Mushers’ significant others don't sit idle during Iditarod

Caitlin Skvorc

WASILLA — While Iditarod mushers are in the spotlight of “The Last Great Race,” their significant others are doing plenty behind the scenes.

Willow’s Jen Seavey, for example, began her preview of husband Dallas Seavey’s race on social media earlier this week, making sure the fans of the three-time Iditarod champion stay in the loop from day 1.

“At this point our Facebook fans are kind of on the edge of their seats, so we try to find time in the morning (before the race) to make a Facebook post,” Jen said by phone Wednesday.

Once Dallas hits the trail, Jen keeps her eyes glued to the Iditarod’s online GPS tracker and videos, scrutinizing the details as a way to connect with her husband on the trail.

“When I sit down and look at that it comes to life,” she said.

Jen said she acts as a kind of decoder for fans who only see a random smattering of mushers represented by dots that could make any move at any time. What she sees, by contrast, is a musher’s strategy based on how long he or she spends at certain checkpoints, for example.

“Wives and families and kennel crew members have kinda taken on that role for the fans to interpret the Iditarod for them,” Jen said.

Fellow Willow resident Rebecca Savidis, whose husband Justin is on his sixth Iditarod this year, said she “keeps musher’s hours” to follow the tracker — which makes her a little less accessible during race time.

“I turn into a pumpkin of a human being,” she said at the mushers’ bib number drawing banquet in Anchorage on Thursday.

Savidis has a sense of humor about her self-imposed exile during the 1,000-mile dogsled race from Willow to Nome.

“I don’t sleep, I hardly eat — I subsist on cheesecake,” she said. “My friend does a welfare check on me every two days if she hasn’t heard from me.”

That said, Savidis doesn’t want to hear from her husband between the start and finish of his race. She wants him focused.

“If I’m talking to him it means something’s wrong or he’s distracted,” she said. “If something’s wrong we figure it out and we move on but we’ve put too much into this for him to be distracted.”

Rebecca said she made a promise to Justin when he decided to run for the first time that she would always do everything necessary to get him to the starting line if he promised to get himself to the finish.

Don’t ask, don’t tell?

Iditarod husband Mike Jonrowe, of Willow, said he takes a more practical approach to following — or not following — the race.When asked what he does while his world-famous wife, DeeDee, is out on the Iditarod Trail, he had a deadpan answer.

“Taxes,” he said.

Jonrowe said he actually tries not to follow the perennial fan favorite on the tracker, not wanting to fret over the “whipsaw” of watching mushers move forward and back in the pack again and again during the race.

Jonrowe said he’s usually more involved in the months leading up to the race, running the dogs 1,500 to 2,000 miles a year, but between his recent knee replacement, wrist injury, and the destruction of the couple’s home in last summer’s Sockeye fire, he said it’s been enough just to try and get everything back in order and get DeeDee back where she feels most comfortable — the Iditarod trail.

“She wants to just try and enjoy herself,” Mike said.

The Jonrowe’s neighbors, mushers Bob Chlupach and Jan Steves, are in a similar situation. While Steves will be starting her fifth Iditarod this weekend (her last finish was in 2012), Chlupach has elected not to run the race this year to take care of home projects.

At least, that’s one version of the story.

“She told me I could only run the race again if I stayed behind her,” he said.

Chlupach couldn’t say for sure if he would race the Iditarod again, but that it’s hard to ignore what happens in Willow each winter on the first Sunday in March.

“After it’s been in your blood, it’s something you need to do,” he said.

Iditarod educators

Wasilla’s Tangela Eischens follows the tracker and uses Facebook to tell the world about her husband Alan’s trek across the state, focusing on Iditarod education in schools.

This year Tangela Eichens will again work with elementary school classes in Ohio and Virginia that she’s been communicating with for the past few months, trading questions and answers via Facebook, phone and Skype.

While that and “daily chores around the house” keep her busy, Eichens said she will start checking the calendar and the clock more often after about 10 days have passed since the beginning of the race.

“It’s hardest right toward the end,” she said.

It didn’t help that Alan started the race with pneumonia last year — his first year running the Iditarod — and got sick again later on down the trail, Tangela said. She later found out that his delayed finish was more a result of just taking his time, enjoying the scenery, since “the money’s the same” for every finisher after 30^th place, he said.

Kathy Fiedler, who lives in Willow with her husband Linwood, said she turns to education during race time as well, albeit a little closer to home.

As a preschool special education teacher at Willow Elementary, Kathy engages her students in the Iditarod by taking them on dog sled rides and bringing in memorabilia from races past, such as Linwood’s sixth-place trophy, which he was awarded in 2003 (his highest finish was in 2001, when he was runner-up to four-time champion Doug Swingley of Montana).

The kids love following the race, Fiedler said.

“I try to make it cool for them,” she said.

Fiedler said she usually takes a few days off from work to travel to Unalakleet during the race, but not just to see the mushers come through the Kaltag Portage. Kathy used to volunteer at the checkpoint, and the Fiedlers have a longstanding relationship with the people there through their company, Arctic Paws for Service, which provides service dogs to people in need in far north communities.

Meanwhile, she knows her husband is building character out on the trail — which makes the time apart easier to bear.

“He’s never had a race that I haven’t thought he became a better person because of it,” she said.

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.