Midnight Run & Winter Fun!

Me with the A team on a training run. George & Roxy are in lead.

Larry with the B team, Pansy & Zoey in lead

Larry's team: Odessa, Zoey, Daisy, Dee Dee, Susie, Rosie, Pansy & Zeus

My team: Roxy, George, Poppy, Franklin, Curlin, Fender, Manny & Smarty

Ana even ran her team: Tefa & Liddell. She is a natural on the sled and does the entire run by herself now. I get a kick out of listening to her give all the commands.

Poppy, a yearling that will be running with the main team. He is George's son and will be "rookie of the year" like his dad was.

Roxy, a 2 year old female that will be leading my team. She is SUPER in lead!!

It seems like we have been training FOREVER since Tahquemenon due to the Beargrease getting canceled. I can't believe the Midnight Run is finally here!! Our winter here has been terrible. It has been an endless cycle of disapointment. We would finally get snow, get a couple of runs in, then EVERY Monday it would RAIN!! This is not good because it turns our trails and dog yard into a skating rink, making it unsafe to take teams out. Sooooo....we have been forced to truck our teams to a safer trail for 4 weeks now. We have never in 12 years in the sport had to truck our dogs this much. Not only is it much harder, but it takes all day to get our runs in and adds much more work! To top it off, after our last warm up, even our safe trail was in terrible condition, so we were forced to take the snowmobile out and make a new trail through the woods where there was still good snow and wasn't heavily traveled by snowmobiles. The trail isn't very long, it takes 7 laps to get an 11 mile run in. So, you can imagine my extreme boredom!! It is all we can do, so it is better than nothing. I am more than excited to run a new trail this weekend and NOT have to do a bunch of laps! The dogs will probably be relieved if we never have to see our little trail ever again!! The Midnight Run is a 90 mile race that starts in Marquette, runs to Chatham for a 5 hour layover, then we finish in Munising. Due to lack of snow, we are only doing a "ceremonial" start for the sponsors & fans in Marquette Friday night. Then we will load our dogs, head to Chatham for the restart. We will leave the chute between 10-11 pm Friday night for a 50 mile run back to Chatham, where we will have our 5 hour layover. Then in the morning we will run 35-40 miles to the finish in Munising. We leave for the race tomorrow morning. To follow our race go to our website, click on our kennel name and go to races: www.sleddogstuff.net