The 2013 Iditarod 2x champ Mitch Seavey is back to defend his position.   We have talked about the teams of Aliy Zirkle (her kennel just won another Yukon Quest to complete a long list of success), 4x Jeff King,2x  Norwegian champ Robert Sorlie, 1x Dallas Seavey, et al who have assembled to test Mitch and team.  

What about the team of Mitch Seavey?  Fortunately, I had a chance to talk to Mitch this afternoon about his team and race philosophy.   Like his son Dallas Seavey, Mitch feels the lack of snow, hard fast trail, some potential for monumental tangles and mishaps on particularly gnarly sections of trail, presents an opportunity to show case the team and their trained attributes.  He believes that training and preparation may enable him to gain an advantage on competitors that will struggle with trail conditions.  Specifically, he believes a trotting team like his will be more manageable and therefore easier to protect from trail injuries.

Mitch views his kennel as an expression of a genetic type, a sled dog that is a consistent, efficient metabolic marvel about 55 to 60 lbs, “big, brown and awesome.”  His kennel is big enough that he has the luxury of running all males,  which are normally somewhat bigger than the females in his particular line of sled dogs.   “I have a lot of them,” Mitch explained, and went on to describe how he visualizes to train and prepare them for an Iditarod.  

Seven of the ten finishers from his 2013 team will be represented in the 2014 line up, giving the team a mature core.   Amongst them he mentions Tanner, his spectacular leader that brought his team to the Nome finish  .  Having said that, he thinks that two eight year old brothers,  Gumbo and Kosher, are actually the best leaders for this year’s Alaska Range traverse.  “I have an absolute understanding with these two dogs.  They know what i am thinking before I say it.”   Intelligent and experienced, Mitch believes they will lead across the Range at a moderate trot.   Arriving in Rohn, for example, on the N. side of the range, it may be true that some teams show faster trail times,but he is convinced that his team will be well preserved, running entirely with in themselves.   This stored energy will be utilized further up the trail.

Further,  he has seven three year olds in the team.  Of these, five are leaders, very athletic and bold.   “It scares me to think about putting them up front in the front of the race”  referring to the speeds and acceleration produced even at their trained gait, a trot.

What to do with Tanner and the super star three year olds who do not understand long term thinking, reservation, prudence, and common sense?   They will be buried in the middle of the team, anonymous, unheralded, ignored, where, hopefully, they will behave and settle into the easy ground covering efficient trot of Gumbo and Kosher, the intelligent masters.  

In this way, Mitch tells me, the three year olds will be covered by an insurance policy.  “Eight out of ten, or better, will make it to Nome if we let the older dogs set the pace.”

This produces a strange irony.  It may be that the best teams will arrive in Rohn on the n. side of the Alaska Range with slow times, while teams destined to fade later in the race will be at the top of the checkpoint time lists.   This is an important consideration for the ardent fan who may not appreciate that preserving the integrity of the team is as important as raw speed.

When do you consider unleashing Tanner and the brown furred three year old leaders?  As the team melds into a reasonable travel speed, especially on trails in the great Yukon River Basin (middle of the race) Mitch will wake up the leaders forgotten in the middle of the team and put them to the front.  Here we may see, as we did in 2013, the fastest team on the trail to be Mitch Seavey’s.

However, at the very center of Mitch Seavey’s philosophy is a committment to always preserve the core strength of the team.  In the final miles of the race from White Mountain to Nome on the Bering Sea coast, for example, we could find a knot of mushers.

Here , in this instance, is time to defend.  The lead may be only five minutes, or twenty minutes, or an hour, the race leader must defend a challenge.  In  a race that is a 1000 miles long and usually last nine days, it seems insignificant to discuss a small lead of ten or twenty or thirty minutes. But a lead that cannot be challenged is the basis of a Mitch Seavey philosophy.  To Mitch Seavey it is the cement wall he began building in the early days of the race when he preserved the energy of the team.  

If the lead team, such as the defending Seavey team, can hold off challengers and own a lead, then five minute or ten minutes becomes a thick cement wall a thousand foot tall.   “It doesnt matter what the lead is in the Iditarod at the end of the race, if you can keep it, it’s a cement wall. If you challenge and can’t make five minutes and pass, then the lead is a cement wall.  No one will ever know if a team could have done more, the lead is a cement wall.”

He did it in 2013, the Iditarod pack must prove him wrong in 2014