Hitting our stride ahead of dryland races

Hey, friends! Hope you all had a great week. We have some exciting things to share with you today!

First of all, we were able to purchase a mountain bike thanks to several generous donors!!! Thank you so much to those who supported these efforts! Right away, we raised the handlebars up a couple inches, added the dog antenna, and outfitted the bike with new, grippier pedals. It’s ready to roll (literally)! It is a Trek Marlin 6, for those who may be curious.

Temperatures have remained cool (even dropping below freezing a time or two), so we have had several more opportunities to run the dogs this week! After figuring out Boo’s displeasure of Pence wearing his harness, he’s been solid ever since!

Riley definitely had the most interesting run of the week, though…

We took the dogs to a local mountain bike trail for a change of scenery and to get some practice on grass/dirt which is more like what dryland race trails will consist of. They LOVED it.

Riley….was probably white knuckling it the whole way lol. Instead of staying on the “easy” trails, they accidentally ventured off onto one of the “expert” trails. The expert trails are much hillier, with steep drop offs, sharp curves, some boulders, and tree roots.

I tried to video our set up and pack up process, as well as various aspects of the run via my phone and a GoPro on Riley’s helmet. Today, we are opening up the video to EVERYONE, because it was a solid run, the course was technical, and the dogs had a blast. They ended up running about 2.4 miles, the longest training run yet. Check it out 👇 !

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Since the dogs have been running more, we’ve made some changes to their diets. We have to be more careful about when we feed them when they’re running. We make sure not to feed them right before a run, but make sure they’re hydrated. After the run is complete, we feed them a dinner consisting of their usual high performance dog kibble with the addition of raw chicken or raw pork.

One last update before we sign off for the week. We know a lot of people are wondering if we’ve figured out our race schedule yet. We are STILL super bummed that Doty is cancelled. We were holding out a sliver of hope that it would come back like last year, but unfortunately it did not.

We were interested in running the UP200 dryland race this past weekend, but it did not work out in our schedules. We were then considering the Almost Winter Dryland Dash in Minocqua, WI, which is now coupled with the North American championships. However, the race weekend required extra vaccinations, microchips, and multiple memberships to multiple organizations, they did not have a sport class (only pro class - which we aren’t), AND they say the course is not meant for entry level teams. All of that combined together steered us away from competing in it, but we would have loved to see all the top level teams from around the country compete there!

So, we are tentatively planning on running at Redpaw’s Dirty Dog Dryland Race in Pearson, Wisconsin the weekend of November 2-3! We have raced there once before, and it is a challenging, but fun course. Fingers crossed for dry weather this year!

If you can make it, we’d love to see you all there!

Also an FYI - if you were planning on attending the GLSDA Lost Pines race in Harrietta, Michigan this weekend, they have shortened the race due to warm afternoon temperatures. Half the classes will run on Saturday and the other half of the classes will run on Sunday.

I believe that covers everything for now! Catch you all next week!

-Hannah, Riley, Boo, and Pence