Photo by Linda Grover. Here I am refueling at the EagleSong lodge checkpoint, which is about halfway. The low point of the race for me was at mile 30. Tim and I were fighting a headwind going across Dismal Swamp, and I was very tired. "There is no way I can go 70 more miles," I was thinking. When we hit the Susitna River (mile 33) I decided to back off and let Tim ski away. If I was going to finish, I needed to let him go and ski my own pace. Tim got ahead, but he never pulled away. He knew it was too early to start 'racing.' We ended up leapfrogging each other, always within a minute or two, until mile 75.