SHAYTAAN SIBERIAN HUSKIES       

Happy are those that dream dreams and are ready to 

pay the price to make them come true - Leon J. Suenes

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L'Odyssée Appalachienne 2010

L’Odyssee 2010 was the best of times, it was the worst of times, wow what a great opening line, I bet others had wished they had thought of that – better get it copyrighted – quick.

Anyhoo, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, a real tale of two ditties, I had great expectations for this race but, as always, there was a bit of a twist and we fell on hard times; there was to be no thoroughfare to the winners rostrum just the bleak house that is last place. Our Mutual Friend, lady luck, was not shining on us, I had hunted down victory but our hopes had gone astray, the story of the British Lion was much more the song of the wreck. But as a boys story is the best that is ever told and a day wasted on others is not wasted on one’s self, bring in the bottled lightening, a clean tumbler and a corkscrew and read about another battle of life. Okay enough of being a Dick…ensian and on with the story.

The 2010 L’Odyssee was a bit of a comedy of errors, a real love’s labour lost you could say although probably much ado about nothing – sorry I shall desist. Although in reality the race really was a winter’s tale that turned into a bit of a Richard the Third.

Although we shouldn’t have favourites, and I enjoy all the races we attend, L’Odyssee really is my favourite race of the year, and to squeeze in one more Dickensian phrase, I really must eulogize large and big up this the main event, innit – good ol’ Charlie he knew how to capture a mood. The organizers and volunteers are amazing and work so hard to make sure each and every musher feels special. The people of Saint-Pamphile who come out in huge numbers to offer never ending support are just so appreciative; from the time you get to the race site until the last musher is across the line we always have a crowd of people around the dogs, asking questions, hugging and petting the dogs, taking photographs. For some reason, perhaps because it is still in its relative infancy, the whole weekend just feels comfortable and special. Do you get the idea that I like this race – it is, was and will be again the best of times.

However, as my experiences of two years hence will confirm, it can also be the worst of times, exaggeratively speaking (and with a certain amount of adverbial inventorisation). Not since an MP had said ‘Look I have a couple of spare luncheon vouchers, how about popping round to Cynthia Payne’s for a quick nibble’ had someone been expecting such an arse whooping in the name of pleasure as I was in entering into this race. Racing in Quebec is always a lesson in speed, or should I say a lesson in others’ speed versus my own slowness. I don’t know how they do it but the Quebec mushers, one and all, are just so fast. I had entered the 10 dog, 25 mile race, ignoring the safer option of running in the pure-breed class (but don’t get me started on that old Aryan chestnut), safe in the knowledge that I was going to come in last. In the days leading up to the race I kept looking at the list of competitors and my fears were not getting assuaged – only 4 had entered: M. Cooke, Sylvain Voyer (winner of the 2009 Can Am 60, and in doing so had bettered M. Cooke’s 60 mile time by over three hours), a second team from St-Donat-de-Rimouski, that I could only assume were Sylvain’s second stream, and Jacques Trottier, a musher I had not raced against before but who had kicked butt at Daaquam and so was not going to be a push over. However fourth would be OK and would result in a decent slice of the purse – not that we normally consider such things – being at a race in order to earn a lantern in red is always more important than sitting at home with a bank account in the black. Imagine then my shear glee when I walked into the auditorium in Saint-Pamphile for the musher’s meeting and where they should only have been four, the room was full, and with a distinct Quebec feel about it: le lantern would still be rouge but the compensation not quite so laissez-faire but a great deal more unfair. However I am getting ahead of myself here and as it is very rare for me to get ahead of anyone or anything I had better take a step back.

We had actually been having a reasonable winter in terms of racing and training. We had started out the winter with 24 dogs in training however due to a late start to training, as a result of the kennel relocation, we had planned on training for and racing at 30 mile events only. In previous years I felt I had put too much pressure on both the dogs and myself trying to run over distances that we just weren’t prepared for so this winter we would be taking a kind of mushing sabbatical, to use what must be  a good Christian word. I figured that we could take things fairly easy, building up the miles slowly yet still having a lot of 30 mile runs under our belts before the Can Am. Although we did go into the Eagle Lake 30 in January grossly under-miled, things had started to go to plan as we moved towards February and in the weeks leading up to L’Odyssee we put in some good performances in both racing and training. This, however, was not going to boost confidence or ego as I knew that we were still going to come in last in Saint-Pamphile. I was predicting that over the two days of racing I would be around 1 ½ HOURS behind the next competitor and it is sad to say that my prediction turned out to be positively Nostradamus-like in its accuracy, not that you needed any prescience to reach such a conclusion, just an ability to understand what an arse I am when it comes to running dogs. Not to be dissuaded by the totally predictable outcome, I was determined that we would do our best, pace ourselves over the two days and have a bloody good time in process, dogs and musher alike. Yes, my sixth sense really isn’t that good; must be an age thing as all my other senses, including common it would seem, are also all beginning to be less effective as the years slip by.

Having learnt a travel lesson from Greenville of two weeks previous (like I am ever going to learn a lesson as long as I try to keep that bloody van on the road), I decided that I would set off in the rejuvenated van early on Saturday morning with the aim of being in Saint-Pamphille in good time for the 0930 musher’s meeting, having spent the previous night at home keeping myself and the van nice and warm and stoked up on gin and tonic – perhaps that is why the van isn’t running so well! Having not learnt my lesson about listening to mechanics who advise against driving the van when it is quite obviously on the verge of some sort of a collective, mass breakdown (van = mechanical = me = mental) it was with a huge sense of relief that I pulled into the car park of l’ecole Saint-Pamphile on time, in good spirits and with a van that was, well lets say, not terminal - yet. Even being greeted by much ribaldry, irony and sarcasmy from my fellow ‘competitors’ who took great pleasure in informing me that I was famous as my grotesque mug was adorning all race promotional paraphernalia, could not dampen my mood. I swaggered off in order to register and partake of the mushers’ meeting, possibly signing a few autographs en route if the mood would so take me (and if I could harangue anyone enough to get them to ask for my autograph).

A positive veteran of L’Odyssee, I settled into the auditorium, surrounded by many more mushers that had been registered the previous evening (I could see purse dollars figuratively slipping away before my very eyes) and readied myself for a meeting conducted entirely en francais interspersed with much Gallic chortling, a nod of a head in my direction and the briefest of brief translations normally along the lines of ‘they are discussing a snowmobile trail that has caused a few people to go wrong in the 12 mile race this morning but don’t you worry about it; just you remember the Plains of Abraham and you’ll be OK’. My limited french vocabularlary detected that a lot of discussion seemed to be around the route that the race would take, not surprising really for a mushers’ meeting, however not wishing to tax my personal translator too much, I looked at the map on the stage and just asked if it followed the same course as last year – “oui”; I mentally shut down (if such a thing is possible for quite such a dullard), confident that I could remember the way from last year and that any surprises would be a pleasant distraction from my back of the pack stupor (as things turned out stupid would be a better word to use). 

Meeting complete and with a little under 4 hours until my allotted start time (I was second off and so in line for an awful lot of being passed), I returned to the car park to relax with the dogs and watch the remainder of the earlier races finish whilst discussing the pros and cons of Disney Siberians versus working Siberians and in particular Jim the Siberian as opposed to Jim the dalmation/collie/alaskan (a long story that is better being long forgotten than long in the telling).

As start time approached I assured any of my fellow competitors who could understand my speech, or at least could be bothered to understand my drivel, that our dogs are very experienced at being passed but if they had any issues to just call ‘trail’ and I would pull over and stop – ever the concerned back of the packer. Then before I knew it, and with all going swimmingly so little to report, we were in the start chute and away. As stated earlier my plan had always been to pace the team so that we would put in strong performances on both days; unfortunately I very quickly became gripped by two devils. First was the aforementioned knowledge of the trail; I remembered from the previous year that the first couple of miles are pretty narrow with limited space for passing so I really wanted to clear that section as soon as possible so as not to hold up any of the real competitors. Secondly, and the devil that I should really have controlled if only I believed in devils, which obviously I don’t, and I am not broaching that ‘belief theme’ again anyway, was the fear of not wanting to be massively embarrassed by being so far behind everyone else. So as we flew out of the start chute and down the trail all thoughts of pacing slipped from my mind. We cleared the first narrow stretch of trail without being passed, part one of the plan complete. Unfortunately I was enjoying the speed and so failed to slow the dogs down when we hit the wider trails. As more and more teams passed me I became more and more mentally caught up in their speed and so instead of slowing the dogs down, like the idiot I am I pushed them on ever faster. Passing through 8 miles we were still ‘cruising’ at around 13mph – far too fast. My speed induced hypnosis psychosis was only broken for a moment as Sylvain Voyer, the first musher out, passed us head on traveling in the opposite direction. Well he would be going in the opposite direction I suppose, I mean you are not going to be passed head on by a team going in the same direction are you, unless you are going in reverse and, well, frankly that would just be too silly to even contemplate; so not being silly I shall stop contemplating. As he had passed me head on I started to wonder where either he or I could possibly have gone wrong, the map on the stage at the mushers’ meeting had quite clearly indicated a loop as opposed to an ‘out and back’ and hadn’t I asked if this was being run on the same course as last year so there really shouldn’t have been any head on passing. However before I had chance to reflect any further, or even think about turning round, more and more teams passed us head on and not one of them seemed surprised to see me neither going in the opposite direction nor going in reverse. Quite obviously I should have paid more attention at the meeting or even requested a more lengthy translation; this was undoubtedly an out and back trail. Oh well no harm done and it was more head on passing practice for Ammo who is/was fast becoming my main ‘go to’ leader.

As we came out of the small loop that marked the turn at half way on this now definitely out and back trail we were overtaken by the last team on the trail, Diane Marquis, another respected and very fast Quebec musher; our average speed dipped below 12 mph. However with only a little over 11 miles to go, and now knowing that the trail was relatively flat, barring a disaster or the team (understandably) quitting on me we were still going to finish the day at a respectable pace. Perhaps this would be a good time to slow the team down and begin pacing myself – on I pushed.

As we came back onto the narrow section of trail that marked the first and last two miles of the race we were still traveling at a good speed however I started to suspect that Dawson was holding back on some of the downhill’s as the remainder of the team picked up speed. This was unusual as he has always been able to keep up with the team no matter what speed we have been traveling at. Dawson however, the brother of the sadly late Yukon, was even more under-miled than the remainder of the dogs. Having had bad stress diarrhea which had contained a lot of  blood, whilst on a training run back in December, I had rested Dawson for over three weeks, concerned and scared that Yukon’s condition may have been genetic and/or hereditary and not wanting to risk Dawson’s health in any way at all. Those three weeks off ensured he missed at least 250 miles of training. We had a problem however in that we were aiming to enter two teams in the Can Am 30 in a couple of weeks time which meant we needed 12 fully fit and healthy dogs. As such I wanted as many race experienced dogs available as possible to be able to select the two teams from. Furthermore Dawson had been showing an awful lot of promise in training and I felt that he had potential to be a real asset on either team at the Can Am. However as Dawson can be quite a nervous boy, I felt that before he was subjected to the huge crowds and high degrees of stress that greet the start of the Can Am then he needed to get some race experience elsewhere. His lack of miles had precluded him from running at Brownville or Greenville so L’Odyssee really was the only option if he was to be in with a chance to make it to Fort Kent. Having said all this a two day, 22 mile sprint probably wasn’t the best place for Dawson to begin his race career. I cannot even claim that hindsight is a good thing in this situation because on the Wednesday leading up to L’Odyssee Louise and I had discussed his relative lack of miles and whether or not this was a good ‘first’ race for Dawson; hindsight doesn’t come into it, we knew I was taking a risk by running him at L’Odyssee. The conclusion to the conversation was that I would keep a close eye on him over the weekend and leave him in the van on the second day of the race if I felt he wasn’t up to it.

Even with Dawson holding back a bit over those final few miles we still crossed the finish line with an average of 10.5 mph for the 22+ miles. Although 31minutes behind the next team, I was still happy with our overall performance; at the back of my mind however I knew we would pay the penalty the next day.

Having spent Saturday night out in the Quebec bush staying in a palatial ‘cabin’ that made even Alex and Lucille’s camp look like…well a camp (see the Greenville story), I rose early (to make sure that I had time to get the van started) and made my way back into Saint Pamphile for breakfast. As the 13 mile and 45 mile races were starting out of town, and as the 120 mile mushers had been finishing their race throughout the night, the rest of the town seemed bereft of mushers. I dined alone, although still surrounded by a strangely alien french babble, and wandered up towards the race site to get a good parking/stake out position for the day. Seeing that there were still a few dog trucks in the ‘120 car park’ I pulled in to try to ascertain who had won the long race. Stopping to chat with Bob and Rhonda O’Hearn I was sad, and shocked, to hear some of the issues that Bob had had during the night and in particular nearly losing his team on the ploughed road when trying to bag a couple of dogs. All the L’Odyssee races run along this road and so I knew that there was little or no opportunity to ‘hook down’ if you had a problem; I was just glad, and hopeful, that I didn’t, or wouldn’t, have a similar problem (the Nostradamus effect tends to be very short lived, or even short-sighted but see above for the effect age may be having).

The remainder of the Sunday morning leading up to my start time was spend discussing, and fretting over Dawson. I was hoping that he had maybe hurt a paw and that by booting him he would be fine but in reality I knew deep down that he probably had a shoulder injury. Unable to find anything, and again gripped by the desire to get round the trail as fast as I could, I made the foolish decision to run Dawson on the second day, totally going against the position that Louise and I had previously agreed on.

Straight out of the start chute I could see that Dawson wasn’t happy. Despite the speed of the previous day’s run the remainder of the team were still really pumped up and set off as they had finished the previous day – at speed; Dawson wasn’t coping at all well. As the first ¼ mile more or less circumnavigated the car park I considered stopping to leave Dawson in the van. As common sense really had taken an all-inclusive vacation away from Robertsville I decided to press on regardless, secure in the knowledge that I could stop and bag Dawson if I had to.

Subject to reverse seeding on the second day, and so last one out in my class, I didn’t have the worry of being overtaken on the second day but I was going to suffer the ignominy, or should that be agony, of crossing the finish line a long time after everyone else had finished. I recalled on a number of occasions over that weekend two years previous waiting for what seemed like hours for Louise to cross the finish line. This year the good people of Saint-Pamphile would be waiting for me. Even though I was having to keep the speed of the team down in order to accommodate a continuing to struggle Dawson, by working out how far I had traveled each time I was passed head on by another team , I worked at that in relative terms I wasn’t that much further off the pace than I had been on the previous day. Buoyed up by this knowledge we completed the loop that marked half-way traveling at a reasonable pace, but as we recrossed the main road to run for home Dawson decided that enough was enough and he slowed to a stop. Wondering if the boots were bothering him, I peeled them off and set off again but within 100 yards he stopped again. With no other option, but knowing that I was asking for trouble by attempting to bag such a highly strung dog, I managed to wrestle Dawson into the bag and attached him to the ring in the bag. He quite obviously wasn’t going to settle so I tried to completely do up the zipper on the bag hoping that if he couldn’t see what was going on then he may settle – no such luck. We wrestled with each other for the next 6 miles, much to the amusement of every marshal point we passed, until eventually, and inevitably, on the infamous ploughed road Dawson decided to get out of the sled bag when the rest of the team stopped, and subsequently tangled, to eat some snacks that another musher had so very kindly left right in the middle of the trail. Having fixed the tangle and straightened out the team I got back onto the runners just in time to watch Dawson get out of the bag. This was the moment that the hook that was precariously, and barely, holding the team decided to pop and the team, fed up with all this standing around, set off at pace. As I tried to hold on to the sled, scoop Dawson up and reset the hook all at the same time I watched the very same hook bouncing around before me getting perilously close to planting itself into Dawson’s leg. With both feet, and all my weight, now on the brake I managed to slow the team enough so that the hook stopped its wild lambda; grabbing the hook I managed to just reach out far enough to force it into the snow bank. As Dawson was still attached to the sled bag, although now stood next to the sled, I picked him up and forced him back into the bag and off we went again. No more than ¼ mile down the road Ammo decided he would quite like to stop for a toilet break. Before I could react, and before the brake took effect on the ploughed road, we once again had a major tangle. I set one hook in the snow bank as best I could and kicked the other hook, infectively, into what remained of the ice and snow of the road. Running to the front of the team I was greeted by a Herculean tangle the likes of which I had never seen before. In stopping to dump, for want of a more salubrious phrase, Ammo with Eclipse alongside in lead had been passed by the swing dogs and the first set of team dogs. As soon as he finished what he was doing Ammo decided that it was time to go again so he passed over the lines of the team dogs, but now well and truly tangled with the team dogs he couldn’t get by the swing dogs, no matter how hard he tried. The hook in the snow bank popped and the team jumped forward thankfully causing the hook to catch again but it was enough that some of the dogs were now in serious danger of getting strangled by the lines. In absolute desperation I looked up to see Dawson getting back out of the bag – just what I needed. For the last ½ mile or so I had been followed, at a distance, by a snow machine; in an absolute panic as I tried to undo clasps without completely letting dogs loose I waved frantically for the guys on the machine to help me. By this point I didn’t care about disqualification for outside assistance or anything, I just cared about the dogs. The snow machine roared up, someone shouted something about ‘you OK’ and then without waiting for a reply roared on into the distance; surely it had been quite obvious that I really was not OK. As I watched the snow machine disappear into the distance I did shout something in response but it was lost in the noise of the engine and as I can’t remember the exact phrase I used perhaps I shouldn’t speculate now on what it might have been. I don’t know how I did it but all of a sudden the lead dogs were back at lead, the swing dogs were back swinging (although not literally I must add), the team dogs were teaming again and Dawson was stood next to the sled watching all these goings on with some bemusement. I decided that was enough was enough; as quickly as I could, out of fear of the snow hook popping again, I put Dawson back in the team and still muttering epithets and superlatives aimed at the snowmobilers, I set off once more along the trail. Thankfully that was about it for the excitement. Dawson was still unhappy running in the team but had come to realize that life was even worse in the bag near the idiot on the runners. The speed of the previous day and a half also took its toll on the other dogs and we slowed right down. Over the final 4 miles I tried 5 different leader combinations in order to try to perk things up but we were spent; 2 ½ hours after starting, and a full hour after the previous team, we crawled across the line to be greeted by the cheers of a huge crowd. Having a microphone thrust into my face, accompanied I must add by a copy of the L’Odyssee brochure with my face on the front, I could find very little to say but that I had had a horrible day and I had burnt the team out the previous day. Well and truly humbled we eased back to the van for a well earned rest and time to dust off the red lantern holder – I was a victor by a mere 1 ½ hours over the two days – Nostrodamus would have been impressed, although, I would imagine, not in the least bit surprised.

The rest of the day passed without issue and we even made it home in good time and without the van breaking down; time to begin preparing for the Can Am 30, our final race of the winter. Dawson definitely wouldn’t be making the short jaunt to Fort Kent now, but at least with Paris and Cassie coming back to full fitness I should have a squad of 14 full fit, healthy and well miled dogs to pick from and should be able to enter two strong teams. Should be I said.       

Rob