This should be an interesting year for the dogs of Flash Kennels.  As those of you who have been following us for a while know, we have a bunch of young dogs in the kennel.

We have 31 dogs in training to race this year.  Of that group, there are only 3 older dogs- 7 and 8- Creamer, Goldeen, and Beatrice, that have a lot of race experience.  Then we have 4 dogs- Pika, Andy, Burn, & Iggy- who are all in the 3-4 year old range but have no race experience.  The rest are 2 years old, about half with limited race experience last year, and the other half with no race experience. 

And, oh ya, we have 7 dogs that are just 1 year olds.... (all of this can be seen on our Google Doc spread sheet)

So, this year is going to be a pretty laid back racing year.  We don't have any high expectations other than to fully train all the dogs to thier best possible conditioning then go have fun in the races... and not worry about how we place.

One other thing is that this is going to be both Tina and Pippin's first year racing!  So tons of FIRST this year should be lots of fun!

Here is a list of the races we are hoping to get to this year:

The Excursion 120 (Rich)

The Knic 200 (Rich and Tina)

The Jr. Tustamena (Pippin)

The Tustamena 100 or 200 (Rich -& maybe Tina)

The Jr Willow 100 (Pippin)

The Jr. Iditarod (Pippin)

The Jr. Quest (Pippin)

The Tiaga 300 (Rich and Tina)

Which, after listing it all out seems like a very busy year!  We probably won't make all of these races, though.  The key ones are the Knic 200, Jr. Tustamena, Jr Iditarod, and Tiaga 300.   The others will just be icing.

The goal is just to give the dogs and muchers a lot of good fun experiences.  Those will be the factors that really determine what races we get to and what races we don't.  Beyond racing, it's high on our list this year to get and have some fun camping trips with the dogs so that might over-ride some of the spring races.

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!