The culprit is...a dog-sled team?

So I'm usually out on the trail, being all hardcore running in the cold with snow on the ground, and I twist my ankles on tire ruts that have frozen into icy lumps. I think, "Ok, I can run around them, but where did they come from? The park service maintaining the trail?" Maybe, although the space between each tire is too small to be from one of their Jeeps. "An ATV?" Maybe, although they're not allowed on the trail. So I usually grumble and continue on my way.

This weekend I headed out to the trail for a run. I was, again, feeling very hardcore, because the temperature with windchill was about 7*. I felt hardcore until I got to the trail and came across a dog-sled team that is practicing for the Iditarod. All of a sudden 4 miles in above-zero temperatures was not very intense at all - not when compared to 1,150 miles of frozen tundra.

The dogs had just finished their run and were being put away one by one in their pens on the back of a truck. One dog greeted me with a warble-ly howl. It was pretty cute, although not nearly as fluffy as I would expect a husky to be. Then I noticed that they had not been pulling a sled, but an ATV with the motor turned off, which explains all of the tire ruts in the trail.

I didn't stick around very long to watch them unhitch and load up into the truck, but I did spend most of my run thinking about the training they do on the trail and wondering what it's like to actually participate in the Iditarod.

I guess that if the dogs and their owner can handle that epic journey, I can handle running on icy tire ruts.