Wow!! It’s been a long time since I posted some news. 2 months to be exact. And it’s been a busy 2 months. But I have a little time now because virtually all the preparations for the Iditarod are complete except for final packing, ECGs and blood work on the dogs, the vet check, driver’s meeting, and Iditarider meeting. It’s almost here.

Last week I was busy packing my drop bags (the bags that contain all my dog food, human food, and gear for the entire race), which I dropped off at the Port of Tacoma on Thursday for shipment to Anchorage, where they will get grouped with everyone else’s, sorted, and flown out to the 20 checkpoints along the trail. The week before that my next door neighbor and I drove my dogs up to Healy, Alaska where they will stay for the month of February getting acclimated to the cold; and trained, of course, which is requiring that I fly back and forth every week for three weeks – more incredible logistics of a lower 48er with a full time job trying to run this race.

Before I drove the team to Alaska we raced in the Cascade Quest, a 200 mile race here in Washington (go to Monte Dodge's or Terri Steele's websites for some great photos of the race). We finished in both 2nd place and last place – there were only two contenders. But it was still fun and quite encouraging to see my team run 200 miles in just over 34 hours and on very minimal rest – significantly less than half the rest we are planning in our Iditarod schedule.

Before the Cascade Quest was the Seeley Lake 200, where I scratched after the first two legs, or after about 115 miles. It may have been unnecessary to scratch as there was really nothing catastrophically wrong with me or my team, but it was the cautious route considering the Iditarod is my ultimate goal this year and I wasn’t comfortable running the last 85 mile leg without any “fuel” in my dogs – they didn’t eat well at the second checkpoint. So, while I regretted the decision for the days following the race, I don’t anymore.

And, before that was a pretty difficult sled-building phase, since the first sled I built this season for use on the Iditarod was destroyed in the first 10 minutes of its maiden voyage after I ran into a tree (and then another tree, and then another tree – it’s a long story), and I then had to really, really rush through building a second sled. But, it’s certainly better that that happened a couple months before the Iditarod because had I used that sled on the race, I wouldn’t have finished.

So, that’s what we’ve been up to in a nutshell.