Brent's Blog

hello all

well it is taken me a while to write this story and I am the king of rambling on but i would like everyone to get the full story so I am going to post it in chapters so here is chapter one from the beginning. enjoy.


Well here I site it has been 4 days since the end of the CB300 and I am still riding a pretty good high. I have also come to realize that the story about this race did not start when i pulled the hook at the start line in glennallen, the real story begins back in aug. when the dogs and I decided that we were going to give it are all this season and stop at nothing to accomplish our goals. Those goals though simple on paper were going to be no cake walk. First we needed to put allot of time in out on the trail. Building the base that the dogs and I needed was no easy tasked it involved allot of all night trips to the white mountains (a two hour trip from home) along with several lengthy camping trips. Secondly I had to make sure that I was successful at my job as Kennel Manager at Chena Hot Springs Resort. This involved managing the care of 70 dogs on top of my 40 as well as giving 80-100 rides a day, with a few dog schools on top of that. As luck would have it I was able to to put together a great crew Mandy, Elizabeth, Shima with the addition of Greg during the race, have been awesome, they have allowed me to be gone training and racing without having to worry about anything. Without them none of this would be possible. And last but not least we had to stay healthy. Both me and the dogs had to survive the sleepless nights and long strenuous runs without injury or sickness. That brings us to the night of Jan 11, as Mandy,Elizabeth, Greg, Thom and I packed the last of the food drops and loaded them into the truck I realized that eveything had come together up to this point. We were on track, the dogs and I had the miles we needed, we where all healthy and I had the Crew put in place to take care of the large operation at Chena. So with that, we loaded the dogs, Thom and I got in the truck at 2AM and started the long trip to Glennallen, there we would meet up with my dad for the start of the 2006 Copper Basin 300. From this point on things went just as planed. Thom and I arrived in Glennallen at 10am and dropped of the food drops my dad showed up shortly after and we turned in for the night. As I laid in bed that night i had a hard decision to make, I had fourteen dogs in the truck and only 12 could go. This was a hard decision because all of them were capable, but some needed this trip more then others. After loosing a little bite of sleep over it at 10:10 Saturday morning Silver, Modanna, Pixie Ling ling, The Dude, Thunder, Ross, York, Rocky Melville, Taco, Masiah and I blazed down the trail with 300 miles of unpredictable trail ahead of us. The first 30 miles flew by the dogs were croozing along at about 11 miles and hour and there was not a whole lot I could do but slow them down. we passed Terry Williams in this stretch and wished him good luck as we went on by. Just as we hit the first set of hills we passed Abbie West and the dogs where loving it. There is nothing that Silver enjoys more then passing and with hills in the trial ahead, we quickly lost site of Abbie. Hills are something that me and the team love. We are extremely strong in the hills and always will be. here is where i got to finally make my first contribution. As we weaved our way up through the narrow trail that climbed for over a mile I realized just how tired I was going to be at the end of this race, for I knew that I would be off of the runners kicking and running on every hill and once we slowed down later in the race i would be kicking all the time. As we crested that first hill the wind hit hard and I nelt down behind my sled to make us more arrow dynamic and we climbed right back up to our 10 mile and hour croozing speed. About 5 miles up the trail Allen Moore came up behind me and passed, we said good luck to each other and the chase was on he tried for several miles to drop us but we hung, there is nothing Silver hates more then getting passed so after being passed he really pushes the pace. When Allen Started to pull away a little bite, I decided that we were going to run our race not Allen Moores I slowed the team down to a good solid pace and watched him disappear into the trail. This would not be the last time I saw Allen. At his point only Allen Moore and William Kleedhn were ahead of me, this of course did not mean I was in 3 place but it was a great motivation. I would love to pull into the first check point and be behind those two. And so it was after a six hour run we pulled into the first check point of Chisitchina in the third position. My Dad and Thom were right there to meet me and of course had a great parking spot picked out away from other teams so the dogs and I could rest easy and not be disturbed. The dogs were strong in this first run and ate and drank well. Now a Five hour rest and then on to Paxson, a 70 mile run over the Alaska range and known as the most grueling run of the race.