Training report

Training goes forward, with the A team about ready to jump up in miles. We like to do a couple of hard runs, with the dogs pulling the wheeler the whole way without help. When they come in looking good, then we up the mileage by a few miles. We alternate between hard, pulling runs and interval runs, where they speed up, then slow down, then pull hard, then run along. All of these are important for conditioning and muscling the dogs. Too much heavy work, and the dogs bulk up, slowing them down. Too much speed work, and the dogs don't build the muscles/endurance they need for the hill work or hard pulling they will see on races. It's imperative that the musher try to present every possible scenario that the team will see on a race; that way, the dogs (and musher!) are prepared for what's to come.

Manny has been rotating leaders in and out on each run. Yesterday, Dusk and Just took a turn in lead, working well and pulling hard together. Today, the B team goes out and I think he's planning on running Dutchess with Munchkin, or Riley, or Torus, or ? ? ? I'll find out later. ;o) Next run for the A team (if there's time today), he wants to put Sunshine in lead to see how he'll do. He was super slow last year, compared to our other leaders...so we'll see. Sunshine handles any speed in the team but tends to slow down in lead. Weird, but true. Temps are about 37F today...pretty warm. So, I imagine that the B team will be S-L-O-W. However, our trails have been groomed by our local sprint musher (Thanks, Mike!), so the dogs will now be running on hard, fast trail. Good training all around.

We've been discussing our kennel name and have decided to revert back to our original name, "Rogue Summit Kennel". We changed it upon moving to Alaska/Two Rivers...as there weren't any "summits" close-by. Our name derived from one of our first huskies, a beautiful red & white siberian named Rogue. He was a fantastic dog, a good friend and a good sled dog. Sadly, he passed away on the operating table, after a routine surgery. It broke our hearts, as Rogue was like one of our children. So, due to the combination of losing our guy and moving from the Bitteroot Mountains to Two Rivers, Alaska; we changed to Running Swift Kennel. However, now we've started seeing are a LOT of kennels with the "Running" theme. Also, we'd like to remember our good buddy, Rogue and at times, we feel like "rogues" ourselves. ;o) So, I'll slowly be switching our kennel name back to the original "Rogue Summit". Bear with me though...there are a lot of places where I'll need to change it!

-Tammi