On the last day of the week, following the Kuskokwim 300 Sled Dog Race, we're going to hear from the final musher who crossed the Bethel finish line. After training for a lifetime total of eleven weeks, it was a Red Lantern for Roger Lee, who finished the race on Monday morning at 9:16 a.m. with a total elapsed time of 62 hours and 46 minutes. KYUK talked with Lee about completing his first K300 and what brought a career-military man to mushing.
"The race for me was a plan. I stuck with the plan and didn't look at changing anything because of who else was in it, or the amount of money, or anything," Lee said.
That plan is based on Roger Lee's training for the upcoming Iditarod. The idea was to run the 300-mile race just as if it were a section of the thousand-mile race.
"So that made me, at every checkpoint, work with the vets more. It made me look at actually enjoying the checkpoints and it made me take the opportunity to talk to people who had time there from this peer group," Lee said. "I could talk with Jeff King. I could talk with Brent [Sass]. I could talk to people like that for a few minutes, which adds to that Iditarod experience."
Lee will be running the Iditarod for the first time this year. He didn't need to run the K300 as a qualifier; he'd already run the Copper Basin 300 and the Northern Lights 300. But he'd heard of the top caliber mushers the Kuskokwim race attracts, and its reputation as a training ground for the longer race. He says that without running the other 300-mile races, the K300 could have been defeating.
"I've only been mushing for 11 weeks because I'm active duty in the Air Force, and I've only been able to come to Alaska on leave, and I only get 30 days of leave a year," he explained.
For the past three years, Lee has been traveling from California to mush with Scott Janssen's kennel in Knik. Last year, he received a 12-month Air Force sabbatical to train for the Iditarod. How he went from never having stood on a sled to finishing the K300 in 11 weeks comes from his military and sports background.
"I was in the British Army for nine years and I was a physical training instructor, a ski instructor, [and a] ski patroller. I used to lead outdoor activities below the permanent snow line. And since I've been in the U.S. Air Force, I used to work as an equipment guy with a search and rescue unit out of Anchorage airport. When I was in the Army, I was in an Arctic warfare unit. We'd go to south Norway for two months and then up to the Arctic Circle for two weeks."
He's also skijored for 16 years.
"So all of that put together, I know when equipment is junk. I know when training is not enough," Lee said. "You know, I have a bag that I take in every checkpoint with me that has a full tool kit. So if anything happens, I'm ready for that type of stuff. That's what your average rookie usually has to build up."
This thoroughness was seen at the musher's meeting before the K300. Lee was not the only newcomer to the race, but he was the only musher seen writing notes during the meeting.
Lee is 53 years old. He says an adventure like climbing Everest or sailing around the world wouldn't excite him, but something about the speed and the relationship with dogs in skijoring did, so he turned to mushing.
"When you're on the trail there are certain parts where everything is going right, and the only way to describe it is an old steam train that looks cool and is just moving along at its speed, but everything is in synch. You get that ch-uh-ch-uh-ch-uh, and just going through these woods on those snake-type trails, just watching out for that's going to wipe you," Lee said. "The dancing ability you almost have to have on a race like this, the physical strength to do that is enjoyable."
Two racers scratched this year in a field of 20. Lee finished eighteenth.
