The Mental Game

Last week’s training was decent.  I did two long skis (6 hours and 4.5 hours) pulling the sled.  I also did a night ski, then campout, then ski again in the morning at Hillside on Tuesday.  But I have to admit that I haven’t logged nearly as many hours of training as I had hoped.  This is mainly because I severely underestimated how much time it would take to get my gear together.  I have a garage full of ski gear and camping gear.  So how hard could it be to pull together the equipment for a week-long ski trip?  Pretty hard, apparently.  

My weekdays are scheduled down to the minute in order to get in a full day of work and a few hours of quality time with my son. This schedule includes one “free” hour that I typically use for exercise.  But recently, when I should have been ramping up my training, that free time was being increasingly monopolized by other race preparations: building a sled, experimenting with boots and socks, and shopping for long underwear, food, boot liners, dry bags, etc.

As I slowly cobbled my equipment together, I was amazed at how much gear I didn’t already have.  I think that’s when it dawned on me that this race is a completely different beast from anything else I’ve ever done.  It’s nothing like the Susitna 100, which was a one-day, one-shot deal.  For that race, I left home in the morning and was back in my own bed that night.  Skiing was the only skill required.  It’s nothing like the three-day adventure race I did.  That race was in the summer with a full support crew.   All I had to do was keep moving.  In the Iditarod Invitational, the ability to keep skiing/moving is only one of the many mandatory skills.

“Iditarod Trail racing is … strictly about self reliance, adaptability, sense of humor, and oh yeah, physical strength, to some degree.”

– Rocky Reifenstuhl, a veteran of many, many human-powered Iditarod races

The physical ability to ski 350 miles is only one small part of actually skiing 350 miles.   This might be the only ski race I’ve ever entered where my years of ski racing experience mean absolutely nothing.  The mental game is much more important.  And having the right gear goes a long way towards improving self reliance and adaptability, and thus improving your odds in the mental game.

Because my training has been less than ideal, it is reassuring to read a quote like Rocky’s (which I have heard many other Iditarod racers echo).  Maybe the training is not that important.  But then again, how strong are my self reliance skills?  My adaptability?  Or even my questionable-at-best sense of humor?  I don’t know the answers to these questions yet.  But I’ve tried to invest my time into both training and gear preparations, so that when the mental game starts, I’ll have the tools I need to play at my best.