Race day!

Wow, well I have officially finished my first ever dog sled race! And it was amazing.

Day one started with the Mushers meeting going over the route and giving out numbers, oh and the very important point of “make sure you pick up your dog poo after you are finished!” on with a lot of clothes, head torch, knife, hat and race number and get the dogs ready. Harnessing them and Connie putting boots on most of the dogs feet to help protect their feet. The race started from the car park 200 meters from where we live, so while most mushers started from the car park with the dogs tied to the cars, we started out from home and drove the dogs to the start line, not so easy with cars around, over 300 huskies and no snow on the road to get the snow brake on the sled to work, but luckily Connie and trond were there to catch me at the start. So when it was my time, I heading to the start line and went off for the race! I had 7 dogs, Bjork and Sibora in lead, Fred and Yahoo second, Olivia in third, and Kaisan and Elgvin in the back! We started straight away up the mountain and it was pretty windy so the sled was moving around a lot but the dogs are so strong that they just pull the sled through! Some of Norway's best mushers were also racing today, so of course I got passed a lot on the mountain! So after 50 kms, I came back down to the car park, after having a cheer squad of Connie and Trond on the mountain, and was in 23rd place, ahead of my Boss, only by 2 minutes! They its getting the dogs back home, un harnessing them, feeding them and checking they are all ok! Then it was all to happen again tomorrow.

Day 2!
Of course I woke up to a power cut, so the alarm clock didn’t wake me up, but thankfully Connie did! Out again, prepare the sled, harness and boot the huskies and back out again. We changed the lead dogs around today to try and get a bit more speed (after not coming last the day before I started to get really competitive!) we started earlier in the day today which was nice as it ment we were always sledding in the daylight unlike the day before which had a fair amount in the dark... My aim was to pass my boss Pal! The slowest teams start out first in the morning with a 1 minute interval, so he was only 1 minute ahead of me! I was following him for the first 15kms roughly and then as we got to a large frozen lake, I managed to pass him! Sorry boss!!! There was a lot of deep powder in some places making the track a bit like a bobsled track, but it was really fun on the sled! And back down to the finish line where lots of people were waiting to cheer us in! Then off to the Fjellstue where I work to get our certificates and have a well deserved drink! Although my plans of going to bed were scarpered by Connie and Trond taking me up the mountain by snowmobile to collect in all of the poles they used to line the race, and poles to mark 50kms of race track is a lot of poles! Now definitely off to bed after an amazing two days!