1300 Miles

Surpassing 1300 miles of skijoring this season!

That's 4 seasons in a row with 1300+ skijoring miles! Impressive Sled Dogs!

"Piece of cake! What a blast! How about 1300 more?" say the happy pair at our
midpoint break of the morning.

We were 9.5 miles from 1300 this morning. I figured we had no chance of making it to 1300 today as it is hard to get 10ish miles in May due to rising temperatures and deteriorating or soft conditions. But, a few miles into our outing I noticed there was a cool breeze blowing with near perfect snow conditions and Max & Zorro looked completely fresh, happy and in a skijoring groove. I started contemplating, "Can we get a long run in today? Is it possible?" Then, we got the last piece of the puzzle to propel us to 1300 - fresh moose tracks! Cool breeze + perfect snow + moose tracks and I knew we'd accomplish a long May run and surpass 1300 miles for the season!

"Sniff, sniff - fresh moose tracks!" say my track inspecting partners.
Notice the footprints to the left of Zorro going up the trail.

As luck would have it, the moose had walked the ski trail! So we had "moose juice" to add to Max & Zorro's tank as we skijored the trail full of moose post holes. Additional luck: the tracks were fresh enough to juice Max & Zorro but we never ran into the moose! Phew!

Moose juiced Max & Zorro following the moose post holes for miles!

Here is a fascinating table to study. If you have followed along this season you know we had a very late start to the skijoring season. It did not start snowing with any consistency until the week before Thanksgiving. Look at the following table of our 1300+ mile seasons which show the miles we had on November 18th each year and the date we passed 1300 miles:

Season	Miles on Nov 18	Date of 1300 Miles
2013/2014	174	May 19
2014/2015	142	June 1
2015/2016	133	June 12
2016/2017	58	May 16

Yes, you read that right... We had 58 miles on Nov.18 of this season yet we surpassed 1300 sooner than any previous season! How did we do it? Well, our pattern the previous 3 seasons was to do 5 9+ mile runs a week and rest 2 days. Once if finally started snowing this season, we decided to try doing 5 9+ runs a week, 1 shorter 5-7 mile run a week and 1 rest day. The thought was we rested most of October and early November so let's catch up. We decided to run at this torrid pace until Max or Zorro showed signs of needing more time off. Well, that never happened, so we kept at this torrid pace for an entire season! It turns out the only real question was whether the human could keep this up.... Well, my knees and elbows are a little sore; but I can rest in June :)

Max & Zorro have another interpretation of this table and our torrid pace for the 2016/2017 season: The human has been unnecessarily holding us back for YEARS!!!!!

Back to today's fun outing. Once the moose tracks disappeared into the trees it was time to turnaround and sprint across the open & snow covered meadows at Rabbit Ears. Turn up the volume as you watch and all the "clicks" are slush bombs flying off Max & Zorro's feet and into the camera (and into my face too!). Wheeee!

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

What an incredible season! And we are still going with a winter snow storm advisory in place for Colorado this coming Thu-Fri! Sharing the joy with my partners at the end of today's run:

"Glad you finally stopped resting so much! How about NO days off next season?" say
my focused and intense partners.

A great way to surpass 1300 - a surprise long May run: 9.7 miles traveled with 1000 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 21 MPH.

2016/2017 Season to Date: 155 days on the trails covering 1300.2 miles with 137,700 feet of elevation climbed.