Weather

    The weather remains warm. The trail needs to be groomed with our steel groomer. The helper went out and ran around the trail with the groomer to shave the ice off the top. This was yesterday. Today we had another warm day so I don't know how the trail is. It started to snow while we were driving home later this afternoon. It has cooled off a bit but not much. The snow will make a world of difference as it will freeze on top of any ice that was left on top of the trail.  Once snow freezes on top it makes a surface that the dogs can run on without slipping.

   Ben and Rachel kept their teams off the trail while it has been warm. The surface of the trail has been soft so it was better to stay off. Ben and Rachel's teams can wait until the weather stabilizes a little. We have been doing our best to keep any dog foot punch holes out of the surface so when it does freeze again we don't have to fill all the holes in. When the trail freezes with punch holes in the surface the dogs can really hurt themselves by stepping in the holes while running 20 mph. We do our best to keep it safe. Training at home is a real poor time to injure the dogs. If it is going to happen better it happens in a race not at home training. 

  Ben and Rachel will have their work cut out by culling all the slowest dogs from their teams. This is not easy because some of the dogs are only .5 mph too slow. The dogs do let you know when they are not comfortable at those speeds. Ben and Rachel will then sell those dogs to friends that are racing else where. If their friends do not buy them then some go to local long distance racers. The money that they can make from their dogs go into some expenses for this years racing or next years racing. 

  The next training runs will involve intravel training, some slower average runs about 85 percent of their max. speed. Then some fast runs trying to keep the average speed near 18-19 mph. During the higher average speeds the GPS comes back with speeds spiking around 23-26 mph. These speeds are too fast to make the dogs maintain but Ben and Rachel find a way to go that fast. Once the speeds average in the area of 18-19 mph it is easy to see which dog cannot make the team. 

  It has been worrisome to see the weather turn so warm but I think the forecast is correct and it will snow and cool off.  Ben and Rachel can continue where they left off in their training without too much negative effect on their teams. We will keep you posted. That is all 4 now.