Bees off snow

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-