K9-4K

The first weekend of every August is the K9-4K event in Frisco, CO. This is a 4K run with your canine partners.

This year's race tally: 5th place overall and 1st place in my age group - woohoo!

The race always progresses the same for Max, Zorro & I. We are always in first place by the first turn of the race as Max & Zorro shoot out of a cannon at the start. We then proceed to learn how slow the human really is as we cannot maintain the amazing start to the finish. Max & Zorro could maintain the pace, of course, but the slow human holds the team back and we fall back into 2nd to 8th place (2nd is our best finish ever, 8th our worst).

Here we go.....

"Go!" says the race marshall and "BOOOOM!" go Max & Zorro launching off the start
line. The really get "race" and love blowing out of the crowd as quick as possible.

10 feet or so off the starting line and the huskies are hitting stride as the human
hangs on for dear life :-)

"Out in front, exactly where we belong!" say the smiling & sprinting pair as we are
establishing our typical lead out the gates. It is funny to hear the crowd gasping and
exclaiming, "Look at those huskies!" as we fly out of the chutes.

About 3.8K later and here we are flying into the finish of the 4K. Max & Zorro are just about the only dogs that are "out in front" of their human the entire race. Others are constantly talking to their dogs to "keep going" while I am struggling to keep up.

We just rounded the last corner and are in the final straightaway to the finish line.

Perfectly synchronized from start to end.
Why am I the only one who is tired?  :-)

Zoom, zoom, zoom - if only I could keep up.... Oh well, we did place first in my age group (fast, young kids in front of us) and a great time had by all! Thanks to our friend Justin Saunders for the great action shots from the race!

Zorro sporting our "first in age group" ribbon!

The full "bag of swag" we got for running the race!
The ribbon, 2 stuffies and box of Buddy Biscuits were the "first place" reward to
go along with the rest of the swag handed out at the event. Oh, and the human got
a t-shirt too :-)

We view the K9-4K as our "end of summer" bash. There is nothing left to accomplish for the summer, time to bring back the snow and get back to skijoring.

Pray for Snow.....

2013/2014 Season in Review

Well, it is that time of year... We have been done skijoring for about 6 weeks and the natives (Max, Zorro & I) are restless.

What to do in the middle of July? I know, make our "season in review" video. It is not the same as being on snow, but it does give us the pleasure of revisiting our footage from last season and assembling the best clips into a 5 minute highlight reel:

Be sure to watch in HD and in a large format (or full screen) to get the most of the highlight reel. Also, turn on the volume and listen to the fun sync'd to Molly Hatchet's "Flirtin with Disaster" - this is a very appropriate song for our skijoring activity:

[watch on youtube if no video loads below]

Oh yea, one more thing... Pay close attention to the song and the video starting around the 2:50 point of the video: the lyrics and action are classic and complement each other perfectly :-)

Pray for Snow, bring on 2014/2015....

Contrast

Only 25 days apart... Wow...

Sally Barber Mine 25 days apart.
Left: skijoring by the mine on May 12, 2014.
Right: hiking by the mine on June 6, 2014.

Yes, our skijoring season is pretty much over. It is now "hiking for the summer" while we wait for the first snow of the 2014/2015 season...