Nome’s Nils Hahn to run 2020 Iditarod
December 1 marked the deadline to sign up for the 2020 running of the Iditarod and one of the 58 mushers who entered is Nils Hahn of Nome.
It’s his fifth running of the Last Great Race, the last time being in 2004. He took a 15-year-break to build a house, have a daughter and live life.
Why go after it again? “I always wanted to do it again. The Iditarod is the biggest and baddest there is,” said Hahn. “It’s cool to live here in Nome and train here. You run the race and as you get closer to the finish line, you get closer to home. And then finishing here on Front Street right in front of the Nugget with friends and family. That’s pretty cool.”
What about the dogs? Do they know they’re headed home during the race? “They know they’re in familiar territory when they get to the coast,” he said. “They were born and grew up here.”
“It’s a full commitment to run the Iditarod,” said Hahn. “When you decide to run the Iditarod, it’s all in.” He and his wife Diana Haecker, who is also a musher, own about 30 dogs. ”It’s a small number for somebody running the Iditarod.”
The food for the dogs during the race is a big part of preparation. Hahn will order all the food to be sent to Nome. “Then I’ll send it off to Anchorage and then to the checkpoints,” he said. “If I’d fly down to Anchorage to do food drops I would have to leave the dogs back. You have to send out 2,000 pound of stuff and it takes you a long time just to gather everything. You need socks, gloves, vinyl gloves, people food, runner plastic. The main item of course is meat and fish for the dogs.”
Hahn builds his own sleds and still has to build the one he’ll run in the race.
The biggest investment time-wise is in the dogs. “It used to be people would show up at the race with 1,200 miles on the dogs in that season,” said Hahn. “But now some people have 4,000 or 5,000 training miles on the dogs. And if the dogs average 10 miles an hour that’s a lot of time spent on the runners.” Mushers who live in the areas of big musher concentrations, such as Willow or Big Lake, have miles and miles of trails to run. That’s not the case in Nome. “Up here there’s less traffic so there’s less trails. So it’s a little bit harder to put miles on the dogs. Where we live I have to put my own trails in. It’s a big endeavor for us, time wise.”
Feeding and knowing each dog’s appetite and needs is a integral part of being a musher in tune with his dog team. Hahn cooks up a huge pot of fish or meat for his athletes for breakfast and dinner. “The main thing is you have to feed your dogs well,” he said. “People think mushers keep their dogs thin because they run faster. But the thing with sled dogs is they consume so many calories because they’re so active. It’s the hardest thing to get a sled dog to put extra weight on. You never see an active sled dog that’s fat. So everyday, like this morning, I spend an hour and a half out in the dog yard. You’ve got to take good care of the dogs.”
He began putting together the 14dog team he’ll run six years ago with a female he got from Teller musher Joe Garnie. She had a litter of pups, sired by another Garnie dog. “So they’re all local stock from around here. I’ve got two dogs that I’m borrowing from Joe for the year and the rest of the dogs have the same genetics. So it’s one big family that I’m running.”
“There are two or three that I could borrow from my wife to fill in the team, but the 14 are a really cohesive unit,” said Hahn. “It’s fun being with them. I raised them like pets, like family. And in the summer we have a fenced-in play yard next to the dog yard so almost every night I turn all of my 14 loose and spend an hour out there with them. All of that time spent with the dogs is important in running the Iditarod. It’s more than just putting miles on the dogs and running them. It’s also being with them and living with them making it through tough situations. We’re definitely one unit. Maybe not big in numbers but we’re tight.”
The 2020 Iditarod starts on Saturday, March 7. This year the race follows the northern route.