Warm trail punishes Iditarod ultramarathoners

FINGER LAKE -- Around the table the men stared into their mugs and tried to find the words to stir hope in Dave Pramman. An old dog trying to run with the front of the pack in the Iditarod Trail Invitational, Pramann was a beaten man.

He pedaled into the Winterlake Lodge here suffering as much in mind as in body. The physiological handicap of age and the psychological toil of churning slowly through endless miles of soft trail had taken their toll.

"This is the hardest thing I've ever done," he said.

Ahead of the 50-something Minnesota cyclist, 29-year-old Peter Basinger was powering toward the Alaska Range with a struggling Jeff Oatley, 40, trying to hold his wheel. Just behind them came buff Jay Petervary, 37, the last of the three amigos leading the human-powered race over the length of the Iditarod Trail.

All had suffered a long day on the 45 miles of trail from Skwentna that started badly in the swamps behind the community of 150, got worse on the climb up and into the Shell Hills, and then turned into a long, low-speed grind across the interminable muskegs and through the skinny patches of spruce forest between Shell Lake and this checkpoint at Finger Lake.

None had suffered as badly as Pramman, however. Now, as they gathered around the long table in the huge kitchen of this modern and extremely comfortable lodge deep into Alaska, they debated just how bad a day it had been.

It was tough, they agreed, but it could have been worse. It can always be worse, said Basinger, who grew up in Alaska and therefore knows of what he speaks. He's the guy who helped save young mountain biker Petra Davis's life after she was badly mauled by a grizzly during a mountain bike race on the edge of Anchorage. Basinger knows just how bad things can get.

A flatlander from Burnsville, Minn., Pramman was wrestling with the sometimes unreal realities of Alaska. For him, the Iditarod Trail had become something just about as bad as it gets. This kind of thought is a bad thing 125 miles into a 350-mile ultramarathon, and everyone at the table knew it.

All tried to cheer Pramman, but with little success. His mind had gone to that dark place where it searches for reasons to quit. It is something that happens not just in this event. It is something that happens in life.

"This is just defeatist thought," Pramann admitted. "I probably shouldn't be thinking this. (But) I feel like I've just done the Trans Iowa and I'm only here."

The Trans Iowa is a back-road, Midwest, mountain bike race about the length of the Iditarod Trail Invitational. It is regionally famous mainly because conditions got so bad one year that no one finished, Praman noted. Somebody has always finished the Iditarod Invitational, but the snow that buried last year's race made things epic. Some racers thought they might not survive the Alaska Range, but they did. And they went on to finish the race.

"If you go back," Pramann said, "you're such a failure."

The Invitational is a test of perseverance. The only reward is passing the test. There is no prize money at the finish line. Not even a trophy. There is only the smug satisfaction of knowing that you were tougher than the elements, tougher than Alaska, tougher than nature itself. And nature has been plenty tough this year.

For a trail, imagine the fabled Alp de Huez of the Tour de France turned on its side and stretched out seemingly forever. Iditarod volunteers from Shell Lake, who never get enough credit from anybody, had thankfully dragged the trail from Skwentna to Finger to knock down a reported seven inches of new fluff, but left behind were a couple of inches of soft, sand-like snow that grabbed at the four-inch-wide tires of the fat bikes ridden by the cyclists who have come to dominate this strange race that began more than 37 years ago as the Iditaski. It was hard to keep the bike moving, but most did with only minimal walking on some of the steeper hills. Their struggles, though, were recorded in the squiggly, snake-like marks left by their tracks on the trail. Pramann noted that, too.

"Peter's running a straighter line than I am," he said dejectedly.

"He runs a straighter line than anyone," Petervary said. He told Pramann to look on the bright side.