"Polardistans", a race for novice distance drivers!

"The journey is the destination". This was the basic principle for our preparations and the training runs for this 300 km long race through the Swedish wilderness. To switch our middle distance dogs over to long distance racing without a mental crash, Manfred had finally decided in favor of this race, since it takes place at the end of the season in the 11th week. This, inspite of the rumors of inadequate organization and bad trail marking which are associated with the "Polardistans", a race for purebred nordic dogs only. Source for these rumours are probably the high percentage of DNFs (sometimes more than 50 per cent) and the wild stories linked to those.

No doubt, there is definitely room for improvement at this event. Especially the rule, that a broken sled cannot be replaced, seems questionable. Thus, otherwise fully operational teams have to quit when the sled is broken. But, instead of picking on rules and regulations, I would like to express our admiration for the incredible performance of the racegiving organization, part of the SPHK-Västra, a section of the swedish polar dog club. This small group of sled dog lovers is doing the trail, the trail marking, vet-checks, sledbag checks, securing the main road crossings, are present on the checkpoints and last but not least preparing the mushers dinner, essentially the whole job without outside assistance. It has to be accepted, that after 5 days of racing, everyone gets a little tired. Due to several reasons (like local weather conditions), you can not expect perfect race conditions here. 
A responsible musher on the search for a special experience with his dog team will be completely satisfied, and we believe that this is the idea behind the race. At first look, the rules seem to be very strict, e.g., the age of the dogs and the variety of equipment. Dogs have to be older than two years and younger than nine years. Dogs older than nine years may be allowed at the discretion of the race-veterinarian if they are accompanied by a "Fit to go"-veterinarian certificat, but there is no guarantee. The equipment might be checked at all checkpoints, though this is done only randomly after the race started. The organization is trusting the fair-play and the realization of the participants, that they have to be ready for any (!) weather situation. One more reason is probably, that people (anyone, not just mushers) without the proper survival equipment, will have to pay the costs for a search and rescue operation, when going unprepared on adventures trips, no matter if hiking, snowmobiling or whatsoever.(We got this information from a licensed wilderness guide.)
Vet-checks and equipment checks start on Tuesday, then on Wednesday at 9 am the pulka teams and on Thursday at 9 am the nomestyle teams are released in a mass-start on the lake. This way there is no time differential necessary to guarantee that the first finishing team is the winner in it's class. In order to finish the race, teams have to be back by 6 pm on Saturday. The trail consists of three "loops" and a final stretch of 5 km. All loops end at the checkpoint "Off-Road". Here each team will be appointed a place (first come first serve) for resting in a somewhat sheltered area with small pine trees. There is a heated building for the vet and the checkers. The toilets are also open to the mushers. Here, they can also pick up cold (!) water for themselves and the dogs. By the way, cold water is supplied at all the checkpoints of the race, and this is the only supply that is granted in addition to what is in the sled, like tent, food for dogs and musher, and all the other required equipment and whatever seems to be worthwile taking along.

The first loop covers 130 km with a checkpoint and dog drop after 34 km. The second loop up above tree level and back is 95 km with a checkpoint and dog drop after 60 km and the last loop, mostly through open forest, is the least marked one with 85 km. The setup of the race allows three days and nine hours for the pulka teams and two days and nine hours for the nomestyle teams to finish the race in time, which is 6 pm on saturday. If bad weather conditions occure, it is possible to run mostly during daytime. Teams with sound conditioning, which from the start aim to just reach the finish and don't get hyped up by the initial (mass start!) race fever should only fail with a broken sled or severe health problems.

Solid conditioning, in order to finish also in bad weather conditions, meant for us to retrain our teams. The change from groomed mid-distance trails to "trails", which looked often more like a freshly plowed potatoe field with more or less scarce marking) was quite a mental shock for our Siberians. Pulling heavy loads at lower speed, requires different muscles and the longer working hours more mental toughness. On the well prepared central-european Mid-distance race trails, speed is the winning factor. When we trained the first time to cross a mountain over the treeline in a snow storm with no trail visible, different qualities were asked for! Our best command leaders gave up frustrated, when we asked them again and again to leave the well packed snow drifts in order to follow a trail that for them (and sometimes also for us) was quite imaginary. We only got back to our truck this evening, because I was pulling the leaders from one trail marker to the next one (luckily only for about 3 km, then the visibility improved.

Several swedish winters had already taught us the deepest respect about wilderness and drastic weather changes, but this training run showed us the missing routine wihout mercy. Starting from there we concentrated on training on bad, blown-in and hardly visible trails. For mental recovery we embedded some runs on packed trails and a middle-distance race. While holding up well mentally, physically the dogs catched some gastro-enteric desease with heavy diarrhea and vomiting at the race in Asarna. Despite having enough medications along, we could not really control it. This had quite some impact on our training intensity. But anyway, Manfred started to camp overnight with the dogs. Three weeks before the race, we got help for the preparations. Hans-Jürgen Ebert sent his son's girlfriend Nadine with his 3 most-usable dogs to our place to give them the finishing touch for the race. Hans-Jürgen wanted to re-run this race, that he could not finish the year before. Three of our dogs were assigned to complete his limited team (i.e. 6 dog). 

Based on our original Alka-Shan mid-distance sled, his son Falk (a very talented joiner and carpenter) had built two brand new, modified long-distance sleds for Nadine and Manfred. He knew that Manfred goes with tradition on such races (actually the reason is not tradition, but the fact, that a wooden basket sled can nearly always be rebuilt with on-board tools). Nadine had created the sledbag with some interesting features. Many thanks to both of them!
Those three weeks flew by with packing and re-packing the sled load, training runs, camp-outs and last but not least sewing additional booties and blankets (thanks again to Nadine) for the dogs.

At the start of the race, our team had about 1500 km under their paws, not even close to what we had planned on. Three dogs in Hans-Jürgen's team didn't even come close to that. On account of the on-going diarrhea-story, our dogs were in our opinion underweight. Dogs with insufficient body fat can't store enough water for a certain performance level. Also the weather on race-day was decidedly mild, with only -4 Celsius and light snowfall. Based on that, we adjusted the strategy for the first leg to a slow start, then after about 80 km a break of three hours minimum. After 34 km (first dog drop possibility), Manfred had to take one dog with severe diarrhea off his team. This supported our strategy. The remaining dogs were looking fine at this point. During the scheduled stop-over, Manfred and Hans-Jürgen were going to give the dogs a warm meat soup and some energy snacks. In the evening the light snowfall turned into a snowstorm that delivered in three hours 30 cm of snow in the valley and up to 50 cm in the mountains. Due to the long rest, Manfred had to drive through the storm and did not arrive at the checkpoint before 11 pm. Just 4 km before reaching the checkpoint he missed a turn when digging something out of the sled bag and added a little extra uphill sidetrip of 8 km. Despite the hard work, the teams looked ok, all dogs were eating the meat soup and the energy snacks. Manfred prepared some expedition food (freeze dried curry chicken) and tea for himself and put up his tent, because it was still snowing hard. He wanted to get up at 4 am in order to leave at 5 am, when his mandatory layover was finished. I was sleeping in our van and set the alarm clock, just to make sure.
When I checked on him, he had the tent already packed. The water for the dog soup and for his tea was boiling, while he stowed away the dog blankets in the sled bag. As he started booting his dogs, I went to the Vet to get clearance for the departure. Each driver has to make sure, that his arrival is signed by the official checker and that his departure is cleared and signed as well. Manfred took a second dog off his team, that was not moving clear. After the vet-check I lead the team to the trail and it disappeared in the darkness for the second leg. After nine hours through deep snow Manfred arrived at the checkpoint Off-Road around 3 pm. When climbing up to the highest point of the race, there was dense fog above the tree line. Crossing the pass and now descending, the sun came out and now the temperatures climbed, four to five Celsius above freezing. The 40 to 50 cm of freshly fallen snow got more and more wet and heavy. Manfred had just stopped for snacking the dogs every hour and for to sign in and out by the checker on the mountain. Hans-Jürgen had his dogs rest a few hours in a valley, 3 kilometers before reaching the mountain checkpoint (Lövhögen). This paid off for his 5-dog-team, as he had to drop one dog in Off-Road, which was lame. He arrived at Off-Road with 5 good looking dogs in the late afternoon. 

After this energy consuming second leg, several of the teams had to quit. According to our strategy, the dogs should now take a five hour rest. They got their blankets, soup and snacks. Manfred reduced his team now to eight dogs. Two weak ones were taken off and send to their boxes in our dog truck. Bathing in golden sunlight, the scenery looked and felt really peaceful this late afternoon, tempting a few mushers into talking. Unfortunately Manfred forgot to go to sleep, which was going to show during the next night. When the team left at 8 pm, the thermometer showed -8 Celsius. Luckily Manfred had changed his wet boots against dry mukluks. I crawled in my sleeping bag in the van and after some time started to get cold. Storm was howling over the roof, when I looked at the thermometer. We had now -20 Celsius. I started the van and let it idle for a while, because without electricity to plug in the engine heater, I was afraid that our diesel would not start anymore. I was expecting the team around 5 am. We had now -26 Celsius, and Manfred was off schedule. Just in that moment the Norwegian team of Frode Bakke, which had started behind him, came in. When I asked Frode, if he had seen Manfred, he rolled his tired eyes and shrugged his shoulders. My suspicion, that Manfred might have taken another wrong turn, proved to be unbased, when he came in an hour later with a screaming dog team and had his sled bag checked. During the night in wide open forest Manfred had overtaken the team in front of him, with calm weather and light from a half moon. Then the wind picked up and the trail went. His leaders had to find and break trail for the next hours. After repeatedly falling asleep for just seconds on the sled he had to make up his mind on either continuing or having a rest. With his contact lenses and no glasses for reading he could neither check the map nor use the GPS to determine his position. In order to play it safe, shortly after 1 am, he opted to sleep for an hour. He stopped at a windshelter just 20 m of the trail, put the blankets on the dogs and pulled the booties of. He set his alarm clock and crept in the sleeping bag at 2 am. At 3 am he went up, bootied and snacked the dogs, took the blankets of and convinced them to start moving. After only 4 km he reached the home trail (from the leg before) and the dogs started to lope the remaining 20 km to the checkpoint.

From Off-Road to the finish line (about 5 km) the teams have to depart one last time to reach the Finish, (same beginning as on leg 3, testing the dog's spirit). On this bitter-cold morning, a sleep-deprived, but pleased musher and his team were driving towards the finish line, when the first rays of sunshine touched the lake, making the frosted bushes on the shore sparkle. His conclusion was "I like it and will do it again next year, hopefully a little better." Hans-Jürgen reached the finish line at 3 pm. He was in an euphoric mood, praising his dogs, their spirit and willingness to perform.

If any Musher is interested in this race and wants more information, feel free to contact us.