Wednesday, January 31, 2018

Non-Gopher Topic: Breaking Down Ryan Redington's Victory in the 2018 Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon.

Each year I volunteer, with members of my family, at the Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon in Northern Minnesota. My cousin is the coordinator for the Sawbill Checkpoint. In addition to helping work the checkpoint, I enjoy following the race and sort of “armchair mushing” the strategies.

This year’s Marathon was roughly ~370 miles and began with 10 mushers. Each team can begin the race with 14 dogs. The ten teams included 8 very experienced and strong mushers, along with two first timers.

Nathan Schroeder and Ryan Anderson have combined to win the previous 7 Beargrease Marathon’s (4 for Nathan, 3 for Ryan), with Ryan Anderson being the defending champ. Blake Freking and Keith Aili are also past Beargrease Champions. Perennial contenders Colleen Wallin and Denis Tremblay were in the mix, along with up and coming North Shore musher Matt Schmidt and last year’s Runner Up, Ryan Redington who is originally from Alaska, but currently lives in the UP of Michigan.

Two rookies rounded out the field of ten. Kevin Mathis of Iowa, and Blair Braverman of Michigan. Both had competed in, and completed the Beargrease Mid-Distance race (roughly 150 miles) in the past.

Unfortunately the two rookies ended up scratching from the race. Kevin scratched before the midway point after a rough start. There was word that his team got in a bit of a tussle before the start of the race, which lead to some early trouble.

Blair had a steady race, but ultimately ended up scratching about three-quarters into the race. I think there were two reasons Blair struggled and neither was in her control. One, the Beargrease trail is difficult. That is an absolute fact and as such, rookie mushers often don't fare well. Second, in comparison to the 8 other teams on the trail, it would be very difficult for a rookie team and musher to keep up.

In many years, with more teams on the trail, often consisting of other rookies or mushers running younger/puppy teams, Blair would have likely been in the mix in the second half of the pack, but that was not the case this year with a relatively small field of competitors. 

A note on the difficulty of the race. The Beargrease trail winds from Duluth up the North Shore of Lake Superior, then back down. While the race doesn’t have some of the long climbs and descents that the long famous races of Alaska have, or other races in the Western Lower 48 states, what makes Beargrease so difficult is the number of short steep hills, often in rapid succession.  There are a lot of quick ups and downs, which is both unusual and unfamiliar for most dog teams. Mushers from Alaska have commented on how difficult the trail is, saying things like “the hills just keep on coming.”

There are a total of 8 checkpoints between the start and finish of the Beargrease Marathon and teams must take at least 30 hours of rest in those checkpoints throughout the race.

There are two mandatory rest spots: 8 hours at Grand Portage (the halfway point of the race) and 4 hours at Highway 2 (the final checkpoint before the finish of the race), meaning teams must take 18 hours of rest throughout the other 6 checkpoints, averaging out to 3 hours/checkpoint.

There are basically two strategies to winning a distance dogsled race. Go faster than all of the other teams, or take less rest than all of the other teams. Obviously it’s slightly more complicated than that, and mushers have to assess the strengths and condition of their teams, but in general, those are the main winning strategies.

With Beargrease having a mandatory amount of rest, the strategy of cutting rest isn’t really available. Sub strategies exist. For example, some teams may rest early in the race, conserving their team's energy for later in the race. Some may take less rest early so that they can get ahead of their competition, perhaps causing them to make a mistake or deviate from their race plan due to being behind. There are no doubt countless other ways of thinking about it, but I am not a musher myself, so this is just my observation.

Regardless of the strategy, for the Beargrease Marathon, one thing is consistent: the top teams will have taken exactly 30 hours of rest (plus their time differential from the start of the race), and not a second more.

This year, Freking & Tremblay essentially “blew through” (stopped only for a couple of minutes) the first checkpoint at Finland, stopping only to give their dogs a snack, then moved on to tackle the run to the Sawbill checkpoint. Redington took a longer, but still short, 1 hour break. Those three mushers arrived at Sawbill 1-2-3 as expected, followed steadily by the other 5 seasoned competitors.

The next two checkpoints at Sawbill and Trail Center are where Ryan Redington essentially called his shot. First, he left the Sawbill checkpoint about 45 minutes before any other team, meaning he took shorter rest than anticipated, and then he posted the fastest time (5 hours, 1 minute, 8 seconds) to make the run. Other competitors were close in run time, but Redington did it on less rest.

At this point, the wisdom was that yes, Redington was out in front, but he was well behind other competitors in amount of rest taken. The concern at this point becomes burning out your team. If you go too fast and/or with too little rest, dog teams can shut down and refuse to run.

Next, continuing the trend, Redington took the least amount of rest at Trail Center, then posted the 2nd fastest run time to the halfway point at Grand Portage. He had taken about two hours less rest than the other competitors, but was running as fast as anyone, and still had a strong team of 11 dogs.

The other 7 main competitors stayed pretty bunched up behind Redington, seemingly employing a similar strategy to each other. They arrived to Grand Portage within 30 minutes of each other, but about 3 hours after Redington.

The race plan that these 7 mushers were employing had been a winning one in the past, but Redington had essentially turned that on its ear.

After an 8 hour & 18 minute rest (the mandatory 8 hour rest plus his time differential from the start of the race) at Grand Portage, Redington hit the trail on the way to Skyport. This is where, in my opinion, Redington really won the race. Leaving 3 hours ahead of his competitors, he made the 53 mile run 20 minutes faster than the next fastest team. He then left Skyport just an hour after his closest competition, who at that point of the race was Ryan Anderson, arrived to the checkpoint.

He was still 90 minutes behind the other teams in rest, but the speeds he was posting and just the psychology of the first place team already leaving a checkpoint shortly after you have arrived, may have been demoralizing for the other teams. 

If it wasn't already, it was now Redington's race to lose.

This is probably a good time to mention that Redington comes from a lineage of mushing royalty. Redington’s grandfather, Joe Redington Sr was one of the founders of the Iditarod in the early 70’s, and his entire family are dog people. Ryan himself won the Junior Iditarod in 1999, has competed in 9 Iditarod’s, completing the race five times with a personal best finish of 14th in 2017.

At 35 years old, Redington literally has a lifetime of experience with dog mushing.

The run from Skyport to Sawbill was more of the same. Redington posted the fasted time, besting Anderson by about 12 minutes and still posting an average speed of over 9mph, while other teams were closer to 8.5mph and under.

Redington took a relatively short rest at Sawbill of about 2 hours, which lead to him being able to take over 3 hours rest at Finland. None of the other mushers would have this luxury. 

All that was left for Redington was the run to Highway 2, his mandatory 4 hour rest at the race's final checkpoint, then the 35 mile run to the finish at Billy’s Bar in Duluth. As it turns out, that was a run that he was able to leave for nearly 2 and a half hours before his closest competitor, which was defending champ Ryan Anderson. Continuing the trend, Redington did the final stretch 24 minutes faster than Anderson.

This was a bit of a statement race, in my opinion, for Redington. He shot out of the gate in 2017’s Beargrease like a streak of fire, but his team speed suffered late in the race. Presumably his team burnt out on the hills because he ended up finishing the race with just 7 dogs. This year his strategy was similar, but perhaps a bit more conservative early. Additionally, his team was likely better conditioned to maintain the pace.

[UPDATE: Redington confirmed in the Duluth News Tribune that he was indeed more conservative early, and that his team had more training this year than last.]

It’s possible that Redington’s win this year was a Beargrease record. Unfortunately, due to snow and trail conditions over the years, the Beargrease route has undergone several changes, so maintaining any kind of official record isn’t really possible. But from a pure time standpoint, Redington’s finish (32 hours, 20 minutes of trail time) is 40 minutes faster than Nathan Schroeder’s record from 2016.

With Redington now residing in the UP of Michigan, it’s possible he will become a perennial competitor in the Beargrease Marathon. While other mushers continue to improve and push their teams, if Redington is going to be a yearly foe, teams are clearly going to need to step up their speed. A daunting task.

The stranglehold that Anderson and Schroeder had on the Beargrease Championship is over for the moment, but those two aren’t going anywhere and are fierce competitors who will continue to improve.

Keith Aili is a wild card who always puts together fast teams, and Denis Tremblay and Colleen Wallin have shown steady improvement for many years.

Matt Schmidt and his wife Erin Altemus have built a very good team. They share the family mushing duties and are just getting started in competitive races.

Blake Freking and his steady team of Siberian Huskies is always in the mix, particularly any year that the temperatures are especially cold.

Next for Redington is the 2018 Iditarod. There’s really no corollary between Beargrease performance and Iditarod performance, as far as I can tell, but Redington's team appears to be in top shape.

In a typical year the Iditarod begins in Willow, Alaska and ends in Nome, but last year’s Iditarod was run on a non-traditional route between Fairbanks and Nome due to a lack of snow on the traditional trail. The conventional wisdom seems to indicate that the Fairbanks route is faster, as the first half of the race is run primarily on flat, frozen rivers.


There is no doubt Redington has a strong team that is built for speed, even on short rest, and his strong finish on last year’s flatter Iditarod trail is evidence of that. It will be interesting to see how he and his athletes are able to handle the traditional Iditarod trail after an impressive Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon victory.

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