In his blood

Robert Redington was born to be a musher. As the grandson of Iditarod royalty Joe Redington Sr., it was probably inevitable.

“I think the [Alaska] Gold Rush and the Jack London books inspired him to drive a dog team,” Robert says of his grandfather. “He tried to come up [to Alaska] on the barge—he must’ve been 20—around the 1930s. He didn’t have enough money to buy a ticket from Seattle to Skagway, so he turned around and joined the military, the Air Force. [After he left the Air Force], he drove up to Alaska with the family—his dad and three kids—in 1948. He got his first husky in the Yukon territory on his way up and it’s been sled dogs ever since.”

Robert adds: “There was a big race in the early days, the All Alaska Sweepstakes. It was around 400 or 500-miles. That’s what gave him the idea for the long race; that’s what gave him the idea that the Iditarod—a thousand-mile race—was possible.”

Sleep deprivation, that’s the hardest part about racing the Iditarod, Robert says. It’s not the physical labor or working with a team of dogs—that’s what offseason preparation is for. No, the hardest part about running a thousand-mile sled dog race is fighting back the urge to sleep.

“Fighting sleep deprivation, that’s tough,” Robert says. “Especially if you want to run up front. To give you an idea, you have to stay [awake] for 13 to 24-hours for nine or 10 days. Staying well-hydrated, that helps. What these frontrunners do is they rest three to four hours. It takes around an hour and a half to two hours to get all the chores done. You got about an hour window to rehydrate yourself and get some food in you and then if you’re lucky you get a half hour, hour nap. The frontrunners, they’re very mentally tough. Being mentally tough, that’s key. If you’re good at staying awake and working hard with a lack of sleep, you’ll be good.”

You get a glimpse of what it’s like in a mid-distance race, Robert says. “This year I was training a lot with two dog teams. So, some days I would be out on the trail for 10 to 13 hours. That can help [prepare you]. When I ran the Willow 300, I got five hours of sleep; the Northern Lights 300 I got four hours of sleep. If it was the Kuskokwim [300], the race in Bethel, I bet those mushers didn’t even get a nap. And you can’t rely on coffee too much or it’ll dehydrate you and make you cranky.”

In 2011, Robert’s brother Ryan got him a summer job in Skagway giving sled dog rides. That following winter Robert started gathering up his own dogs.

“I pick out a theme and that’s how I name the dogs,” Robert says. “I had to have a skateboard litter. So, I got Nollie, Kickflip, Varial, 50-50—Ollie and 50-50 will be on [my Iditarod] team. I wear a lot of wool, so I have [dogs named] Cashmere, Angora, Wooly Mammoth is the biggest in the litter. Another litter is the Goodbye litter. There’s Adios, Bon Voyage, See You Later, Ciao. Hopefully when they’re old enough to race, we’ll be saying that to teams when we go by them.”

Last year was the first year Robert ran the Iditarod. He made it 600-miles in. This year, he says his goal is to finish the race with a happy and healthy team.

“My dogs are pretty big, so I can just kick back and relax,” he says. “I’m not into speed, I’m more of a steady [racer]. I think out of the 18 dogs I’m taking, there are only three who are under 60 lbs. So, yea, they’re a bunch of four by fours.”

Redington took first place in the Northern Lights 300 earlier this year.

“Everything just went right,” he said. “It seemed like it was easy for the whole team, so that was pretty special.”

Redington explained that the Northern Lights 300 goes a little bit faster than the Iditarod.

“You’re only out there for 40 to 70 hours. I think you can make a mistake in the 300 and you’re still [a contender]. If you make a mistake in the Iditarod, it could cost you the whole race. If you go too fast early on, a couple days later you might have a couple slow runs just because of one bad run,” he said. “Winners do the Iditarod in 15 to 20 runs. Those 300-mile races are usually four to five runs. The Iditarod is kind of a mistake-free race. There are mid-distance races—the shorter ones—where you’ll have maybe five really good teams in there; the Iditarod, you have everyone in there. So, everything just has to go right.

Redington said that in recent years, changing weather has affected the race.

“When we go over the Alaska Range—when we go down that—that runs through the Dalzell Gorge and there’s no roller coaster ride like that. And if there’s no snow, it’s dangerous for the dogs and the musher,” he said. “We got snow this year, enough for the Iditarod to go on its traditional route—over the Alaska Range. Over the last couple of years, it’s been very disappointing. The last couple of years, we were training on nothing but ice. I think the February before last year’s race I told my girlfriend, ‘we gotta get out of here. We can’t train here for the level we’re hoping to be on in a couple years.’ We ended up north of Willow, near Cantwell.”

Redington sees a lot of familiar names among this year’s favorites.

“Dallas and Mitch Seavey and Aliy Zirkle are maybe the hardest working mushers right now,” he said. “I think they’ll definitely be in the top five. They’re all very capable of winning it. Nick Petit from Girdwood, you can’t count him out. He’s had a very good year mid-distance racing. I think we’ll see Nick a lot. The first 500-miles, if he can keep it going, maybe he’ll have a win. Wade Marrs has a nice team. I think my brother, Ray Jr., has a top 10 team for sure. Once you get to Kaltag or Nulato [checkpoints], those first 5 teams, those are going to be the ones to watch.”