This being said, we had a great winter.  Sharing some pictures here.

Despite the circumstances, that Central Europe almost drowned in rain, we got buried in snow at our cabin near Särna, Sweden. Actually, our training was in a way influenced by global warming, as it was one of the mildest winters in history, reported in Scandinavia. According to the TV weather report, in 2008 the temperature was 5 Celsius above normal for the months of January and February.

Särna area is well known to be one of the coldest spots in Sweden. But this year, the temperature was hovering only around freezing point for several weeks. As one low pressure system followed another, it dumped snow on us almost every day, lots of snow and sometimes close to rain.

During these times our daily routine was basically: pushing the snow shovel for 1 to 2 hours in the morning, digging out the driveway, the kennels and dog houses. After this human workout, the trail needed to be opened up and groomed with the snowmobil for another 2 hours. Finally in the afternoon, we could  go out with the team for the necessary training runs. There were days, when the snow kept on falling and it meant for us to go out again at night with the snowmobile and press the white stuff down.

This efforts would not have been necessary if our training would have been for Polardistans 300 or 400 km. But Manfred had entered the three day MD race on the WC in Asarna as our   goal of the season.. This purebred Polardog highlight event of the year 2008 offered us the opportunity to see a large number of SH teams from the various countries, which seldom or never before competed together.

Despite our not always successful efforts to pack down the home trail, it was sometimes impossible to work the team on speed. Luckily this year we could enter four MD races, of which three had fairly well settled trails. It was pure joy for our dogs to find out, there are still well packed trails existing to run fast, besides the every day trail breaking at home.

Our home training  is more the type of conditioning a team, as we never push the dogs to go faster, in the hope to prevent injuries. Going to races becomes this way exciting for team and driver and offered the necessary speed work for the big event. This was not without risk, as speed is the factor to lame up dogs. This way we lost Don to a severe wrist injury in Nornäs, a two day 46 km race, as he must have stepped into a punched hole. Because his swollen wrist had to be medicated, I knew he would not be in the line up for Asarna. There would be random drug testing at the WC, and according to the swedish doping rules the dogs had to be off medication 4 weeks prior to the race.

14 days before WC in the NSHC Femunden race, the course again was  twice 46 km. Here we lamed up Patchouli and Moonlight, two other key dogs of the team. This way we had only 12 dogs left, no back-ups anymore. But we seemed not to be the only affected competitor. Tore Hunskar, the winning unlimited team in Femunden lost even more dogs due to his fast runs. He outperformed  Manfred by good 20 minutes over two days and I would have taken any bet that day, that he would become the new World Champion.

The remaining 10 days before WC, we spend some more time to make a race trail out of our home trail and we managed to run the team speedy but easy on well packed 48 km. It was kind of boring, but Asarna would give back excitement to us at it’s best.

As we inspected the starting list and the parking area on Thursday, it was for sure to become a mega event, with more than 250 teams entered. I was amazed by the huge parking area the organization had bulldozed and put into sections for the various countries. Start and Finish area were roomy laid out as usual, but the 5 large Sami-tents gave the area a special flair. As we attend this race almost every year, we knew about the procedure of the vet check and the thorough inspection of the dogs.  For many Central European mushers it was new in this way, also especially the more strict Swedish doping rules.

The first heat of the race was Friday morning. The MD teams were send out 8 o`clock in the morning, which I considered a great thing. The trail was hard and fast, packed down by a big “Pistenbully”, as it had been minus 6 Celsius over night. During the daily warm up the sprinters did find softer conditions later on, as the sun was shining bright.

Manfred went out first with his team of 12 dogs … and also came in first, his dogs having performed a flawless run. To my surprise, some of  the following hotshot teams were not on his heels and I was wondering myself what was holding them up. After all we had  8 year and 10 month old  leader Derby in front to set a steady pace, not busting brainless out of the chute. It became Derby’s day and the one of her team mates, as  in the end, they were leading by about 12 min (results day one).

To make a long story short, the time gap allowed Manfred to run the other two heats careful enough, not to risk loading any dogs. As the course is the last 12 km more or less all uphill, he and the team still had enough energy to run away from his competitors, who were chasing him like a rabbit. His goal to go out every day first and come in first he did accomplish after three exiting days of racing (results day two and total).

Line up the first day was Derby and Lemmon, Poka and Lima, Iron and Dallas, Limit and Howdye, Enia and Pumkin, Hot-Shot and Hexe, the average age of the dogs was 6 years and one month.

A Thank You to our 4-legged athletes, to our sponsor HappyDog, and last but not least to all our friends which gave us a hand in training or racing or a place to stay.

Monday morning we drove back to start packing up to go home to Germany. While on Monday it started to rain and snow, by Tuesday it was plain rain and during the night it kept on pouring down. Wednesday was the start of Polardistans 300 and 400 for the Siberian-Husky teams. The Pulka class, Greenland Dog, Malemute and Samoyed  teams had already started the day before. It was sad to see the trail turning into ice, slush, and water. I felt sorry for all those people of the race organization, spending numerous hours of work, they deserve a somehow stable winter and a positive experience to keep on being involved.

Have a good summer and see you next winter.