Night training

With night races and night training becoming more and more popular within our sport, I felt that it might be a good idea to put down in writing what we do to ensure that the dogs and musher’s have as fun and safe a time as possible.

We have had to night train for some 14 years. With us both having full time jobs, it is impossible come late October onwards to get the dogs out during the week for a run in daylight. Looking back, I can say that night running has been both good and bad (how come it always seems to rain when training at night?) Also, you could purchase a nice wee car with the amount of necklines etc lost in some god-forsaken forest in the pitch black!

Whenever we night train we almost always use the quad bike. We have always viewed training at night as something that should be over and done with as quickly and safely as possible, and, therefore, we tend to put dogs together and run larger teams to minimise the time we are out there. My quad has a good halogen light that sits pretty high up on the handlebars. New quads tend to have the lights further down (i.e., the same height as a cars) which is good for lighting the dog’s bums up! A light as high as possible shining onto the trail in front of the dogs is perfect as well. In Italy, Steven witnessed 2 halogen spot lamps; mounted onto telescopic poles about 6 feet above the quads handle bars!

We always train with a head torch and over the years have tried loads of them. Steven’s current one (which I think is the best yet!) is the Mila PL120. This is an orienteering headlamp with a 100mm lens and really kicks out the light. It has a rechargeable battery that lasts for up to 2 hours on full beam and 3 hours on the lesser beam, which is ample for most of us in the UK.

Steven actually raced with this light only last year and found it sufficient. That said, we always fix another light to the rig, as when scooting and running, the light was bouncing around a wee bit and whenever I looked down to see where the footrests on the rig were the dogs were plunged into momentary darkness!

The Mila is expensive (around £175 for the light, battery and charger) but I now consider it as essential equipment and would never be without it. Although the lens is big, I guarantee it is actually more comfortable to wear than the smaller Petzl type models.

Whilst many people feel that the dogs don’t need the lights and that they see well in the dark, I tend to think as much light as possible is a good thing! The few times that something has happened to our lights, whilst night training, it has left me scared and wishing to get back to the van ASAP. Hurtling along at speed, within a forest, not being able to see, is not my idea of fun, and yes, whilst the dogs may be able to see, I couldn’t and the dogs knew this!

Steven run a 14-dog team in Norway at night with just a very small head torch and had no problems. However, it was a beautiful clear night and the moonlight reflected off the snow and you could actually see for miles.

Unfortunately, we will never experience these conditions in the UK (mud does not reflect too well!) and bearing in mind that our trails can have many obstructions, I would go with light, light and more light!

We NEVER go above 15-17 mph on night training runs, and whenever we night train with a rig, we keep the team sizes way down to ensure that we can achieve control of the speed. I feel this is important, in that it gives the dog confidence at night and also reduces injury occurrence.

In effect, we have never really viewed night training as anything other than giving the dogs a chance to stretch their legs, get out of the kennels, and learn some good manners etc. We have never really tried to use night training as an opportunity to get the dogs fit for racing and used weekend daylight training runs for that.

There have been excellent articles published before about the type of battery/light combination to use on your rig. Indeed some organisations stipulate what they can and can’t be. Obviously power and size depends on what size of team you are running. A light you can use to run a 2-dog team, might not be suitable for a 6-dog team in a race situation, but think about mounting 2 lights and one can act as a back up in case of emergencies.

Whichever way you run your dogs at night, be rest assured that it is good fun, good for the dogs, and satisfying for you knowing that your team will heads out confidently on trails they cant see. This year we all have the chance to run a Night stage with the added safety of marshals out on the trail, which will be fantastic fun for both musher and team!

Some of my good mushing memories are running dogs at night, getting absolutely soaked, getting back, making the dogs a warm feed, drying them off and putting them in the dog barn for the night, then getting in the house and running a large, roasting hot bath. Bliss!

UK mushing- who can beat it?

Fiona Maxwell