Think mushing to Nome is tough? Try pedaling it
Author(s): Craig
Medred
OUTDOORS
Staff Date: April 13, 2008
Section: Outdoors
Kathi Hirzinger-Merchant didn't even warrant a mention on
Sports Illustrated's silly list of the toughest athletes in sports, but she'd
kick your butt any day.
Yeah, I can hear a bunch of you now mumbling, "Who the
heck is Kathi Hirzinger-Merchant?"
Kathi -- it's pronounced Kay-tee; she's German -- is a wisp
of a former farm girl who came to Alaska from Bavaria around the start of the
new millennium, got hooked on adventure and never left.
Now 31, she became the first woman to complete an Iditarod
Trail mountain bike race to Nome last month. Though the pitfalls of pedaling a
fat-tired bike over 1,000 miles of snowy trail from Knik to the fabled city on
the Bering Sea were many, her exploits barely warranted a mention in the popular
press.
"Out of sight, out of mind'' is the term that comes to
mind.
Kathi is not much of a self promoter. In this regard, she is
like a lot of other Alaskans who do way more than they say.
Ask her what she did to train for the ride to Nome, and
she'll tell you about a winter spent riding all over the frozen and uninhabited
corners of the Susitna River basin and the Talkeetna Mountains where Tiger
Woods would likely have frozen his putter off in the minus 40 to minus 50
degree temperatures.
Not to belittle Tiger, who SI declared the toughest athlete
in sports. Mentally, golf is a supremely difficult game, no doubt.
Physically, though, it's a different matter.
Iditarod and Yukon Quest champ Lance Mackey -- SI's No. 2
pick -- can certainly make a better claim to true, physical, tough-athlete
status than Tiger, though there's no doubt that in any kind of human aerobic
competition, Hirzinger-Merchant would hand Mackey his lunch.
Lance had his dogs to help him. Hirzinger-Merchant had only
hubby, Bill, who, though he biked north with her, wasn't necessarily all that
much help.
Bill and I go back a bit. I remember his first outing on the
Iditarod.
An adventurer from the Wind River Range of Wyoming by way of
Fairbanks, he skijored the Iditasport race of the 1990s up and over the Alaska
Range to McGrath before better judgment kicked in and he realized bikes are
easier to maintain than canines.
Bill's first Iditarod trip was notable for the left he took
off the trail near Farewell Lake, where the trail starts into the desolate
Farewell Burn. Richard Larson, who was providing snowmobile support for the
Iditasport that year, found the ski and dog tracks heading off parallel to the
spectacular north side of the Alaska Range on an old trail running toward the
Federal Aviation Administration's long-abandoned Farewell Station.
There was a discussion about what to do about this. Larson
decided he should follow the rest of the Iditaracers down the proper trail,
while I tracked Bill.
He and the dogs led me and a snowmachine on a merry little
romp for miles before Bill finally decided that the Iditarod Trail really
shouldn't be running east and west at this point, it should be running north
and south.
So Bill ordered his dogs to "gee'' and went
bushwhacking across the Burn, past skeletons of charred trees and over willow
brush before, sure enough, reconnecting with the Iditarod Trail
Bill's trail-finding skills have improved since then. Along
with skijoring the Iditarod Trail, he has run it, mountain biked it and ridden
it on a snowmobile in support of the Iditarod Invitational, heir to the
Iditasport.
In fact, he and Kathi took over the organization of that
event some years back when Kathi got seriously interested in winter mountain
biking. She promptly set the Invitational's female record for mountain biking
300 miles over the Alaska Range to McGrath, with a time just under 5 days, 8
hours.
But that wasn't enough.
Having already driven a snowmobile from Knik to Nome, she
decided this year she had to go by mountain bike, so she dragooned Bill into
riding once again. Off they went.
It was not easy.
Here is a bit of what race director Dan McDonough posted to
the race Web site:
On their approach to Nome, Bill and Kathi faced
"immense winds and cold temperatures. At one point, when they were
protected from the constant wind, Kathi looked at the temperature and saw minus
30 degrees ... Bill described pushing the bikes at a 45 degree angle to prevent
the wind from blowing the bikes away.
"After 25 and a half days Bill was looking forward to
having a beer upon his arrival. Instead, when they arrived at 2:58 a.m. they
were greeted by one woman on the street who was heading to work.
The only place open for food or drink was a coke machine.
"They celebrated with dehydrated food in Styrofoam
coffee cups."
And Sports Illustrated thinks Tiger Woods is tough?
I won't even go into how Alaska mountain-biking phenom Peter
Basinger beat the Merchants to Nome in the process of pedaling to another
Invitational win, despite battling illness much of the way.
Bill noted Basinger's "finish time was amazing in way
less than ideal conditions. ... Pete's time from Shaktoolik to Nome was only 5
hours slower than Iditarod winner Lance Mackey's with his dog team."
As for Kathi's accomplishment, Bill could only observe that
"she managed in spite of having to drag a worn-out, old senior citizen
behind her."
Worn out? Not quite.
Old? Well, certainly beyond middle-age even by the measure
of four-time Iditarod champ Martin Buser's New Age declaration that "50 is
the new 30.''
But still tough.
Tough as shoe leather.
Tough enough to trounce any Sports Illustrated writer
putting together silly lists of the toughest athletes in sports.
That goes for both of the Merchants, and Basinger, and
runner Tim Hewitt, and all the rest who managed to go 1,000 miles under their
own power on that infernal trail this year.
Because everyone who has done time on the Iditarod agrees
none of us could hold a candle to the toughness of the people who pioneered
that route or to the aboriginal people -- arguably the toughest people anywhere
ever -- who were traveling the route when history was recorded only in stories
told by one generation to the next.
Outdoors editor Craig Medred is an opinion columnist. Find
him online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588.
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