On Racing in a Pandemic: Why We're Staying Home
Laying on my couch, staring at the ceiling it came to me, I said the words aloud to register them:
‘I don’t want to get COVID-19.’
At this point, the major races I had been planning to sign up for had canceled: first the UP200, then Can Am, and then even the local Brownville 20/20 race. Left standing was the midwest races, the Beargrease for which I was already on the waitlist, and the Copper Dog 140 which would open signups the next day.
I scraped myself off the couch, ate lunch, and ran a 10 dog team of the developing A-listers, led by Aurora and Willie and including the yearlings Marian and Wocket. 40 degrees and raining, it felt like October, not the edge of December. The weather has unspooled from a reliable cycle this year, not assisting with marking time.
As I sat on the ATV, I found myself bypassing this winter and moving to spring’s puppies, and to next year’s race goals, an unconscious heart-based confirmation of where it wanted to lead my head, an alignment. But also a decision that raised more questions, left an unsettled feeling, reminding me of the time I scratched at the Beargrease, a decision I made that was both obvious and clouded. That scratch balanced the safety of pulling out with the risk of moving forward. My friend Maria was the one who pointed out the words I was using, and the words I was not using, and that overwhelmingly I was not using words of moving forward.
When the pandemic broke back in March, I said to a lot of people that I didn’t expect much of a race season. Maybe it's because my day job has me reckoning with the slow pace of social change, of human work, in rural areas. Maybe it's because caring for my siblings shoves me into the public health arena and exposes the vulnerabilities of our interconnected human systems. Maybe it's because for such a long part of my formative life, my long-term plans were tethered to the unknown of my mother's illness, where I learned the roll with the punches.
Maybe it's because of some other cautious part of my personality, that the idea of hosting races, but more importantly my own measure of comfort attending them, started to feel like a bad decision to me. I started the training season with that expectation, fortunately with 9 yearlings to train and only a handful of dogs really in their prime, it's easy for me to say that it's a good year to gear down with different goals.
The Can Am Crown, the race I've been fortunate to run all three classes multiple times over the past 8 years totaling 1,300 miles of Can Am racing, takes place in a tiny rural town. There are so few lodging/ hotels available for mushers and volunteers, that a longstanding host family program exists to give everyone a bed. Like so many rural areas, the average age of the Town, and the Board of Directors, and the volunteers, peaks towards that more vulnerable population. Long stretches of road isolate Fort Kent from major highways. The exhaustion of organizing and running a race diminishes the immune system, for both mushers and volunteers. This shows a vulnerability waiting to be exposed, should the region become flooded with out-of-county visitors, teams from as far away as the midwest.
These vulnerabilities do not go away with the elimination of spectators, hosting everything outside rain or shine, contactless musher registration, or creating team signup limits.
When the decision by Can Am came out, my fellow mushers were sad. The Board was as well. For me, I'd been waiting for this, and I applaud, and still applaud, Can Am for taking the leadership and making this decision. Can Am was not the first race to cancel, following the UP200, Idaho’s Eagle Cap Extreme, and Alaska’s Fur Rondy. Personally, my prefrontal cortex is exhausted from making constant decisions--I'm grateful that Can Am, and the UP200, made this decision for me. More than a few mushers, signed up for longer and more competitive races that are still slated to run, have said to me that they wish other races would follow Can Am's lead and just cancel.
Following on the heels of this decision, I thought more about my own vulnerabilities. There are friends I know who have COVID, have had COVID. They lived through it, but the virus ravaged their bodies for weeks. On the phone with my sister over Thanksgiving, she said that she and her husband couldn’t afford to get sick, either one at a time or both, for that long. I thought of what would have to happen if I did get sick, if Chuck and I were both sick, at the same time. I thought of my siblings, I thought of trying to care for them when I couldn’t care for myself. The connection to my own life, my own reality, crystallized for the first time.
Two weeks ago, my house sitters notified me that they were within contact with someone who had been in contact with a potential positive. Suddenly, the thin causal chain that can carry this disease became real—all it could take was one or two people, standing too close to others for too long. Quarantined and tested, we did not pick up COVID. That experience marked me.
I am fortunate to live and operate in a lifestyle where I can minimize risk for myself and my family. Chuck and I both telecommute, I live in a rural area. So far we’ve been able to minimize risk and exposure. I recognize not everyone can, and maybe there are those who have more comfort with exposure and exposure practices. I, however, do not: and do not want to add to the risk portfolio I already live under.
The Macy’s Parade, 2020.
During Thanksgiving day, while chopping vegetables and simmering sauces, my housemates and I watched the Macy’s Day Parade, the floats sliding quietly down empty and silent streets, a length of a single NYC block. Seeing those floats, and seeing the performers spaced out, seeing the singers waving to empty walls, I felt the visceral difference of what racing would feel like. The empty starts, the roll-through timing, the isolation, all necessary steps to minimize contact and reduce risk.
Standing at a start line, the last person I talk to is a volunteer, a start line coordinator I’ve known for years, who stands on my brake until it’s time, and then hands my own team back to me, a clap on my back as we release into the trail. That personal exchange, embodies the partnership and community of racing: for every hour the musher has spent training, the volunteer has spent organizing, and for every hour the musher is on the trail, the volunteer is at work as well. The races in which that exchange is distanced, like in the rumbling polarized trucks of a Beargrease checkpoint, I’ve questioned what the purpose is, without that visible exchange between volunteer and musher.
The reality of racing is that we are not fully socially distanced, there are volunteers close to teams and spectators that throng the trails. I haven’t seen COVID plans for races, but I suspect they rely heavily on mushers bringing their own volunteer handlers, something that I’ve always struggled with bringing, and in COVID would only use someone within my own household. I suspect contactless registration, distanced vet checks, and staggered musher meetings. No banquets, no award ceremonies. The rituals and grounding social exchanges scraped away, leaving a hollow bone.
What was left?
As I tallied up all these elements, the environmental vulnerability of the places I was traveling to race (and indeed the place I live myself), the vulnerability of my own family, and the loss of the community in racing, for my own decision matrix, the cons outweighed the pros. The decision that weighed me down, that clogged my prefrontal cortex, that had me glued to my couch on a rainy morning staring at the ceiling, suddenly came out of my own mouth.
‘We won’t be racing.’
It is true, the dogs also need to race, to experience competition, and that competition forges a deeper bond. Gemma, as a competitive leader, becomes her best self in a race and only started trusting me once I started bringing her racing. The two year olds of Hoss and Orchid have never seen a race, and there are 9 yearlings who need that test of a race environment to learn who they are. There are an array of five year olds in their prime, Oriana and Rocky and Hippo and Gem and Gemma, who are missing out on a year at their peak athletic ability. Racing for the three year olds, Willie and Spiller and Flora and Razz, would make them racing pros at five years old. Flora herself didn’t really solidify as a sled dog until she ran her first race. I recognize all of these things. I recognize that to fulfill their needs, I’m supposed to put the dogs first.
As a racing team, it’s tough to sit back. All of these things that I described do not translate to a virtual race: while I might be timing on my GPS, the dogs have no idea without the environmental differences—the vibe of the crowds, the new trail, the scent of other teams.
If the goal for 2022 is a return to the Can Am 250, this means the young dogs who are being groomed for that team will be in their first races that same year. The 250 is a tough race. Looking at the team yesterday, the 10 dog A listers, I thought of how to push and test the dogs this year to see what is possible in 2022. Even without races.
This whole pandemic thing really is a personal choice. I share the elements that came together for my own decision matrix. As someone who takes a calculated risk every time I step onto the runners, placing my bodily safety into the paws of the dogs in front of me, I applied that same personal risk analysis to racing. This isn’t to say that races can’t be organized, that events can’t happen, but that for my own personal choices, which relates to my own personal history and family situation….that I’ll be staying home.
I have been thinking about community, and how to build and maintain that community that I will be missing from racing. I still don’t know the answer, but I’m sure it’ll come. Or, maybe, the question will just linger.
As musher and friend Stephane Duplessis always says, mushing is a 'next year' sport. Out of a place of love, I invite us all to consider what that means, this year.
“There are years that ask questions, and there are years that answer.”