Speed Bumps

Where the heck have I been? It's been a while since adding to the blog, so I'll try to be better about keeping up. Things get a little crazy though!

So we've had a couple of speed bumps during the last few weeks. Running dogs and racing have taught me two invaluable lessons though, 1: patience and 2: obstacles are to be figured out, not allowed to dominate the situation.

Speed bump number 1: tweeked my back, dang. This sport seems to be done in the prone position most of the time. You bend over the pet dogs, bend over to feed dogs, bend over to check on dogs, bend over to bootie dogs, bend over to scoop poop... you get the idea. So I had to rest a little, a bit of ice, and the following (especially drinking more water):

It seems that everyone in this sport has a bad back. I just need to work smarter, not harder. I'm one of those 'strong back, weak mind' sometimes. So I'm coming up with little tricks around the yard to make things easier and not dependent on me bending over.

I'm doing much better now, almost normal. Back to training dogs. Also back on the 4 wheel. We haven't received any new snow since that storm a month or so ago and the ground is starting to show.

Speed bump number 2: Mr. Snake, who was doing fantastic, had a seizure during a run. Seizures in dogs aren't an unusual thing at all, but one should not (and cannot) take a dog to Iditarod that may have a seizure. He's quite fine and just wants to get back to training; but he will have to go back to my friend Bob who runs recreationally. He'll probably never have another one again! So the biggest, strongest dog gets to go on semi-holiday, even though I'm sure he'd prefer to work for a living. Dang.

Speed bump number 3: The first race of the season, The Sheep Mountain 150, was cancelled due to lack of snow. I suppose the lack of snow is more disconcerting to me than the race being cancelled (it's Alaska in December, we're suppose to have snow); but the race cancellation is a bummer also. I was going to run the 2 year olds, just as a series of training runs. But we will just have to arrange some camping trips in the White Mtns to teach the punks how to rest and camp between runs.

None of the speed bumps are serious. My path is still in the same direction, and I'm sure I'll have many bumps along the way and will certainly have some big speed bumps in the race! Now I'm just back to training for the next race, which is the Copper Basin 300. This is a very, very tough race. I'm looking forward to the challenge.