My favorite races: The Iditarod Trail Invitational

Part two of a series about the best endurance events, as subjectively chosen by me

Finishing under the burled arch in Nome, March 16, 2016

What ignites a life-changing passion? How does the tiniest spark flare into a conflagration with the power to consume so much of a life? The passion burned through more than two decades. At this point, it has left nothing untouched — my jobs, my homes, my relationships, my friends, my family. Sometimes, I believe this passion has been the most freeing force in my life. Others, I wonder how I came to live in a cage of my own making. And still, the passion continues to burn, warming my sleep with dreams of the wind-swept tundra.

Living the #vanlife on the Dalton Highway in June 2003

Where was that initial spark? It took some time to locate its source in my memory, and I discovered it came from a place I had not expected — a musty used bookstore in Fairbanks. It was early June 2003, while my boyfriend, two friends and I were in the midst of a spontaneous three-month road trip from Salt Lake City to every corner of Alaska we could reach with a 1990 Ford Econoline van and trailer carved out of an old Datsun pickup. Jen and I were killing some time while the boys picked up the supplies to coax that rattletrap nearly a thousand miles to Prudhoe Bay and back — transmission fluid, oil, spare bolts, etc.

They needed to upgrade another failed part — was it the radiator in Fairbanks? Or the electrical wiring? I forget now. But I remember Jen and I were bored and wandered away from the auto parts store, trying to entertain ourselves with the smallest amount of money possible. We found our way to a bookstore where I browsed a battered paperback of Gary Paulsen’s “Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod.” Before that moment I had heard of a race in Alaska that featured sled dogs and a famous trail and a thousand miles. But my knowledge of the Iditarod at that point was thin and full of holes. Even as I browsed the book, I thought, “This is the trail in ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee.’”

I did not end up buying the book; I remember instead picking out Jon Krakauer’s “Into the Wild” — which, I confess, as a 23-year-old, I loved. (And honestly, I still do. Yes, Chris McCandless was a selfish asshole and he didn’t need to die, but damn, he had a wealth of passion and Jon Krakauer writes a rollicking tale.) Jen found a cassette tape featuring an Alaskan folk singer named Hobo Jim. It was $2 but she didn’t want to spend the money. I was growing tired of the mixed tapes in the van so I threw it in with my Krakauer book and a few other paperbacks I have now forgotten.

Fortuitously, our favorite song on the tape was Hobo Jim’s classic, “The Iditarod Song.” We’d annoy the boys by singing out loud, drowning out the loud rumble of gravel as the van puttered north under the warm light of the midnight sun.

Well, give me a team and a good lead dog and a sled that's built so fine,
And let me race those miles to Nome, one thousand forty-nine
Then when I get back to my home
Hey I can tell my tale
I did, I did I did the Iditarod Trail.

Live screen grabs from the Nome cam that captured my finish in 2016.

Thirteen years later, through all of the odd decisions and unimaginable leaps that make a life, I found myself pedaling the icy pavement of Front Street toward Nome. For a brief moment, I thought of that song. Would that 23-year-old in the van, flush with wonder at the golden sun arcing over the Brooks Range at 1 a.m., have ever imagined herself in this place? She already believed she was on the adventure of a lifetime. After that, she was going to settle down and settle into the vague mundanities that the young imagine can easily fill an entire life once youth is done.

But that was before everything that came after: The Alaska fascination that would carry the boyfriend North. Her following in grumbling resignation, an emotion soon eclipsed by wide-eyed exhilaration. Discovering snow biking. Immediately taking this discovery to its extreme in a 100-mile endurance race. Vowing at the Susitna 100 finish that in two years’ time, she would be ready to take on the 350-mile race on the Iditarod Trail. Doing just that. Watching the boyfriend become equally enamored with this race until he also attempted it twice alongside her — her on a bike, him on foot. The boyfriend failed, twice. She failed the second time when a near-disaster on thin lake ice left her with serious frostbite on her right foot. The relationship dissolved and she blamed their combined obsession with race. She walked away from the race, moved away from Alaska. But then she met a new someone. And he too loved the race. And just like falling in love all over again, the passion sparked anew.

Somehow, through the most impossible progression of a million disparate decisions, it all arrived at this final mile on Front Street. I had pedaled a thousand miles across Alaska. All of the shivering and tears, all of the wonder and joy, the gasping in the wind and shivering in my bivy sack in the snow, it came down to this. No matter what else happened in my life, no matter how many mistakes I made or setbacks I experienced, no one could ever take this away from me.

I did the Iditarod Trail.

My husband, Beat, and me outside Skwentna Roadhouse in 2014

I couldn’t decide what to write about in a post about the Iditarod Trail Invitational. I knew I was either going to keep it relatively short, or it would end up growing to many thousands of words. I’ve already written three autobiographies and one co-authored biography about my experiences in this particular race. It’s a lot, and I keep promising myself “no more books about the Iditarod” … so this won’t become one. It seemed best to simply write about how I first stumbled into the fine madness of running the Iditarod, describe a bit about the race, and send you off with a short blurb about the 2024 race, which begins Sunday, Feb. 24.

Racing on the Iditarod Trail dates back to 1973, when Joe Redington and others devised a dog-sled race that would travel 1,000 miles across Alaska to Nome in recognition of the brave mushers and dogs who shuttled life-saving serum to the Western Alaska village during a 1925 diphtheria outbreak. Ten years later, Redington and others launched the inaugural Iditaski, the first human-powered race on the Iditarod Trail. In the mid-1980s, a hundred-mile snowshoe race formed. But human-powered Iditarod racing took a turn toward international fame in 1987, when what was then still a relatively new sport — mountain biking — found its way onto the Iditarod Trail. Iditabike was born.

Fueled by magazine and television blurbs, Iditabike quickly grew in notoriety. Ski and run divisions were added in the early 1990s. Now called Iditasport, the event grew to more than 200 participants with purses of $50,000 to $80,000 for winners. Iditasport was organized by an eccentric and erratic character named Dan Bull, who bragged that a death in the race would be great for publicity as he expanded his few-frills event to a 350-mile race in 1997 and the 1,000-mile Iditasport Impossible in 2000. As Iditasport expanded, unrest began to creep into the organization. Bull cited financial strain from the race, which he claimed made no money due in part to expensive promotions and prize purses. By 2001, the entire event was unraveling. Bull disappeared into the annals of Iditarod legend while a passionate racer, Bill Merchant, stepped up to organize a similar event. He called his independent race — first held in 2002 — “The Iditarod Trail Invitational.”

Merchant believed it crucial to keep his race as true to early Alaska exploration as possible. While its big brother race, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, embraced new technologies and conveniences (such as regular air support, veterinary care, and trail breaking), Merchant was adamant that racers carry their own supplies, break their own trail, and rescue their own damn selves if it came to that. He was resistant to GPS technology that helped racers navigate and outright banned satellite trackers, claiming the trackers did more harm than good since they only agitated the people who were watching and couldn’t do anything to help if they tried.

But even Bill Merchant couldn’t fully stop the steady march of progress. He quietly bowed out of directing the race while his now ex-wife, Kathi, took over for a time. Kathi co-directed with the current race director, Kyle Durand, until she turned it over to Kyle entirely in 2019. The Iditarod Trail Invitational is a bit more polished these days, with a media crew on the trail, some course marshaling, mandatory race tracking, GPS tracks and a wealth of information online, and well-organized checkpoints (the ITI of my early years had the same checkpoints, but the organization could at times be somewhat erratic.) Despite a handful of upgrades, the ITI is still very much a self-sustained, challenging, often dangerous, and wild adventure into an Alaska backcountry that has changed little in a hundred years.

My most recent finish of the ITI, when I biked to McGrath in 2022.

I have finished the ITI five times in DNF’d twice. My “stripes” on the race jacket that Kyle provided are:

2008: ITI 350 bike. 6 days, 2 hours, 20 minutes.
2009: ITI 350 bike. DNF. I left the race at mile 55 with frostbite.
2014: ITI 350 foot. 7 days, 7 hours, 50 minutes.
2016: ITI 1000 bike. 17 days, 3 hours, 46 minutes. This is still the women’s bike record to Nome.
2018: ITI 350 foot. 8 days, 11 hours, 34 minutes.
2020: ITI 1000 foot. DNF. I quit in McGrath with mental and physical exhaustion. I still consider the 1,000-mile on foot the ultimate challenge. I also don’t believe I can become strong enough to complete this challenge. I don’t know what I can do to be stronger than I was in 2020.
2022: ITI 350 bike. 5 days, 4 hours, 52 minutes.

My husband, Beat, who is really strong, and somehow even more obsessed than I am, has grown into one of the most accomplished competitors in the race. (I believe his number of finishes now falls behind just one person, Tim Hewitt.) Beat has two “short” race finishes: ITI 350 once during the race’s undisputed most difficult year (2012), and the abbreviated 700-mile race to Unalakleet that 2020 became amid COVID shutdowns. He has finished the 1,000-mile race a baffling seven times, all on foot. His fastest finish was in 2022 at 22 days, 22 hours, and 42 minutes, the sixth-fastest foot finish of all time. This Sunday, he will be lining up for what he hopes will be his eighth finish in Nome.

Beat and I posed under the burled arch in Nome after his 2014 finish.

2024 will be the largest field yet for the Iditarod Trail Invitational, with 67 athletes on the roster to McGrath and 38 aiming to go onto Nome. I will be helping out with some of the commentary on the ladies in the race, and always post commentary about Beat on my Facebook page. The race is such an addictive endeavor that brings people back again and again, that it’s gotten to the point where I personally know a majority of the competitors. Hopefully, this will make for colorful commentary, so be sure to check in on the ITI’s social media.

Besides Beat, I am unashamedly cheering the loudest for the ladies. The women gunning for my Northern Route bike record include Nome veterans Missy Schwartz of Fairbanks, Leah Gruhn of Minnesota, and Nome rookies Amber Crawford of Anchorage and Kinsey Loan of Eagle River. Two women — Magdalena Paschke of Germany and Faye Norby of Minnesota — hope to reach Nome on foot, which is something a woman has not done since Loreen Hewitt set the 26-day record in 2014, and Shawn McTaggart finished a few days after her. One woman, Sunny Stoeer of Utah, is going to try to reach Nome on skis — something no one has done in the race, and as far as I know, hasn’t been done by anyone since two men skied to Nome in 1994.

It’s going to be an exciting year! Tracking of the race and other information is available at https://itialaska.com/tracking.