Yukon Arctic Ultra Feb 15, 2009

This is straight from the Yuon Ultra website & it explains a lot...

"

February 20th, 08:30 AM local time

What a day ...

It was a day with many things happening. So many I don't even know where to start. Well, I guess at the beginning ... On my way from Carmacks my first stop was McCabe Creek where volunteer Marianne stayed with a few athletes. I drove into the farm road and turned right to park next to the workshop which has always been our checkpoint there. Just that the workshop was not there any more. Instead a pile of ashes. A thousand thoughts went through my head immediately. But I tell you right away that nobody was injured! The fire was caused by a generator and discovered by Marianne. Nobody was in the building at the time. However, the fire could not be stopped. The entire workshop burnt down.

So, there was no tragedy but of course an occurance which is very difficult for the Kruse family living at McCabe. These generators cost a lot of money and I probably would have been devasted. Not so the Kruses. It is not an exact quote but Jerry Kruse later said something along the lines of "I can look out that window and cry and complain. There is still going to be a pile of ashes. Things like that just happen." Now that I admire!

Who thought that this was all the day had in store for us was wrong. From McCabe I went to Pelly Crossing and turned on the computer. I checked the SPOT shared page and almost fell of my chair. A help message from Joachim Rintsch about 10 km from McCabe and 5 help message from Sophie, Michael and Team Helmut. Well, on the phone to race headquarter Jessica Simon to co-ordinate rescue. We knew it was no life threatening situation but still it seemed very strange and I was really keen on knowing asap what had happened.

Since we were not able to be at two ends at the same time and because of the amount of help messages we decided to involve the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) and organise a Search & Rescue party from the Carmacks end. The RCMP also were going to back up our efforts from the McCabe end.

I drove to McCabe. Before I got out my snowmobile I called Jessica again and she told me that Greg had already encountered Joachim. The problem: 20 cm of fresh snow had made the trail disappear. And whilst it is easy to pick up the reflective of the Yukon Quest markers at night, it is really difficult to do that during the day. Joachim did not know anymore where he had to go. At night snowfall was so bad that visibility was allmost zero. Greg put in the trail again and Joachim could continue the race and came into McCabe fine. So did Sean Brown shortly afterwards.

In the meantime I had to go back to Pelly Crossing to have better communication possibilities with Jessica. It did not take long and I was informed that Sophie, Michael and Team Helmut were fine. They encountered a similar problem like Joachim. All of them found it almost impossible to pick the right trail. In additon to that the snow slowed them right down. Frustrated they concluded that it would be impossible to finish the race in time and pushed the help button.

I have to say thank you to the RCMP and Search & Rescue to help so quickly. I also want to apologise for any inconveniences. I am glad that it was nothing life threatening and it showed how efficient help can be organised and how professional the RCMP and Search & Rescue work out here. 

Since Sophie, Michael and Team Helmut had made the Carmacks cut-off and are otherwise fine, I decided to give them a time penalty (slowest time for the leg to McCabe plus 20 hours). They have been moved to McCabe and are allowed to continue the race from there. "

So...while Mike has been allowed to continue, his SPOT indicator hasn't been activated yet.

Every morning and every night I pay homage to the insanity of the ultra runner know as Adventure Mike. I log into the Artic Ultra website to see that he got into and out of the checkpoint okay. Then it's off to the SPOT site to see messages and try to get a visual of where he is. I'm hoping that at some level he knows I'm thinking about him and sending him good vibes. Then today I see the "help" message on the SPOT site. I was really happy to see the "help cancelled" come up. There were several messages so I'm not sure what was happening, if it was weather or trail conditions or ??? So for anyone out there, that's the latest update as of 3:20pm today

You are also suffering from the Great Taper.

You know that you've got all the training you need already under your belt, so take the time to stay off your back & get better.

I've hurt my back twice before, & a couple of days of Rebaxocet seemed to do the trick...be careful with the sutff! Your back will feel great, but it's still all messed up...so make sure that you don't do anything to aggravate it in the interim.

It's not really a direct comparison, but for what it's worth...I twice had the flu on the Tuesday before a race (Dirty Duo '03 & Hayward '02) & both times I had great races. Rest is good.

Besides, if you need to ice your back, I hear the Yukon has more than enough.

Michael,  yikes! I hope that the kink in your back gets better very soon.

The power of the mind is amazing.  You'll be getting to the start well rested and hopefully that back pain will only be a bad memory.

Muscle relaxants (but not during or close to the race!) and ice work wonder when my back is in spasms and nothing else helps. 

Good Luck!

Sibylle

Shit happens in 3s.  As the countdown looms, what next?

My experience has been that, for a race of this magnitude with only a week to go, any training you do from now on doesn't matter a rat's tail.  In fact, you may want to ease off on your sphincter a bit and feel good about the cold and the back because they will make sure you don't overtrain.

Have a great weekend.  'Really looking forward to your updates and reports as you make your way up the field on race day.

PS  I have a slightly-used "peter-heater" from when I used to cross-country ski race in Quebec.   Let me know if you want to borrow it.