by 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