The skijoring husband and wife duo of Andy and Susan Seitz swept the distance events at the 7th Annual Birch Hill skijor race.  Andy's small but fast and motivated dog Mabel, pulled him to a first place in the one-dog 9K class in 23:30 to beat last year's winning time by 23 seconds.  Yeller and Ed did the same for Susan in the two-dog class 13K class, equaling  Kriya Dunlap's 2006 winning time of 26:40.

In the 1-dog 9K race, Jim Herriges knew that his dog Ole was not having a great day from the very beginning.   But when he discovered that Ole had earlier eaten a bag of dried chicken breast treats (supposedly representing nearly 10 lbs of chicken), he was surprised that he had managed to finish second in 27:12, just ahead of David French and his golden retriever Boone who finished third in 27:45.

Susan Seitz led the 2-dog 13K mass start race from wire to wire and Chad Carroll overcame two falls and a pit stop by one of his dogs to finish second in 28:39.  Matt Bray passed Alina Evans during the closing kilometers of the race to finish third in 31:03.  Evans was home from college for spring break and borrowed dogs from George and Cindy Salmon.

Carol Kleckner won the 3-dog 6K race in exciting fashion with a time of 11:49.  Kleckner, Sara Elzey, and Mike Malvick simultaneously arrived in the finish chute and at one time there were nine dogs spanning the width of the chute in a mad dash to the finish line.  Elzey finished second.

Kumi Rattenbury won the 2-dog 6K race in 22:55 in her first ASPA race.

Sunnifa Deehr won her first race of the season in the 1-dog 4K class, racing with leap to a first place finish in 13:53.  Keith Hanneman finished second in 14:54 and Gail Davidson was third in 16:10.

The day's events were topped off with a relay with three-person teams going 3K for with one dog for each leg.  Candy bars were scattered around the course with varying time bonuses for the type of candy bar retrieved.  During the relay, Jim Altherr and Don Atwood were overheard to be good naturedly bickering over the only $100,000 candy bar that represented an additional 20 second time bonus.  Babe Ruth bars were worth a 10 second time bonus.

Herriges led off for his team with a scorching fast leg.  He was ecstatic about his dog Vinnie's performance, since this was Vinnie's second skijor race in about four years. As a yearling, Vinnie refused to skijor after a couple of falls by his skier. His performance in this race supports the value of not giving up on correcting behavioral issues.

Andy Warwick and Zip took the tag from Don Atwood and raced their team back into contention with a great second leg.  Warwick tagged Malvick who left the transition zone with Mesa in first place, grabbed the requisite candy bar at full speed at the top of the stadium, and went on to win by more than a minute head of the team of Herriges, Evans, and Peggy Raybeck.

Many thanks to Judy Warwick for serving as race starter, Sara Tabbert for timing, and Isaac Charlton and Aaron Atwood for timing and calculating results.  Jim Herriges served as Race Organizer and Andy Warwick served as Race Director.

Also, thanks to our sponsors who provided the wonderful assortment of prizes for today's competitors.  The Alaska House Art Gallery, Apocalypse Design, Canine Caviar, Grubstake, and 49er Feed Distributors all generously contributed.  Thanks are also due to the Russell, Tom, and the rest of the Birch Hill trail grooming crew.