Six more weeks of winter

It's Groundhog Day and Phil determined that there will be six more weeks of winter. That is great news! Our training for the Iditarod is going well, and the more cold weather we have, the better. A couple of weeks ago, Chuck, Tim, Loreen, Rick B. and myself did a training run in the Laurel Highlands. The snow machine trails were in great shape and we were able to pull our sleds for about five hours that night. Afterwards, we camped out in the woods, where night-time temps dropped well below zero. It was really good training for Alaska. Chuck mentioned that he learned a lot on that trip. The next day we traveled to the Cleveland area for the Buckeye Trail 50k. They had a lot of new snow, which made the trail fairly slippery the entire day. We chalked it up as a good training run.

We got a good run in at Mingo Park on Sunday in preparation for the fun run coming up in a couple of weeks. The trails were snow covered and tough to run on. The weather is going to warm up for a few days, so the trails should be better by the end of the week. At least they are not muddy, which is the case much of the year. Don't forget to join us for the Mingo Mingle on February 14th. You can view details on the webpage, which can be found here: http://www.laurelultra.com/mingo_mingle.htm
I added links to a couple of images of the trail that Bob Fargo sent to me.

Steeler nation is fired up, as our favorite team won it's Sixth Super Bowl last night. What a game, as the lead changed hands three times in the final minutes. Many of the South Hills area ultra-runners watched the game at Don's house.

I am still waiting for the new plastic to arrive so that I can complete work on my sled. I am guessing that the bad weather across the country slowed the delivery, and hope that it arrives this week. I will put a couple of pictures up when I get it finished. I also plan on switching from a synthetic sleeping bag to a down bag so that I can shed a few pounds on my sled. We will be sending our food drops to Alaska shortly, which the race will take by plane to the two drop points along the Iditarod course. I am beginning to get excited again, and can not wait to get started.