box lights on my truck on for who knows how long and it drained the battery. Thankfully I had some very good friends who were able to jump my truck and we got to the start, late but the race officials were still able to park us. And hey, we made it!
The start of the race was chaotic. The setup was very similar to the Copperdog evening start in downtown Calumet – truckloads of snow were brought in to make a trail down Washington Street. The difference being in Calumet, we hop right onto the snowmobile trail; while in Marquette, the trail went into a bike path that continued out of Marquette until we would hit the snowmobile trail several miles down. And of course, there were ten times the amount of people in the crowd watching the UP200 and Midnight Run starts than Copperdog. This can be extremely overwhelming for the dogs, but they focused in and ignored the crowds cheering and ringing bells and headed straight down the trail. I had Compass and Kestrel in lead, followed by Zirkle and Loaf; Bogey and Foucher; and finally Watkins and Schou in wheel.
I was pleasantly surprised by how nice the trail was on Washington Street, especially as it went in a steep downhill into a 90 degree turn. There was plenty for me to stand on my bar brake and really slow the dogs down so we didn’t ping pong around the corner. However once we hit the bike path, it was a different story. The snow on the trail severely thinned out to the point the carbide spikes on my drag mat were screeching on the pavement. I could barely slow the team down to a controllable speed. Literally one mile in, speed demon Rita Wehseler made up the two minutes between our bib times and caught me. I stepped harder on my drag mat to slow my team down and allow her team to pass cleanly, but as she was passing, the right runner of my sled hit a fistful of hardened snow. Between the drag mat, my nerves driving a big team, the pass, and now this sudden off-balancing hit, the sled tipped over and I hit the ground. Thankfully between all the layers I was wearing, it was like falling on a pile of pillows, but I had a new problem: the dogs were dragging me down a bike path with nowhere even close to enough snow to stop them and set a hook. Somehow I was able to hang on to the handlebars for about 100 feet until the dogs realized they were suddenly pulling a WHOLE lot more drag than they were used to and slowed to a merciful stop. I got lucky – my head was right next to the side of the groomed “trail”, where there was a little bit of a snow bank. I flipped my snowhook out of its holster and slammed it into the miniscule snow bank, praying it held. Telling the dogs “Don’t you even DARE,” I got on my feet, turned the sled upright, pulled the hook, and off we were again. This whole ordeal was, of course, very well lit with tons of spectators watching. I didn’t even have the emotional capacity to feel embarrassed though since I was so rattled and anxious from almost losing the team. Nothing rattles me like a fall, since falling often means losing the team, and it was an awful way to start out the run. Mercifully, a few more miles down the trail we hit the snowmobile trail and my drag mat could actually bite and have a meaningful impact on the dog’s speed. At some point during the fall, Schou switched over to the right side of the gangline with Watkins, and kept trying to dive into the snowbank on the right side of the trail, driving the sled into the soft snow off the groomed trail. I would have to grip tightly and drive to the best of my abilities to keep upright, telling off Schou with “Guys. Guys. GUYS.” until he and Watkins pushed back onto the trail.
The first 15 or so miles were mercifully straight and flat snowmobile trail. Normally this would be pretty boring but I was so rattled after the fall that I needed that time to breathe and get my head back on straight. Another musher came for a pass not long after we hit the snowmobile trail and, hoping to slow the team down and give her a clean pass, I lifted my foot and confidently brought it down on my bar brake. Except, I still have muscle memory of driving my old wood sled, not this newer aluminum sled, and the bar brake is ever so slightly narrower than the brake on my old sled. I missed the brake completely, and down I went again. This time, it was just the one knee dragging on the snow, thankfully I was able to keep balance enough to keep my left foot on the sled runner. The other musher yelled at me, “Get on your brake! Brake!” but I yelled back, “I can’t, I fell!” She pulled away as I was finally able to pull my right leg back under me and onto my drag mat.
Two falls in the first 5 miles of a 46 mile run set a pretty anxious tone for the rest of the run. It was snowing, and the snow was coming at me and obscuring my vision. Once we got off the snowmobile trail, the trail wound around the forest, dodging trees and becoming narrow. In daylight the next day, this would be a really fun trail; but at night, I was having a TIME. The glasses I was wearing were one prescription old, so I was having trouble reading the signs until I was right on top of them – which doesn’t work great when your lead dogs, who have to TAKE the turns, are 40 feet in front of you. On top of this, my headlamp was stuck on the widest setting – I had sent it in to be repaired when it stopped holding a battery charge over a year prior. When the company sent it back to me, the battery worked but for some reason the ability to focus the beam of light no longer worked. I haven’t done any night runs between then and now with something that DIDN’T have its own headlights (like an ATV) so I didn’t realize how dim the light was when it was stuck at the dimmest, widest setting. I could barely see my lead dogs and I certainly couldn’t see past them, especially with the snow coming at my face. The only reason I could really keep track of them was because of the light-up harnesses they were wearing, and I really had to trust they knew where they were going because I simply couldn’t see the trail ahead. New headlamp is on the URGENTLY NEED list before I do my next night run.
Between the visibility and the falls, I was having a pretty bad run mentally. But 10 miles from the checkpoint, Kestrel decides he needs to make it even worse. I decided to have him lead tonight instead of Loaf because Loaf is in standing heat, and her brain was a little bit tinged with horniness and not all there. But Kestrel has a very bad habit on long runs. He stops to poop. Now, sled dogs poop (and pee!) on runs all the time. The difference here is, most dogs will do it while they are moving. They slow down, yes, but as long as they keep moving, even at a crawl, I am happy to slow the team down for them. Not Kestrel. He stops cold, dead in his tracks, and plants himself like an anchor to poop. Now, I wouldn’t normally mind this behavior if he only did it once or twice during long runs, like Loaf does. I don’t mind it when he isn’t in lead, because he is forced to keep moving or, if I have to stop, no tangles happen. But in lead, he stops so quickly I don’t have time to react and brake until the swing dogs and sometimes even the team dogs bunch up around him. And he keeps. Doing. It. In that 35-43 mile stretch, he stopped probably 20 times. Half those times the dogs would sort it out and keep going without assistance, but the other half of the time the dogs would get in a huge tangle. And remember how Loaf, in swing position, is in standing heat? This means that she is ready for sex RIGHT NOW. As long as the dogs are moving they ignore her but as soon as Kestrel stops and is nose to tail with a tangled Loaf, he only has one thought on his mind. I put Loaf in swing because she is a great leader and I wanted her near the front in case I needed to switch her into lead, but that simply wasn’t an option. Under normal circumstances I would have absolutely swapped Kestrel out of lead, but with how eager Kestrel, Compass, and Zirkle were to make puppies, there was no way I could safely move dogs around. So instead we just had to stick it out and keep stopping until Kestrel finally got everything out of his system.
I would put my snowhook down to stop the team so I could fix a Kestrel-caused tangle. Then I would return to my sled, attempt to pick up the snowhook…nope. The dogs are tired of the constant stops and are basically frothing at the mouth to go, driving the snowhook even deeper into the snow and impossible to pull out. So I bury my second snowhook, get off the sled, and use a combination of kicking and pulling with both hands (which I can’t do on the sled, I need one hand on the handlebar when I pull the hook) to get the snowhook free. The dogs launch forward…burying the second snowhook deep in the hard packed trail. So I bury the first snow hook again, and kick kick kick the first snowhook until it’s free. The dogs, overexcited, launch forward…burying the first snowhook AGAIN. This happened about 5 times in a row at one point and I was so near tears from the stress, the dark, the physical exertion and being exhausted from the high intensity workout, until by some divine grace I was able to pull the snowhook from my sled.
The trail continued to wind like a snake, curving around trees and going up and down. At one point I am watching my lead dogs, and they disappear over a hill. Then the swing dogs disappear. I get on my drag mat, expecting a normal incline. The team dogs disappear. Finally the wheel dogs and I approach the drop and I realize, this is not a normal hill. It is too late for me to move my foot from my drag mat to my bar brake for stronger braking, so I just hang on with everything I have, screaming “MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER! MOTHERFUCKER!” into the dark woods, watching the front of my sled start to overrun the wheel dogs and inch closer to their behinds on what felt like a 50 foot vertical drop. But then we reached the bottom, I took a breath, and we continued on to the split between the Midnight Run and UP200 trails. The Midnight Run took a right and continued down a power line trail for 5 miles.
Despite everything, we made it to the checkpoint in Chatham. 46 miles was our longest run to date, and as mad as I was at some of the dogs, I was immensely proud of them too. They finished the run really peppy and ready to do more – apart from Watkins, who I noticed in the final couple miles stopped pulling. I had a vet check him out immediately once we arrived, so they could do a musculo-skeletal exam while his muscles were still warm. The diagnosis was sore pectoral muscles, so I massaged him with some linament oil while he looked up at me and licked my face. My handlers, Hannah and Miranda, took off everyone’s booties and put jackets on while the vet and I were looking at Watkins. I wanted to kiss them. While Midnight Run allows mushers to put the dogs in the dog boxes on the truck at the checkpoint – which is calmer and warmer for the dogs, allowing for better rest – I decided to bring straw and do a traditional wilderness-style checkpoint where I bedded the dogs down in straw beds. We needed more camping practice like this for the Beargrease 120 in two weeks, where boxing dogs isn’t an option. To my surprise, after eating, most of the dogs laid down and went to sleep almost immediately. I couldn’t have been prouder of them in that moment, because laying down and learning to rest has been a bit of a hurdle for us in the past. The vet team came around to check all the dogs as is mandatory. The trail was extremely rough on everyone’s feet – even though I booted them, the fresh wet lake effect snow was so abrasive and snow-balling so quickly that it was ripping booties off, wearing through booties quickly; and for the feet that had boots fall off, they all had minor injuries. None of these are severe, the dogs can still run on them fine as long as they are booted, but I was shocked how hard the trail was on the dogs.
The checkpoint had some food for the mushers, so I ate half of an egg and cheese burrito (all I could stomach) and then headed to the community center where they were letting mushers camp out and stay warm. Hannah and Miranda took such good care of me and the dogs, they tucked me in like a baby and I sincerely could not have done the race without them. I was in and out of sleep for a few hours until one of my closest friends, Megan, came to wake me up. Megan was also doing the Midnight Run, but I was saddened to learn she had to scratch after her dogs were just wiped coming into the checkpoint. But I was so proud of her for completing the really tough first half and owning her decision.
Six of the eight dogs at the checkpoint. (Photos from Megan Moberly)
Megan, Miranda, and Hannah helped me boot and get everyone ready to go. After sleeping on it, I decided to drop Watkins at the checkpoint. Even though he probably could have completed the race, we still had other races to go this season and the last thing I wanted was to risk a worse injury. Battling sleep deprivation-induced nausea, we set off for the second run. Kestrel was demoted to wheel for this one, and Loaf was in lead with Compass.
Once we got going, I started to feel better and the nausea faded. Dinah Patten, who left the checkpoint 30 seconds after me, caught us a few miles in when my dogs refused to take a road crossing, telling me that the trail VERY CLEARLY continued to the left. Thankfully Dinah’s dogs spotted the trail across the road and took it, and my dogs were able to follow. We followed Dinah down the powerline trail, keeping an eye out for the left turn back into the woods. Almost five miles in, Dinah stopped her team and called back to me, “I think we missed the turn. I saw some snow fence in the woods back there.” I responded that we had just passed a confidence marker, so I didn’t think we missed it. We continued for another tenth of a mile, when Dinah stopped again. “There’s no tracks going this way, this isn’t right. We need to turn around.”
If you’ve never turned a dog team around before, it is far from simple. It is extremely easy to get dogs tangled, pop a snowhook, or lose your team. Thankfully my dogs were superstars and even though we did get a few tangled dogs, they all stayed very calm and let me untangle them. Dinah and I retraced our tracks, and a mile back, Dinah found the snow fence she saw and took the correct turn into the woods. I was so thankful she listened to her instincts, and thankful the snow was still falling and covered last night’s tracks, because we had been headed to Wetmore – thankfully, we just did a bonus 2 miles and got back on track instead. I hadn’t even seen the snow fence on the way out before – I think it was probably where the turn was supposed to be, but got knocked down by wind or snow and blown into the woods. It comically hooked onto my sled as we ran it over, and it took a half mile for me to get a snowhook down and unhook it from the sled for the trail sweep to find later.
Dinah faded away, pulling ahead as we plodded through the woods. The windy trail was way more fun in the daylight now that I could see, and sketchy parts in the dark like a very narrow ice bridge at the bottom of a valley were easily navigable in daylight.
Loaf and Compass drove us back towards Marquette at a slow but steady pace. Even though they had finished well the night before, it was obvious to me that they were tired, but willing to stick it out. The run ended up being close to 40 miles with the detour Dinah and I made. After a long stretch on the snowmobile trail, passing a sculpture park and other landmarks, my seven dogs and I finally pulled into the finish. I could not have been prouder of the dogs for earning the Red Lantern and finishing our first ever checkpoint race.
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