Alaska Dispatch

Always there was a smile on the face of Tracey Petervary.

When she labored to push her heavily loaded bicycle up a steep section of the Iditarod Trail coming off the Skwentna River in the Alaska Range, she smiled.

As the Iditarod Trail Invitational pushoton wandered in the blowing snow trying to find the buried trail in the not-so-happy Happy Valley, she smiled.

When at last the ragtag gang of pedalers from around the globe turned bike-pushers all found better trail along Pass Creek on the last climb to 3,350-foot Rainy Pass, she smiled, chatted and joked with those all around.

It was the same during group bushwhacks through the willow thickets that covered the trail, or fighting through the ground blizzard at the top of the Pass, or wading through the open waters of Pass Fork on the other side, or dancing nervously across the sketchy ice bridges that were the only way across Dalzell Creek down in the gorge of the same name, or when trying to trace the scratch marks of snowmachine skis which were pretty much the only indication of where the trail was on the even sketchier ice of the wide Tatina River leading into Rohn on the north side of the Alaska Range.

The smile finally cracked there. Fatigue can, in time, take down even the strongest of spirits. But Petervary bounced back with a few hours sleep.

By the time she left Rohn, she was smiling again, and smile she did across the rough, largely snowless Farewell Burn and on to the finish line of the Invitational in McGrath -- 350 miles from the beginning in Knik.

And there the positive attitude clearly paid off, for Petervary claimed a new women's record for what is arguably the toughest winter race in Alaska. Participants in the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, or at least the leaders, generally get a packed and well-marked trail to follow. Not so for the Invitational bikers and runners.

The trail they follow is only marginally marked, and if it is packed, it is only because they got lucky and a snowmachine happened to go by. Because of bad trail this year, there was a lot of bike pushing. Racers largely pushed for the 30 miles from the Finger Lake checkpoint to Perrin's Rainy Pass Lodge, and then pushed again for 35 miles through Rainy Pass to Rohn.

Still, Petervary made it to McGrath in 4 days, 18 hours and 53 minutes unassisted. The previous race record of 5 days, 7 hours, 48 minutes was held by Kathi Merchant, wife of race founder Bill. She was accompanied by her husband when she set the record, although there remains considerable debate as to whether that was an asset or a liability. The consensus seems to be that she was pacing him far more than he paced her.

This time there is no question of pacing. Petervary's husband Jay, the 2008 Invitational winner, was in the competition but he took off early with the race leaders and he and Tracey didn't see other again until McGrath.

Jay finished in a time of 4 days, 9 hours, behind champ Peter Basinger and runner-up Jeff Oatley. Basinger, 29, and Oatley, 40, made it to McGrath at sled dog speed. Basinger was there in 3 days, 9 hours, 45 minutes. Oatley, the defending champ, was only 33 minutes behind. For Basinger, an Anchorage cycling phenom, this was his fourth Invitational victory.

For notching another championship, he won -- as in the past -- nothing. Same for Tracey Petervary.

The Invitational doesn't even hand out trophies. This is racing in its purest form. The satisfaction for each racer comes from knowing she or he did his or her best and, of course, beat someone else. Basinger is now back in Anchorage where he attends graduate school while working part time at Speedway Cycles. Oatley is headed back to his job as an engineer at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks.

The Petervarys, reunited now, are continuing on their bikes along the Iditarod Trail to Nome.

The only other woman to finish the Invitational this year was Californian Louise Kobin, who came in not far ahead of hikers Eric Johnson from Ogden, Utah, and Tom Jarding, a mailman from Pennsylvania. They made McGrath in 5 days, 17 hours. As of Saturday, 20 of the 44 racers who started in Knik on Sunday had finished.

Contact Craig Medred at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .