past Iditarod champions, were caught ill-prepared and hadn’t packed proper cold-weather protective gear for their dogs—garments such as fleece or windproof jackets, and most importantly for the males, fox-fur jockstraps, informally called “peter-heaters.” As a result, numerous huskies in other teams hit the finish with frostbite to their ears, tails, and most painfully of all, their penis-sheaths and tips.
Cole, on the other hand, went into every race hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. She had planned and packed for the frozen hell she had encountered and as a result, her team looked as good at the finish line as they did 200 miles earlier at the start. I wasn’t the only one who noticed: so did the race marshals, who presented Cole with the Humanitarian Award, a coveted prize given to the musher who displays the best dog care during the event. This was in addition to her second-place prize money.
It was the third time she had placed second in the race and Goliath was on her team for each event, but for this running—even before the other musher had shot off his mouth—Cole wanted to whittle her placement in the standings by one more spot.
We scrutinized over past years’ training-mileage journals looking for areas to make improvements. We swam the dogs in a nearby pond for cardiovascular conditioning during the warm weather months, and from the time the Alaskan winter began to kill summer in its inimitable way—by smothering the world in that intermediate color that has no color—Cole and I rigorously trained the dogs by having them pull us on four-wheelers. For weeks we endured gray rain falling from gray clouds in a completely gray sky, as we conditioned teams on beaches with gray sand, gray stones, and next to gray water. Our world was gray, but we sucked it up in the hopes of having the dogs peak for this Gin Gin, and peak they did.
The first fifty-mile leg went great for Cole. She had the fastest time of the whole race field and couldn’t believe it. I too competed in the race with a puppy team, and by the time I came in to the first checkpoint, she had been there long enough to have finished all her chores. I was kneeling down, rubbing balm onto the wrists of one of my dogs when she found me.
“I’m leading and don’t know how. I’m the most conservative musher I know and I’m rating them down on the down hills,” she said in a giddy sense of disbelief with her own performance.
“That’s great, hon,” I said sincerely from under the heavy weight of my fur-lined parka hood. “But shouldn’t you be asleep by now?”
“Can’t,” she replied. “Too excited.”
I did my best to get her to go lie down for at least a little while. She never did get in the winks she should have, but it didn’t seem to hold her back. I came out of the lodge that served as a checkpoint to see her and the team off. In the distance, even in the low light I could see Goliath leading the charge out. His coat looked silver in the pale blue light of the quarter moon.
On the second leg of the race, the course followed the always frigid 110-mile run down the river. It was a long, long night run and with the mercury plummeting to the predicted minus forties or below for most of the trip, it made for an inhospitable evening.
For those who have never experienced these temps, or exposure to them beyond walking to and from the car on a cold winter morning, they are tough to endure for any length of time, but spending fourteen hours in them while standing still and fatigued on a sled is absolutely brutal.
Take this as a powerful statement coming from a musher, since being warm is as a temporary condition in the existence of any musher worth their salt, but minus forty and below is beyond cold. Soft winter clothes suddenly make sounds like crinkling vinyl. Every breath you take stings your teeth and sears the whole way down your throat and into your lungs. Eyes must be blinked frequently and any wind—no matter how slight—will make them water with tears that freeze almost instantly. Touching the brass snap of a dog’s neck or tug line without a glove will leave a blistering second-degree burn. Even your bones seem to feel brittle and frozen.
Still, not even a cold comparable to when the mastodons ruled this region could get Cole down. Part of it is her perpetually positive disposition. Deep down she has always had a soul as warm as a summer’s day that she draws energy from seemingly without trying or even knowing she is doing it. But on this night, a spectacular show going on overhead, and the dancing astral light of a rich, emerald aurora kept Cole from focusing on her numb fingers, toes, and nose. She maintained her race lead with thick-coated Goliath—seemingly at ease running in these temperatures—comfortably being her front dog much of the way.
On the third leg of the race, the last hilly forty miles to the finish, Cole continued to stretch her lead and again had the fastest run time of any of the racers. In the wee hours of the morning, to the fanfare of only a dozen or so people still up at that time, she came into the finish line with the team still raring to go. All the dogs were covered in a thick hoar frost that had built up from running through the steam cloud of their own exhalations. Back at the truck, after the dogs had their harnesses slipped off, received a light massage from Cole, and had all inhaled a warm, wet meal of meat and kibble, some still had the energy to wrestle and play.
Goliath, even though he’s grown too old to seriously train with the team, still loves to run along with the other dogs, and frequently assumes the lead position.
A clever reader may be asking themselves, how I would know, since I was still on the trail when Cole came in. I know because it was relayed to me and the rest of the race field during the finishing banquet when Cole was awarded with her first-place trophy and prize money, and bestowed with the Humanitarian Award again.
“Anyone who saw her team at the finish line would know why she was chosen for this award,” said the race marshal, and then continued to extol the ways Cole embodied the best example of the bond between dog and man, or woman in this case.
Winning the Humanitarian Award is always a prestigious honor whenever received, but circumstances in which this distinct privilege goes to the race winner are extremely rare. Sometimes to achieve victory, mushers will run their dogs hard, really hard, some could argue a little too hard, so the winning team frequently doesn’t look and feel as good as they should and the race judges pick up on that.
For Cole’s win, she didn’t drive the dogs to extremes, or even outside their comfort zones to stay in front of the competition. Rather, she had a clean run, her training was specifically dialed in for this event, and that resulted in the team peaking as desired. Basically it lined up exactly as planned. So, to get the Humanitarian Award too, it really spoke to how well Cole cared for the dogs, before and during the race, and since we’re always trying to foster the message of excellent dog care, it was gratifying to come out on top and be recognized for this devotion. The icing on the cake though came the next day as we grabbed a final bite to eat before getting on the road to head home.
This wasn’t Cole’s first win and we were familiar with the experience of Cole being treated differently after she came in first. Like high school, everyone suddenly wants to sit at the cool table. Mushers who a day before wouldn’t give you the time of day are now eager to come introduce themselves and pull up a chair to eat with you, or perhaps buy you a beer. To our surprise, the prerace nay-sayer—who ended up finishing a few spots behind Cole—sought us both out, and instead of currying our favor over a greasy cheeseburger or bottle of booze, he made a sincere apology.
“Ya know, I gave you a bit of a hard time about that dog with the thick coat, but he made the whole thing, and I’m not too proud to admit I was wrong,” he said. Then, turning specifically to Cole he humbly concluded, “Impressive run, Colleen. I’ll never doubt your dogs again.”
“For the record, he finished in lead,” Cole replied, to punctuate Goliath’s performance.
It meant a lot to both of us that this musher was man enough to come and admit his error, but particularly that the added accolade came from a racer as accomplished as we knew this man to be. Our team, Cole’s performance, and Goliath’s contributions in particular had left a lasting impression with this seasoned race veteran. We’ve