Following the 2026 Iditarod Trail Invitational

Might as well lean in. Day one

Beat with fellow foot racer Gavan Hennigan at the starting line in Knik, Alaska.

I don’t have anything new to share about my knee injury. I admit the “depression” stage has hit hard since Beat left for Alaska. There’s no way around how bad the MRI looks, and the imaging doesn’t even adequately explain my pain, nor does it mask the assumption that if my “good” knee looks this bad, well … I guess I no longer have knees. It was a nice 46 years while they lasted. And yes, I know, I know, there are paths to healing, and I hope to keep my head together so I can ask the right questions when I meet with the orthopedic surgeon on Tuesday. TBD. But I appreciate everyone who shared their experiences and useful advice after my last post. If you have experience with meniscal root tears, please reach out. It means a lot to me.

Since I won’t have my own adventures to share for a while, and since I have few places to put all of this excess energy, I’ve decided to write regular reports about the Iditarod Trail Invitational, specifically the thousand-mile race that my husband, Beat, is participating in. The 2026 ITI started at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 22, in Knik, Alaska. If you need to unsubscribe during this difficult time, I understand.

The Iditarod Trail Invitational is a ski, bike, or foot race following the historic Iditarod Trail across Alaska — 300 miles to McGrath or 1,000 miles to Nome. There is also a 150-mile race that was added more recently. The race’s history goes back to 1987, when “Father of the Iditarod” Joe Redington Sr. challenged the local mountain bike club in Anchorage to hold a race on the trail. The 200-mile Iditabike launched, forming the foundation that would lead to the development of fat bikes and arguably the first multiday trail ultrarunning and bikepacking race in North America. Iditabike became Iditasport, which morphed into the Iditarod Trail Invitational in 2002.

Riding my Surly Pugsley during the 2008 Iditarod Trail Invitational

My obsession with the Iditarod is two decades long and reaches into the depths of my soul. The trail is the root of many traumas and also the “happy place” I go to when my therapist conducts EMDR. I discovered the human-powered version of the famous sled dog race shortly after I moved to Alaska in 2005. I signed up for my first 350-mile ITI on a fat bike in 2008, back when informaton about the race was still extremely sparse. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I’ve gone on to start the race seven times — four with a bike, three on foot — DNF-ing twice, and completing the 1,000-mile ride to Nome in 2016 in a time that still stands as the women’s course record. My last participation was with a bike in 2022. I was lost in grief about my father’s death and hated the soggy, bumpy, drowned trails of this brave new era of climate change. I swore I would retire from ITI after 2022, but I still think about it all of the time. It’s not healthy. I know.

It doesn’t help that my husband, Beat, is even more lost in the Iditarod than I am. It’s my fault for pulling him into this sport after we started dating in 2010. I wanted to impress him by becoming a runner, and he wanted to impress me by signing up for a 100-mile winter foot race in Alaska. We completed the 2011 Susitna 100 together — an enormous first for both of us. From then on, we’ve been lost in each other’s worlds. But Beat has taken Iditarod racing so much farther than I ever could. He’s started the ITI 13 times as of today, always on foot. He’s finished the 300-mile race once, the 1,000-mile race eight times, and received a 700-mile finish when the race had to be cut short during the first days of the Covid pandemic in March 2020. Only one person has more 1,000-mile finishes than Beat. Tim Hewitt, the current course record holder, has nine on foot and one with a bike. Tim, now 71 years old, has sworn he’ll return to the race if Beat ever beats his record.

Of course, these are all boring race stats. What I love about the Iditarod is that the racing aspect is the least interesting thing about it. This is a trail through true wilderness, where nature can dole out anything from hard rain to 60 mph ground blizzards to deep subzero cold. The route wends over frozen rivers and crosses the formidable Alaska Range. Those racing the entire trail go on to cross wide swaths of boreal forest that haven’t seen human inhabitants in decades, travel 150 miles on the mighty Yukon River, and trace the shoreline along the Norton Sound, a rugged coastal region frequently blasted by brutal winds. Trail conditions are continuously in flux, so it’s impossible to count on anything. One day, the trail could be hard-packed snow where riding 100 miles is a breeze, and then next, it could be buried in two feet of fresh powder where bikers are lucky if they can push ten miles. The Iditarod is adventure, one of the truest sorts of adventure one can have in the modern era. The stories, not the stats, are what make the ITI interesting.

The stories and the people. I’m far from the only person struck with an Iditarod obsession. The ITI tends to entice the same people back again and again. We’re an odd bunch, many of us falling along the spectrum of what is now termed “neuro-spicy.” As this year’s race launches, I wanted to highlight a few people I’m following:

Beat on the bus from Anchorage to the start line in Knik

The woman sitting across the aisle from Beat in this photo is Carol Seppilu. Carol is an Indigenous Alaskan (Siberian Yupik) who lives in Nome. Her childhood was harsh, and suicide was rampant among her friends. At age 16, in a fog of depression and alcohol, she shot herself. She survived and went on to find joy and peace in running. Despite her scars and the challenges of living with a tracheostomy tube, she’s had impressive success in ultrarunning races. This year is her first attempt at the 300-mile race to McGrath.

In the 1,000-mile race, there’s Klaus Schweinberger, a mild-mannered Austrian who has attempted the race on foot nearly every year since 2013. He hasn’t managed many finishes. He might have just one, possibly two finishes within the race’s 30-day cutoff. But he never gives up. When I attempted the 1,000-mile race on foot in 2020, I arrived in McGrath just a few hours before Klaus. The trail to that point had been extremely arduous, with deep snow, high winds, and temperatures down to 45 below. I’d given everything I had to get to that point, and it had taken me nearly 10 days. COVID was beginning to cause large disruptions in the United States when I emerged from the wilderness on March 10. My energy levels were zero, and the cutoff maths didn’t math. I told Klaus as much when he asked me whether I would leave with him the following morning. “It’s 650 more miles … I just can’t … it’s not possible,” I whispered forelornly.

“Ah,” Klaus replied in his steady Austrian accent. “But we must never stop trying.”

I take Klaus’s words to heart whenever I want to stop trying — like now, with my knee in such pain and the outlook so bleak.

Often traveling with Klaus is Donald Kane, a jovial Scotsman who lives in New South Wales, Australia. Donald is a lineman, spending his days at precarious heights on high-voltage power lines. He told me that he comes to Alaska to feel safe for a few weeks. Donald can be difficult to understand through his thick Scottish accent, but he’s always good for a laugh and a breath of fresh air, kicking back with whiskey and jokes at checkpoints. In 2018, Donald rigged up a solid fix for my broken trekking pole that I swear saved my race. The repetitive motion of these events becomes a reflex, and I was flailing without my pole. He’s finished the race to Nome a couple of times with a bike, and has been trying for years to earn a finish on foot.

There’s Gavan Hennigan, an Irish adventurer who is our new quasi-neighbor in the Chamonix Valley in France. Gavan is the fastest Irishman to cross the Atlantic rowing solo, and has finished the race to Nome at least once before. He works as a deep-sea saturation diver and does much of his training in hyperbaric chambers or running tiny laps on oil platforms far out to sea. When he’s not working, he travels all over the world. Beat considers Gavan his top competition and a good friend.

Ryan with Beat at Skwentna Roadhouse in 2024.

There’s Ryan Wanless, an ultrarunner from South Dakota who is seemingly never in a bad mood. I met him in 2018 when we were both walking the trail to McGrath, in the wee morning hours on the Yentna River. He was wearing the most ridiculous coyote skin hat I had ever seen; it was more like a headdress with tail tendrils falling down his back. I hadn’t slept and was terribly grumpy as Ryan walked behind me and did not stop talking well into the morning. I finally told him I had to stop and pee because I couldn’t take anymore energy-sapping extroversion. I have since acknowledged that Ryan is fun, and I am a big old grouch. He has since taken to biking the 1,000-mile race to Nome, often at a similar pace as Beat, who walks the trail. They have become good pals.

There’s Mark Hines, an adventurer and winter travel expert from the United Kingdom. Mark and I spent some time together on the trail in 2020. He built the best bivy spots, semi snow caves dug deep into tree wells with a little campfire still smouldering in the center. I was always surpremely jealous as I passed his wilderness hotels mere hours after I’d bedded down in a messy snowmobile track just feet off the main trail. Mark’s a pretty funny guy himself. He recently released a book about racing the ITI in 2023, which includes several paragraphs about struggling to find his own penis when he needed to pee during a cold windstorm.

There’s Jay Cable, an unassuming cyclist from Fairbanks who’s a lot stronger than he’d ever let on. He’s finished the bike race to Nome at least four times.

There’s Troy Szczurkowski, no-nonsense Australian who has logged at least five finishes in Nome. He’s a bike mechanic with a mechanical approach to all things. He finished his first race to Nome about a day after I arrived in 2016. I met him at the finishing arch and offered to take his photo, but he insisted on setting up his tripod and selfie stick, because that was the way he did things. (A tripod! I don’t think he’s carried that since.)

There’s Jay Petervary, one of the longest-standing veterans on the trail this year. His first race was in 2007, and he’s since gone on to finish the 1,000-mile bike race at least four times, winning it three times. In 2023, he was involved in a horrific collision when a teenager driving a truck mowed him down from behind while he was riding a straight, flat, wide-open gravel road during the Tour Divide. His injuries were extensive, and his recovery took a couple of years. That he’s recovered enough to attempt the race to Nome is seriously impressive. I’m rooting for him.

I have to mention fast guy Tyson Flaharty, a wild-haired cyclist from Fairbanks who is a favorite to be the first to Nome this year. Yes, I know, ITI is still a race.

There are only two women in the 1,000-mile race this year: bikers Mayella Krause and Kendall Park. I don’t know either well, but Mayella is a fellow Boulderite who is originally from Brazil. She has a unique style — long, blond dreadlocks, tattoos, and an admirable dedication to strength training. Kendall Park is from Missouri. Both are the same age I was when I finished the race to Nome, 36, and both have a great shot at beating my record if the trail cooperates. I will say this … it’s really the trail that decides.

There are others — 115 athletes spread across the three races this year — but this list is going a bit long. Check back to follow the progress of this cast of characters along with Beat’s woeful satellite phone reports from the trail. I’ll probably mix in race updates with injury updates for a glut of blogging this month. I won’t take it too hard if you need to unsubscribe.

You can follow tracking of this year’s race at https://trackleaders.com/iti26.

If you want to read more about personal journeys in the ITI, I wrote about my first ITI during the Wild West times of 2008 in the book, “Ghost Trails: Journeys Through a Lifetime,” and my 2016 race to Nome in the book, “Into the North Wind: A Thousand-Mile Bicycle Adventure Across Frozen Alaska.” I also co-authored Tim Hewitt’s biography about his first eight trips to Nome between 2001 and 2013 in “8,000 Miles Across Alaska: A Runner’s Journeys on the Iditarod Trail."