After a gourmet meal and a good rest, we’re off down the trail again. If you recently read my story, Routine Rest, you have a pretty good idea about what the “rest” part of our run/rest schedule looks like. So, I’ll bet you’re curious about the “run” part of the run/rest schedule.

Just like students, dogs enjoy and look forward to snacks. The usual six-hour run is broken up with snack breaks. Every musher has a system for snacking. Martin Buser divides the 6-hour run time in half and stops to snack the dogs 3 hours into the run. Other mushers choose to go heavier on the snacks, snacking after 2.5 hours and every hour there after until reaching the next checkpoint. Still others, namely Lance Mackey, are adamant about snacking every 1.5 hours.

Snacking really depends on the weather, the colder it is, the more snacks the dogs receive. These snacks are valuable sources of both calories and water. Most often the snacks are frozen fish (salmon or white fish) or frozen meat (beaver, mink, venison, lamb, liver, ground beef, beef hearts or other ground meat). Not much time is lost in snacking. Stop, set the snow hook, locate the goodies, toss a couple of pieces to each dog while walking up to the leaders, give a little love to each dog while walking back to the sled, pull the snow hook and continue on down the trail.

Mushers are always watching the weight of their dogs during the race. Sled dogs and human marathon runners should be lean and muscular but NOT skinny. Looking at a dog, its ribs, backbone and hips shouldn’t be buried under layers of fat nor should they be sticking out or easy to see. Over weight athletes – dogs or humans – can get hurt from the effort of carrying extra weight. On the opposite side, underweight athletes will be strong at the beginning of the race but will slow down as the miles add up. Mushers will drop dogs that are getting too thin during the race. Whole teams have “scratched” because the dogs haven’t been able to maintain a healthy weight on their trail meals.

Stay tuned for more stories. Let PRIDE be your guide – Personal Responsibility in Daily Effort.

Born to Run,

Sanka W. Dog