Jack 5000

Jack & Rudy, the "powerful, miniature reindeer" towing me to the finish in my Santa hat this Christmas morning :)

Santa would certainly accept these two in his reindeer team :)

Today marked a very impressive milestone. 5 year old Jack surpassed 5,000 career skijor miles (5,006.3 miles to be exact). Now, put that in full perspective, he has amassed the majority of these miles since turning 1.5 years old as he was a baby and growing and then doing very short training runs before that. Then, factor in some of those evil summer months without snow and he's put together an impressive 5,006.3 miles in that time! Wow Jack! Impressive!!!!

For the curious, Rudy is roughly 5 months younger than Jack and roughly 175 career miles behind Jack. So, we'll certainly have a "wooing as surpassing 5,000 miles" post for Rudy in January :)

Back to this morning's fun Christmas run. We started the day laying fresh tracks on backcountry trails as Jack & Rudy love to do:

Laying fresh tracks as the ski runs of Breckenridge Ski Resort come into
view across the valley.

We did and "out & back" in the backcountry to start the outing. So, we had a turnaround point on this leg of the outing. As impressive as Jack's 5000 miles is the fact that he has rolled at least 1 snow angel on EVERY skijor outing of his life (and often more than one). It is safe to say that Jack LOVES snow angels. Rudy loves them too, but his snow angel tally is at about 90-95% of his lifetime outings compared to Jack's 100%!

"You expected anything different?" asks goofy Jack looking back to me.
"Ah, digging my snow angel today!" adds soothing Rudy.

After our backcountry out & back, we dropped onto the groomed trails of Gold Run Nordic Center. Much to our surprise and pleasure, we were first tracks on the freshly groomed trails! From backcountry fresh tracks to groomed country first tracks, it doesn't get much better than that!!!

Flying Jack & Rudy - see, Santa would accept these flying Siberians
to join his flying reindeer.

The kids were really into being first tracks on the freshly groomed trail and FLOORING it this morning. Top speed in this skijor clip? 24 MPH. Zoom! I'm actually surprised the GPS did not clock us at 26 MPH (our usual season top speed), it sure felt that fast to me on skis!!! If your volume is up you'll hear some "whees" from me as we go over little lifts in the trail. Each "whee" from me adds more energy and juice to Jack & Rudy! :)

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

We were going so fast, that we redid the groomed trail twice. Second pass same as the first, just swapped in position...

Second pass, switch sides, same results. Zoom!

Jack & Rudy: what an impressive pair of miniature, flying reindeer.

"We had a flying blast!" declares the happy, happy kids.

Fast, fun day: 11.1 miles traveled with 800 feet of elevation climbed and a top speed of 24 MPH.

2022/2023 Season to Date: 47 days on the trails covering 396.5 miles with 34,200 feet of elevation climbed.

5 year old Jack's skijor career to date: 5006.3 miles and counting! Go Jack Go!