Thursday is Iditarod meeting day at the Lakefront Hotel, formerly Millennium Hotel. It begins with Assistant Race Director Joanne Potts, who is also the honorary Musher of Iditarod 44, doing the roll call, to make sure all 85 mushers are present. Race Marshal Mark Nordman introduces his crew of races judges, the main principal sponsors have a chance to speak and head Veterinarian Stu Nelson addresses the mushers. Outside the official Iditarod photographer Jeff Schultz is taking pictures of each musher for any official publication.
It is fun looking around the room. 85 Mushers. Who will be to Nome first? Who will have their dreams come to an end prematurely and scratch? Are they all really ready? Plenty of stories are going around, some mushers who have trained down south seemed to have better training conditions than Alaskan mushers from the MatSu Valley. Rick Casillo who runs Battledawgs Kennel commented on how he had to live on the road again this season, in order to find snow. Rick ran the Northern Lights 300 and Denali Doubles “ as warmup “ and did very well in both races, specially with a second place finish in the Northern Lights, less than a minute behind local favorite Ryan Redington. The best training for racing is racing some might argue, yet the current race Champion Dallas Seavey has stayed away from the pre-race season leading up to Iditarod.
Others like Michelle Philips and Ken Anderson are exchanging stories of working with racing trainees. The challenges which come with getting people, who come from a whole different walk of life, usually a city life, to the starting line of a race. Oh the stories we can swap, as I have quite a few experiences with the subject “ race clients “ myself. People who one day hope to sit in this room, having earned the privilege of driving 16 dogs to Nome.
Sebastian
