What's Happening!

This year the end of January marks the end of the race season for the Flash Kennels sled dogs but just the begging of Iditarod madness! And since we aren't racing in it this year, we have a number of things going on to help students get the most out of this exciting event!

The first is our February Special Event, Race Ready! You can read more about it below, but I can only say that we are totally pumped to be doing this program.

In much the way baseball is a game of statistics, distance sled dog racing a sport mathematics!

Speed, Distance, Time! And how to balance them to figure out when to run with how long to rest are the equations mushers go over endlessly as they work their way to Nome.

In Race Ready we'll introduce your students to all the factors that have to be considered in that equation.  And then show them how to use online “race update” data to understand how their favorite musher is doing out on the trail!

Then there's the Virtual Sled Dog Race: The Pipeline 1000! This isn't a videoconference but instead a two week online event! About the same amount of time the real mushers spend out on the Iditarod trail. This is the event that started it all for us here at KEA and this year it is new and improved. It promises to be the best running ever. Don't let your students miss out!!

So, as you can see, while the race season is winding down for the dogs of Flash Kennels, things are just heating up for the rest of us at KEA! We hope you'll join us for all the action!

Race Ready!

Iditarod is just around the corner! And, as we all know, there are a million and one ways to use the excitement of the race to motivate learning!

Join KEA for our February Specail Event: Race Ready! And we'll show you the BEST way!

Race Ready is a great program that approaches the Iditarod as a big, huge, giant math problem that your students will love to solve!

Racing sled dogs is all about figuring out how far you can run, how long it will take you to run it, and how much rest the dogs need until they can do it again!

So, in other words, it's nothing but one long RATE equation! But one that's just slightly more interesting than figuring out when one train leaving Chicago is going to meet up with another leaving form California!

In Race Ready we'll start out by going for a dog run- just to see why musher's love to run. Then we'll move into the strategies distances racers use win. You guessed it... rate equations! And finally, we'll wrap it all up by examining how to interpret the race updates data that all races post on the web! At the end of the program your students will not only have learned how to use rate equations in a real life setting but they'll be dying for Iditarod to start so they can do it some more!

To find out more about the program, learn how it's adapted throughout grade levels, or register, visit our website here.

It is right smack in the middle of the busiest race weeks for us this year.

We just got back from the Tustumena 100, where Charlie ran the team, and one day away from the Don Bowers 200, when I get to run them.

The Tustumena went GREAT!  The team ran at an average of 8.5 mph.  And there was ZERO injuries.  Lost did develope a bit of a sore wrist by the finish but just 2 hours later it was totally fine!

This was by far the healthest race team we have ever had at a finish... tails wagging, barking, and basically looking as energized as at the start of any run at home!

All of the dogs on this team are just 18 months old- except the two leaders who are 6 and 7.  That's very young, you can see it in thier bodies.  They look just like young teenagers all gangly and a bit uncoordinated!

That will all change! 

But for now our goals are to get them in a few races, run easy and slow, rest a LOT, and let them learn that racing is FUN!

So the Tustumena was a total success!  With the added bonus that they learned how to live out of the truck for 5 days!  Another skill they need to learn.

And now that leads us up to the Don Bowers 200.  The Tustumena 100 was 2, 55 mile runs with a 4hr rest seperating them.  We are going to run this race like two Tustumena races...

In other words our plan is to run 50 miles rest 4hrs run 50 miles more to the halfway point.  There we take a mandatory 8 hr rest and then run back down the same way we came- 50 miles, 4hr rest, 50 miles to finish.

Again, our goal is to average 8-9mph the whole way.  So we should get to the halfway point in 16hrs and finish the race in 40hrs- If all goes well.

If all that happens then we will call it a great race season!

Next year with more maturity in the team we will try to bump up our traveling speeds to 10mph!  They want that now, so it shouldn't be an issue, they just don't have the deep level endurance that can only come with age.  So if we let them try for 10mph this year they fade down to 6mph by the 25 mile mark... Distance racing is all about pacing.

Nothing I see marks a truly good dog musher more than split times at checkpoints that indicate consistent speed throughout the race!