ASK THE MUSHER Vol 5: Ken Anderson

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ASK THE MUSHER Vol 5: Ken Anderson

Postby ThisSpaceForRent » Sat Jul 12, 2008 1:45 pm

It is my distinct pleasure to open this installment of "Ask the Musher" by introducing to you all KEN ANDERSON...

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Also invited into this is his wife and fellow musher Gwen Holdmann, if she is so inclined.
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As 99.9% of us know Ken gave Lance a heck of race in the '08 Yukon Quest (Kens rookie year in this race) finishing Second by only 15 minutes...He also finished 4th in the '08 Ididtarod.

Gwen has run and finished both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest.

For those interested in supporting their efforts, please visit their website:
http://www.windycreekkennel.com/

Welcome Ken and Gwen!!!

Let the questions begin...
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby ThisSpaceForRent » Sat Jul 12, 2008 2:07 pm

ken,

Are you planning to run both the Quest and I'rod in 09?
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby Moose » Sat Jul 12, 2008 2:25 pm

Thanks for agreeing to do this, guys. It means a lot to us Iditarod dreamers. Ken, my check is in the mail. Literally. Maybe you've even received it by now. I'm looking forward to receipt of the journal.

Gwen, I imagine the new kiddos will cramp your style...at least for a while. Heck, I imagine they'll be cramping both your styles! (They ought to be anyway!) 8-) But what are your plans for the '08/'09 season as well?
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby nosnow tx » Sat Jul 12, 2008 3:08 pm

Ken,

I am a newbie to this forum, but not to the Iditarod/Quest. I'm in East Texas, far removed from your beautiful
Alaska. We have been a fan for the past 5 years.
It's an honor to have you on this forum to answer a few questions for all of us that are Iditajunkies.

I am wondering if you are O.K. with the tracking device and will it be used this coming year.
As a fan it was great to watch the race unfold, BUT if I were a Musher I don't think I would want the device tracking
my every move. I can see several ways it could be misused and certainly not to the mushers advantage.
What are your thoughts?

Thank you for your time, and Good Luck this coming season.

Nosnow
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby Sady » Sat Jul 12, 2008 9:39 pm

Welcome to Ask The Musher, Ken and Gwen! I'm excited to have you here with us. I followed you, Ken, on both the Quest and Iditarod. My questions for you are: What was the physical and mental toll on you and the dogs running both long distance races back to back? Do you plan to run both this year?
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby ken anderson » Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:49 am

Hello,

Thanks a lot for everyone's interest. I'm kinda busy right now but I'll try my best to answer everyone's questions. First off, we've gotta get rid of that terrible photo of me with my eyes half open. For some reason about one in two photos of me are with my eyes shut. It's like I've got some sort of telepathy linked to the photographer's finger or something.

Anyways, for starters, I'm not sure if I'm going to run both races again or not. Everyone tells Gwen and I we're a bit naive about what we're getting ourselves into with twins on the way. They're due in about three weeks so we'll see. Gwen's parents are a huge help for us right now. They drove their camper up the Alaska highway and have been here for nearly a month helping us with the new house and preparing for Marais Elise and Kiran Emil. They plan on staying until New Year's if they don't get frozen out beforehand. They're currently in their camper but will soon rent a place in town when it gets cold. We're interviewing handlers right now and have luckily had lots of interest so we're being especially choosy. I need handlers that I can trust to train my adults if needs be. I usually do all the training of the main team but will need to lighten up a little with two rug rats running (crawling) around.

I had mixed feelings about the effects on the dogs and myself of running both races. I think mentally it's quite draining for both the dogs and myself doing both. However, physically, I've never felt better and the same goes for the dogs. I really enjoyed the Quest and felt I personally put in a good performance. I wasn't quite so on my "A" game in the Iditarod, even though things fell in place in the end. I really felt like I was just going through the motions and didn't approach Iditarod with the same mental focus and passion as I did for the Quest. Of course when that happens it affects the dogs' performance as well. I started the race with 16 leaders and seemed to try almost everyone up there at some point in time. I've found that when I'm focused and intense that my dogs feel that way as well and I never have leadership problems. Even if I go into the race feeling I've got questionable leaders, some new leaders always emerge. This year I played musical lead dog way too much. I can't speak for Lance but I think he had similar issues.

I finished the Quest with 8 dogs and wound up taking six of those, as well as three others I had dropped. The other dogs came from my "B"-squad Quest team that my former handler, Julie Estey, ran. She scrathed early with a torn ACL and the dogs off her team wound up being my sharpest dogs in the Iditarod team. The problem was that I had the key leaders in my team and being that Lance and I raced so hard, they were not quite on step going into Iditarod. Physically, they were in incredible shape but mentally, they were just so-so. I don't want to get too commercial here but I do talk quite a lot about the effects of running both races in my journal.

My decision to race or not to race the Quest will most likely be made at the last minute. It will depend on money, logistics, and dogs. You'll most likely see me signed up though.

As far as the trackers go, I hear they were a huge hit with the fans and to me that makes it all that more worth it. There is a huge information void in our race and this is helping to fill the gap. The race just needs to find a way to financially capitalize on it. I don't follow the financials of the race and I don't know if it's making money or not, or if they feel it will or not in the future (I believe there's mixed feelings about this but don't know for sure). I think a lot of fans think the mushers up front are all loaded with dough. That's not the case (with most of us anyways). I have a dog food sponsor and a couple of private sponsors that basically cover my immediate Iditarod costs. The other $50,000 has to come from race winnings or my summer slide shows or selling dogs or my journal. Often times the kennel barely breaks even. It's hard to stay afloat year after year like that. Luckily I have a wife with a steady job that's as into the dogs as me and understands and accepts the financial highs and lows we go through trying to make this happen.

Anyways, if the trackers can bring more money to the race, I'm all for it. I don't do a whole lot of looking around at the competition anyways and believe it would take a lot more extra work to follow someone's tracker while I'm in the checkpoint wanting a warm meal and sleep more than anything. It's probably not going to change my strategy much, if at all, anyways.

As far as rule changes go, the thing I'm most disappointed in is how they changed the purse breakdown. I think it was fiscally responsible for them to reduce the purse to an absolute minimum they know they could cover, as long as it doesn't have the effect of dampening their drive for bringing in purse dollars, knowing they're not obligated to bring in any more. The problem is that for some reason they didn't reduce the percentages equally. They left the top heavy and reduced the placings around 10th to 25th. These are the hardscrabble mushers I'm talking about that are scraping by year to year to pull it off. Most every musher I've talked to says they should have reduced the percentages equally.

I enjoy writing and would like to chat more but I've got to get to work.

Take care, Ken
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby fladogfan » Sun Jul 13, 2008 4:25 pm

Congrats on the twins!

Love the way you write, it's like you are just talking to us. Same for your journals, very easy reading and it's as if we were there with you.
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby Heidi » Sun Jul 13, 2008 4:53 pm

Hi Ken & Gwen! (Those are my parents' names! :D) Thanks for joining us.

Ken, congrats on your top finishes in the Iditarod and Quest. And more importantly, congrats to both of you on the upcoming birth of your twins. :)

Okay, I have a couple of "fun" questions:

1) What are your favorite checkpoints and why?

2) If you could choose 5 extra things/amenities (beyond the usual - and they can be anything from the mundane to the ridiculous) for a checkpoint to have, what would they be? :D
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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby ThisSpaceForRent » Sun Jul 13, 2008 5:11 pm

Ken,

I took out the "squinty eye"picture for ya ;) I looked for a replacement but your right, all the pics on your site have sunglasses on or squinted eyes... 8-)

question....run/rest. do you have a particular formula or "play it by ear". We all know Sorlie and Lance have been favoring the LONG run. What are your views?

Thanks for being a part of this forum...."Ask the Musher" will only go about a week so this shouldn't eat up too much Trail/Training time.

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Re: Ask the Musher...Ken Anderson

Postby ken anderson » Sun Jul 13, 2008 11:46 pm

To get to the questions:

I think most musher's favorite checkpoint is Takotna. They serve awesome food, there's great resting areas for the dogs, there's internet access right there, hot water for the dogs, and a quiet place (the church) for the mushers to sleep with a good area for drying gear out. Everything's very well-contained so you don't have to walk far. I was always a little leery about 24ing in Cripple vs. Takotna because it's sometimes wicked cold, there's no musher food, and no hot water. However, this year I 24'ed there and found it to be very peaceful and I got into a good rhythm of feeding myself and the dogs that allowed me to get lots more sleep than in Takotna. Since there's no central eating/volunteer/media/internet area, you don't waste time with all that. There were warm wall tents that allowed me to dry my gear well. The stove had a pot of hot water that I could put my frozen,vacuum-packed meal in while I was sleeping, so when I woke up I had a hot meal ready right away. So in a way, less was better.


The most important things for a checkpoint are (in my personal order of importance):

1. Good, quiet, protected resting areas for the dogs that have some sun exposure to bake the dogs in the afternoon (helps them recuperate). Hopefully this checkpoint is warmer than your competitor's 24'ing checkpoint!!

2. Quiet, warm sleeping quarters for the musher with ample space for mushers to hang wet gear.

3. A pot of hot water on the stove.

4. An internet connection or at least current printouts of trail times.

5. Musher food

Other decadent amenities would be:

A shower
A nurse (in case you're banged-up)
A major airport where you can ship an extra sled in.
A massage therapist that doesn't mind stinky mushers

As far as run/rest goes:

I've always had a relatively predictable strategy: if you look at my placings the first half of the race, I've always moved up in the second half. I think last year I left Cripple in like 26th place and finished 4th. I'm a firm believer in starting the dogs off easy and progressing into long runs at the end. I'm also known for not taking tons of rest on the coast and sometimes skipping checkpoints entirely. I believe you can pull this off if you've run a smart first half of the race and steadily built the dogs up to longer runs later on. I try to keep the runs less than 6-7 hours until doing a long run into my 24. This keeps the dogs' speed up. After that the runs turn very quickly into 8-12-hour stretches.

So far, though, it's not proven to be a winning strategy. It's a safe, secure bet for a solid finish, usually with a nice-looking team. In the future I may have to think outside my box and be a little more aggressive earlier on to make the next step.

Ken
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