Time to lay out the winters goals!

These goals are the first step toward a third try at Iditarod in 2012- where I would dearly love to be competing for Rookie of the Year!

1) Happy, healthy, injury free dogs! This is the first goal and the one everything else hinges on!

2) Happy, healthy, injury free mushers! Almost as import as the first goal!

3) Win the Aurora 25/25 race in Dec.

4) Win the Solstice 50, also in Dec. a week or two after the Aurora 25/25

5) Win the Tustemena 100 in Jan. (Charlie will be running the team in this race.)

6) Finish strong in the Two Rivers 200- run it with Tina and her team.

7) Finish the tiaga 300 strong, running with Tina and her team.

And that's it for this year. Next year we will take two possible paths.

1) Run the Yukon Quest with Tina. This will depend on a couple of things- good experiences for Tina with distance racing, and 2) finding a good driver to handle for us during the race.

2) Run the Copper Basin 300, Tustimena 200, and Tiaga 300. All competitively in the top 5.

Well that's it. Big goals considering my experiences the last time I raced. But I am a learner and I learn best when I fail- so look out here we come!

The racers are on their way home from Yentna checkpoint.  The race started with a suprise increase in milage on the first leg of 20%!  Yikes!

Most teams took nearly 11hrs to get there- this is a lot considering over the last few years this first leg has only taken about 6hrs.

Three teams never made it to Yentna and had to scratch.  A huge bummer and a complete mess up on the race organizations part in how they structured the race and how they communicated trail changes to the mushers!  

But now they are on their way home.  Charlie is in a "race with in a race" battling 3 other teams all with in 10mins of each other.  They will be racing for 6th place, but if something happens to any of the teams in front... you never know!

We expect him to be done anytime between 2-4pm Alaska time.  And after yesterday's run he will be TIRED!

Deep snow today! Snow and Snow which made the trails slow and hard pulling for the puppies.

 That's just fine, though.  So for this year we have had fast trails almost all the time and the dogs have been moving quick steadly going faster and faster as they have grown older.  It has been on my mind to start training them to pace themselves better.  The deep snow has made this easier.

 The deep snow made for slow, steady work and I have no complaints about how the pups did.  Though, I have a lot of females in heat and that did make for some distraction.  Anyway, the slow speed let my mind wonder and I started thinking/firming up my dog plans for next year.

First thing is a big trip down the Yukon River to at least Unakleet but likely to Nome.  That will be in the spring.  But I also need to race 500miles to make sure I am qualified for Iditarod the following year.  I will likely run the Knic 200 and the Don Bowers 300.  With the pups I would run those f=very conservatively with lots of rest and short (hopefully) fast runs.  But in Dec. there are a couple of tune-up style races of shorter length, for those I would like to race as hard as I can and see just how competitve these new pups are.

Well... that's as far as I got in my dog-run-mind-wonder.