We
normally don’t participate on off snow races, because our goal is on longer
distances, and off snow races don’t fit our training programs. This year
however we made an exception, because we found a brave musher to drive our
dogs: Erkki Byrkland from kennel Lumikiisan. He volunteered to drive our team
in two races, Ohkola and Jämi. Neither me nor Suvi are brave enough to drive our
wild strong bunch off snow without a sturdy heavy fourwheeler.
We
made no changes to our training, even with the race plans. I’m driving the 11
dog team with long distance races in mind, so training kilometers are longer and
slower than those in Ohkola and Jämi. Erkki drove his own team in 8 dogs class
on both races, and then drove our dogs on 4 dog class afterwards. On both occations
our team was the two B-litter’s, Benny and Beck in lead with Pimu and Putte in
wheel. Erkki had met our dogs once, when we visited kennel Lumikiisan a couple
of weeks before the first race in Ohkola. He drove the dogs once then to see
them in action. And then there was the races.
Ohkola
race was held in September 29th – 30th. There were 6 teams on 4 dog class, five
of which were Siberians, driving 2 x 4,1km distance. Antti Mäkiaho from kennelMcAhon, drove his own first racing team, being the fastest Siberians. He shared
the 1st position with a team of hound mixes, having the exact same finishing time.
Teemu Kaivola drove Antti’s second team and was second in the race. Erkki with
our team did quite well, finishing fourth, with the average speed of 28,17km/h.
Full results of the race can be read on L-SVU website.
Jämi
race, held in October 13th -14th, was the Finnish Championship race of the
Finnish Sleddog Sport Federation. The race being a championship race, there
were more teams participating this time, 19 altogether. I hadn’t prepared the
dogs for the race, I had to train them normally the whole week. They got a free
Friday, but on Tuesday and Thursday I had trained quite hard with 20km runs on
both days on a four wheeler. I was a bit afraid I had trained them too heavily,
for them to run smoothly and fast enough. But the B-bunch had recovered well
from the training and had a nice relaxed run. Erkki and Bs finished 6th on the
race, but being the fastest Siberian team. On the 2 x 4,2km distance, the average
speed was 28,88km/h. Full results for the race can be read also on L-SVU website.
Thanks
to our visiting musher for the nice results! We hadn’t had any official
Siberian results for Finnish kennel club for some years, because usually our Siberians run together with Alaskans. Now the Bs got REK1 from Jämi.
Start on Saturday. Photo by Jutta Venhola. |
-Kati-