Why Riley will never run canicross again...

Happy Tuesday everyone! Hopefully you’re staying warm wherever you are, if you’re dealing with the same cold weather we are here in Indiana.

For today’s story, I (Riley) am going to walk you through my experience of participating in my first dryland mushing event at the 2021 Doty Dusty Dog Dryland Race. Hannah gave her recap last week, and mine is very similar in the fact that I ran canicross once and have decided to move on from that event forever.

Let me explain…

Don’t get me wrong, anything involving sled dogs and racing is fun, to a degree. I attended the 2020 Doty event and was hooked after seeing all the awesome dogs, incredible speed and the overall atmosphere of race weekend. So naturally, I wanted to participate myself.

Hannah ran in 2020 and I remember her telling me how hard it was, but being the competitive person I am, I thought to myself that I could handle it. I was in some of the best shape of my life since high school. I was running almost daily for a couple months leading up to Doty. I thought I was good to go, this would be a walk in the park. After all, I was running a couple miles each day. This was supposed to be less than two. Piece of cake.

Boy was I wrong.

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You may think you’re running fast when you’re training all by yourself. You can increase the speed on the treadmill and push it even harder on the street without pacing yourself. But neither of those prepared me for being pulled by a big, strong sled dog!

I ran with Spike. The definition of big and strong. (and no, I can’t go this entire newsletter without mentioning how awesomely large his noggin is too!) As Hannah mentioned last week, Spike was my favorite of the Bravermountain team right from beginning. And when I got to meet him in 2020 at Doty, I was even more obsessed. So naturally I wanted to run with him in my first race. Sorry, Boo, but you didn’t like me for a long time, so I had no other choice than to favorite another dog…

I thought Spike and I were going to CRUSH it! I really had high hopes. I was feeling good, and knowing how strong Spike is, I really thought he’d pull me to victory. But here’s the thing about running dogs solo, not in a mass start: not all sled dogs do great running by themselves. It’s no fault of theirs, they just aren’t used to not running with other dogs ahead of them. This is especially true of Spike, who is typically a wheel dog at the very back of the pack, always chasing the dogs in front of him.

You can see in the picture above that from the very start, he was a little distracted. Q and I prepped before running on how to try and keep him on task and pulling, but there’s only so much we can do before a race. After all, this was Spike’s first canicross event, too. With all the people at the starting chute and down the front straight away, I can’t blame Spike for getting distracted on his own.

But after we cleared the first 300 yards or so, Spike’s instincts kicked in. Out of nowhere, he started pulling like CRAZY! I legitimately thought he was going to pull me over and I was going to look like a fool. I kid you not, I was running at a full sprint, the fastest I had run since playing sports in high school, and maybe even faster. I might’ve underestimated the amount of strength he had…

After the first straight away, I was gassed. I had just full on sprinted for a quarter mile. I had definitely not trained that well. I was more so quickly jogging for my daily runs, never sprinting for prolonged distances.

This is where we got into trouble. After his initial distractions, Spike was dialed in and crushing it. However, I was struggling. I had to slow him down some (so I didn’t die…) and I think that really killed his momentum. When I slowed him down, he started to get distracted again.

There was a period when Spike was running only slightly ahead of me, the line not tight at all. I was relieved about the slower pace, but it wasn’t good for Spike. He was easily distracted and even spooked by people along the trail. I know it’s my fault, not being able to keep up with him.

I knew I had to recover and pick up the pace.

Once we cleared the hills, we started cruising again. I was able to speed up, and Spike took back over. I paced myself a little more, but still allowed Spike to lead and pull. It was actually quite a nice run once we figured out the right pace.

We finished the race (yay!), but I knew we didn’t have a chance of finishing top three in our class. Oh well, I was just happy to finish still running.

Day two was much better, from a pacing standpoint. I knew what to expect on the opening stretch and I was able to keep us on a sustainable pace, not sprinting full out from the start. Spike and I kept a steady pace the entire second run, with no major mishaps like the first day. He stayed on task and I didn’t feel like I was dying.

We improved our overall time on day two, but unfortunately we still didn’t finish top three. I don’t consider myself a “runner,” so I wasn’t too bummed. It was a new experience and we finished both days, that was the goal.

Biggest takeaways from running canicross:

• Holy crap these dogs can run. You don’t get a true appreciation of their power and speed until you get pulled by one on foot.

• Dogs running by themselves (or even with just one other dog) can be complicated. Keeping them on task and not distracted is a battle when they don’t have dogs in front of them to chase.

I can’t say that it wasn’t fun… But I can say it wasn’t a blast! It was hard, but I’m glad I started out my mushing career by running behind Spike on foot. It gave me a true appreciation for a sled dog’s capabilities.

Safe to say that I’ll be sticking to races with wheels moving forward. And after two years in a row on bike, I will say it’s a whole lot easier and fun than getting dragged!

Who has ran with dogs before? Have you experienced the same thing Hannah and I did? Let us know about your canicross experiences in the comments!

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