With the toughest time of
year ahead of the kennel, the guys and gals were
previously geared down with shorter runs due to
the ebb of the sled season. Now, the kennel has
turned to sand and some runs still puddling with
water during the day. Copious time has been
spent raking "dead" straw. We used 17 bales this
year and now have 3 humongous obnoxious looking
piles in the kennel, waiting to be transported
and burned off in the coming drier months.
With all the raking, there
has been plenty of time for reflection on the
past season.
Did we have fun? Yes.
Did we learn anything? Yep,
possibly more than any of the other speed racing
years.
Were we satisfied with the
dogs? Yup, 3 new leaders, all capable of
stringing an open class team out for more than
16 miles.
Were we satisfied with race
results? Heck no and no again.
Much has been said about the
overall speed of the two big races in Alaska
increasing close to 5 mph compared to a decade
ago (will discuss later in this entry). We
definitely cannot do, however during training I
felt we were faster than previous years and had
GPS readings to substantiate but when it came to
the races everything went flat, with no punch
culminating in February. I adamantly believe
the "bench-mark" of speed for Siberians in races
such as the Rondezvous or ONAC can be raised, if
the goals are realistic over time.
I also realized I may have
denied the dogs adequate groceries in a quest to
get the athlete as tuned as possible. We were
able to get the dogs a bit rebounded in March.
Our race results do not indicate but outside of
goofy things happening such as a moose running
across the team and somewhat couching the
performance of the dogs due to the fact
5 individuals were inserted who had
been disadvantaged by lack of regular training
and racing since early February. With that, in
March I told myself to approach each day as if
it were a building block for next year. I pulled
dogs from the team with each heat of the ONAC
not because of injury or fatigue but rather from
subliminal intuition I wanted those dogs to end
the season with a positive building block
looking to come back next year utilizing
the observed cataloged knowledge. Of course,
we're hoping my reads are accurate and maturity
related to the dogs.
Next, we have gone back to
studying diets in relation to speed endurance
and realize one of the areas of inadequacy was
the lack of calcium as the diet was lopsided
towards red meat. We are likely going back to
mixing our own diet and having it analyzed prior
to the season. Though I felt we fed as good as
it gets for what we could afford, something was
not right, which has warranted a focus to that
aspect.
