Rookie ready for his first Iditarod

Despite running the Iditarod for his first time, rookie musher Sam Martin is cool and calm as he takes off on the 1,000-mile journey from Willow to Nome this week. With a decade of dog handling experience, Martin isn’t feeling the nerves that many might expect for someone tackling such a massive undertaking.

“I’ve put in all the hard work. We’ve done 5 months of training. I’ve been running dogs for 10 years. I am as trained up as I can be, the dogs are trained up as they can be. We may have the answers to the test, now we just have to go out and do it. It’s like a 10 day vacation,” Martin said.

Martin, originally from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, will be racing with a team from the Alaska Husky Adventures and The 17th Dog kennel owned by Matt and Liz Failor in Willow. Martin returned to the kennel last fall and has been training hard for Iditarod ever since.

When he was 19, Martin moved to Alaska where he would bounce back and forth from Juneau and Willow running tours during the summer and working for the Failor’s in the winter. Martin would also spend time working with Lauro Eklund in Fairbanks and participate in several mid-distance races with his kennel.

When Matt Failor approached Martin last year, Martin said he had offered running Iditarod to him. Failor would not be racing his team this year and it was an offer he couldn’t turn down, Martin said.

The opportunity to take out the kennel’s A-team for Iditarod was a huge compliment to Martin, who said he was taken back at the generous offer.

“I was pretty stoked. It was a huge confidence boost,” Martin said. “If he thinks I can do it, then I know I can do it.”

Martin’s prior races this winter included the Copper Basin 300 and the Two Rivers 200. His strategy for those races was to take it slow and ease the dogs into race mode.

All of the dogs on Martin’s team have run in the Iditarod at least once. He will be taking out some of Failor’s and The 17th Dog top dogs from the kennel, including some that have run the race upwards of seven times. Martin said that these dogs will serve as the foundation for the now three-year-olds that raced in the Iditarod with Dane Baker in 2025.

“The only person on that team that hasn’t ran it is me, so any mistakes that are happening, that is my fault,” Martin said. “The dogs are going to get me to Nome and they’re going to be my saving grace.”

Everyday since arriving at the kennel in October has been in preparation for Iditarod. A lack of snow until January forced Martin and his team to load up and travel to Trapper Creek, Glen Allen and camping out on the Denali Highway. A dumping of snow at the beginning of the year made training right out of the kennel much easier and more convenient as race season approached.

“Everyday we’ve been cracking at it,” Martin said.

Gear preparation and acquisition started early. Drop bags were organized and labeled soon after receiving them in December. Roughly 2000 pounds of meat was cut and sent out for the dogs as well as plenty of rations for Martin himself. A sled with a full set of spare gear was sent to McGrath in case of emergency.

And despite how stressful the preparation and training for the race can be, Martin said that Failor has been there whenever he was needed but has also pushed Martin to take the lead and lean on his past experiences running dogs. Failor’s confidence in Martin has given him the push to move forward.

“He’s helped me out a lot,” Martin said. “He’s been there every step of the way.”

Racing in the Iditarod was never a dream for Martin. But the longer he spent mushing and the more he enjoyed racing in the mid-distance races, running in Iditarod became more feasible.

“It felt more inevitable,” Martin said. “I’ve been doing this for so long, and I dont know if there’s an end in sight to it. So I think eventually I would get to this point.”

The main goal is to finish with happy and healthy dogs and Martin looks forward to enjoying the scenery along the route. Visiting the villages and the people from the race is something that intrigues Martin as he crosses 1000 miles of rugged Alaskan terrain. Martin said he looks forward to tucking in his shirt to proudly display his finisher’s belt buckle for the rest of his life.

While there is much that Martin doesn’t know what to look forward to, he emphasized that he is not looking forward to wind and extreme negative temperatures.

“It’s just a part of it,” Martin said. “If the dogs can do it, so can I.”

Martin is going into race week positive and confident. His attitude is seemingly laid back and oozing not with the anxiousness of being a rookie for the Last Great Race on Earth, but the anticipation of lifting the snowhook to begin an adventure not many can say they’ve been a part of.

“I can’t afford to not be positive about it. We’ve put so much into it,” Martin said.

While there may be new challenges that Martin and his team will encounter along the way, his mindset is what will keep him moving down the trail.

“The event, the outcome, the only thing you can control is your reaction so I’m just focused on that,” Martin said.

Family from the Lower 48 will be up to send Martin off from Willow and his father will meet him in Nome. This will be new territory for his family and a first time for many of them to experience Alaska.

Martin recalled learning about Chris McCandless in high school and thinking about how crazy of a person that he was for leaving everything behind and moving to Alaska. It wasn’t until some time later that Martin realized that he, too, made the same move only two years later in search of his own adventure.

And now his adventure takes him and his team to Nome.