From Gerry on the trail:
Steady wind with blowing snow had me worried last night about the trail conditions on the infamous Kemmerer trail. In addition, we have a number of dogs we have been working on with massage and ointments to keep them in the race. Most common are sore triceps muscles, possibly because we trained on our hard trails in Whitehorse all winter and are now quite often floundering in soft snow on top of a hard base. I brought Eider and Monster back into the team today; both did great, but Eider’s soreness came back slightly.
All in all I can feel tiredness in the team after a week of fast racing. I wasn’t able to give dogs days off as planned, as others had to sit several stages out due to injuries. The resulting 10th place on today’s stage has me now firmly in 7th overall, with a 45-minute lead over Al Borak in 8th. It’s nice to have a cushion, but they never seem big enough.
Tomorrow morning I will do a short test run with some of the question mark dogs, and then it’s off to the final stage of the Eukanuba Stage Stop race.
Gerry Willomitzer 