Husky News

Tim Hewitt will go to sleep and awaken in darkness with temperatures plunging to 40-degrees below zero.

After many miles and hours of running, he will stop and unhook himself from the 45-pound sled he will pull; a sled loaded with everything he needs to survive racing 1,100 miles on foot across Alaska in February.

He will unpack his tiny camp stove and melt snow for drinking water.

He will eat dinner.

Not the dinner he will crave after endless days of putting one foot in front of the other alone in the vast wilderness.

Not the amount he will need to maintain his weight, running an average of 50 miles per day in temperatures cold enough to make the weather in his native Greensburg feel like summer in Bermuda. Just the food he will need to fuel him in the middle of nowhere - beef jerky, peanut butter and smoked salmon.

And then, he will spread a sleeping bag out on his sled and crawl in, fully clothed and exhausted.

He will rest for only a few hours before awakening in the brutal cold, shivering.

Then, he will get up and start running again.

This will be the daily grind for Hewitt, 53, as he attempts to run the Iditarod Trail from Anchorage to Nome beginning Feb. 24. It is the same route that will be used a week later in the famous dogsled race.

In the dogsled race, it will take a musher and his team of up to 16 dogs about two weeks to complete.

It will likely take Hewitt more than three weeks to finish his race.

“I don’t really have a good answer as to why I do it,” Hewitt said. “Why does someone run, period? A lot of people think you’re crazy just for going outside and running.”

More unbelievable than Hewitt attempting the “world’s longest human-powered race” is that he’s completed it twice already, knows every horrifying detail and is going back for more.

Also surprising is that Hewitt does not come across as a fellow who’s lost his mind.

He’s an attorney in Latrobe, a husband and father, a volunteer pole vaulting coach at Latrobe High School and a board member of the Westmoreland County Historical Society.

Amazingly, Hewitt is not the only person in the world who thinks this race can and should be done.

There is a 50-racer cap on the officially-named Iditarod Trail Invitational. As of this week, the Web site advertised only one spot left. The Invitational is actually two races in one, with competitors having the choice to stop 350 miles in at McGrath, or continue on the next 750 miles across the Alaskan interior to Nome.

They also can choose to run, bike or ski that course.

Eighteen of the 49 registered competitors for this year’s race will attempt the full 1,100 miles: nine on bike, five on foot and four on skis.

Since the first race in 2000, only 26 people have completed the full distance: 15 by bike (three people completed the route twice), eight by foot (Hewitt is one of two people to run it twice) and three by ski.

“The general rule is that 30 percent will drop out before they even get to McGrath,” said Kathi Herzinger-Merchant, who organizes the race along with her husband Bill Merchant.

Bike, snowshoe and ski races of distances up to 100 miles on the Iditarod Trail date to the 1980s. In 2000, Hewitt and Tom Jarding, a 52-year-old postman from Wyano who met Hewitt competing in the Laurel Highlands Ultramarathon, entered a 100-mile running race on the trail.

That was the same year the first full-length race to Nome was held.

Two of the 12 people who completed the race that year did it on foot — Janine Duplessis of Washington and John Wagner of Milwaukee.

It took them 41 days, 10 hours and 30 minutes.

Hewitt and Jarding entered the race the following year and finished together in 26 days, 20 hours and 46 minutes despite Hewitt suffering from a stress fracture in his leg.

That was on the Southern Route.

In 2004, Hewitt returned to tackle the Northern Route.

He was the only finisher.

In 2006, he went back to Alaska again, but got the flu two days before the race began and had to be evacuated 250 miles in after developing severe bronchitis and induced asthma. He still uses an inhaler periodically because of the damage to his lungs.

Conditions vary so much on the trail that it’s virtually impossible to plan how far a racer travels on any given day. Hewitt carries snowshoes, but usually wears Gore-Tex trail running shoes with sheet metal screws around the perimeter to give him traction.

Between Anchorage and McGrath, there are villages where competitors can sleep in cabins or gymnasium floors and get food. Once they reach Rainy Pass about 165 miles in and head over the Alaska Range, it becomes more remote.

After McGrath, it becomes desolate.

“You’re not going to see a building for six days after McGrath,” Hewitt said. “I went days without seeing another person or even an airplane in the sky. I kind of enjoyed it. But you are on your own out there.”

It also gets colder once racers reach the interior.

Hewitt said it isn’t uncommon for temperatures to fall to minus-30 or minus-40 at night. Winds up to 50 mph are routine. Gusts of over 100 mph are not unheard of.

“You can’t stop. You have to keep moving,” Hewitt said. “And you have to think about what you’re going to do when you stop before you stop.”

The wind can also create “ground blizzards” where the sky is clear but visibility might be 30 feet on the ground because of the swirling snow.

“Those are the things you worry about and occupy your time thinking about while you’re going through it,” Hewitt said. “Every day it’s something new. You hear wolves at night. You see the Northern Lights dancing around some nights. Other nights, it’s a snowstorm. It’s dark a lot. It’s that time of year up there, but you get used to it.”

Hewitt has run into trouble before.

Once he couldn’t find the trail, and the wind was blowing his tracks away almost as quickly as he lifted up his foot. He circled for hours before he somehow got back on track.

Another time — after a brief bathroom stop — he lost feeling in his hands and feet. He had chemical hand warmers, but couldn’t open them because his hands wouldn’t work. Eventually, he had to just start running again.

He had no other choice.

“I thought, ‘You got yourself into this mess, you have to get yourself out,’” Hewitt said.

He started to regain feeling after about 30 minutes.

One time, he removed the balaclava protecting from his face for just five minutes when it was 30 degrees below zero. His nose froze solid.

“It was like a rock on my face,” he said.

Competitors are expected to phone headquarters from different checkpoints along the trail. If a racer gets into trouble between checkpoints, the best advice organizers give is to hunker down in the sleeping bag and wait for someone to pass.

“Last year, we had a guy who fell through the ice and got his feet wet, and all he had was his running shoes,” Herzinger-Merchant said. “Another racer came along and heard a whistle and found him up in a tree (for shelter) in his sleeping bag.”

As policy and part of the nature of the race, organizers will not tell a competitor to stop. They use an interview process to screen applicants.

“It’s not always what they say they’ve done, but the questions they ask us,” Herzinger-Merchant said.

Herzinger-Merchant said they have had some minor emergencies on the trial before, but to her knowledge, nothing life-threatening.

That’s not to say the potential for disaster isn’t around every bend.

Although no one competing in the race has died, a snowmobiler was on the trail two years ago preparing it for the dogsleds before he was buried by an avalanche and died.

“They were still looking for him a week before our race started, and they found him three days before we started,” Herzinger-Merchant said.

By the time the racers reached the same point, they were still hearing avalanches nearby and had to cross the debris from the slide and recovery operation.

“That was very scary, to know they just found him a couple of days before,” she said.

But to some, the experience outweighs the risks.

In this year’s race, there are 27 veterans and 22 rookies.

The first-timers include Hewitt’s wife, Loreen, and their friends Rick Brickley of Greensburg and Rick Freeman of South Park. The foursome will run to McGrath together before Tim Hewitt continues to Nome on his own.

“You get a lot of people who think you’re crazy,” said Loreen Hewitt, who has run ultramarathons of 100 miles but nothing as long as 350. “My immediate family still thinks I’m crazy. … It certainly isn’t for everybody and not everybody does it, but there’s something for everyone.”

Jarding also will attempt to complete the full 1,100 miles for the first time since 2001, running by himself.

“It’s tough going to Nome, believe me,” said Jarding, who also entered in 2004, ‘05 and ‘06 but scratched all three years for reasons ranging from cracked ribs to a stomach virus. “But I just love being out there. It’s so quiet when you’re out in the middle of nowhere. … It’s a pretty simple life up there. All you have to worry about is going forward, eating and sleeping. You don’t have too many concerns.”

Source:TRIBUNE-REVIEW