Bailey Vitello pulled his dog sled into a remote checkpoint with less than two hours of sleep over the previous three days.
The 23-year-old musher from Milan, wearily trudged inside to grab a cup of coffee and a short bit of rest. He was 230 miles into the 300 mile long Idaho Sled Dog Challenge. His 12 dogs had other ideas. Bailey wheeled around to see his canine compatriots barreling down the trail without him.
“I started running,” said Vitello. “I caught the team and we just went. We did another 35 to 65 miles.”
Thanks in part to his dogs’ enthusiasm, Vitello and his team raced to a second-place finish in the Iditarod qualifier earlier this month. Vitello is the first musher from east of the Mississippi to compete in the event. The result was fantastic, but Vitello said it was never his primary concern. He is and will always be focused on the health and happiness of his dogs.
“I don’t think there’s a single person out there who will tell you they don’t want to win. But it’s not my priority,” said Vitello. “My priority is to get my dogs healthy through this, get my qualifier and have a great run with my dogs.”
That’s just what he did. For three days and 300 miles in the snow, Vitello raced. On the sled, he kicked and pulled, exerting massive amounts of energy while rarely refueling himself. The constant nature of distance mushing means there is little time to eat, sleep or drink. Any downtime is dedicated to the dogs. For Vitello and his fellow mushers, there is but one luxury on the trail.
“Good coffee. You have got to have the right coffee. I think that really is what will push you through a lot of those sleepless nights,” said Vitello.
Sleepless nights are a staple of long-distance racing. Mushers are faced with a seemingly unending list of chores they must keep up with on the trail.
“We run into the dark and run into the sunrise and run through the day,” said Vitello. “When the dogs are resting you massage the dogs that are sore. And that window where everyone’s like, ‘Oh, well, you’ve got time to sleep when the dogs are resting.’ Well, no, that’s when I’m packing for my next leg and getting my gear ready and snacks for dogs. Making sure everything’s up to par. So, when I’m on that run, everything runs flawlessly and efficiently.”
Just like in motor racing, dog sled teams need to refuel and get maintenance. But instead of a pistons and gasoline, a musher’s engine consists of 12 four-legged friends, each with their own personality and quirks. According to Vitello, the true skill of a musher is reading and reacting to the dogs.
“They’re burning close to 8,000 calories a day,” said Vitello. “And you need to replenish that every single day. Have you ever heard of hangry? Yeah, that’s the same thing for a dog team. And even if they are so tired, they don’t want to eat. That means I stay longer at those checkpoints. Everyone thinks it’s just the musher strategizing the race. It’s actually the dogs.”
Those dogs mean the world to Vitello. The musher is more of a parent than a team manager. He gives all the credit to his dogs and called himself the weakest link on the team.
“Everything we do is all about the dogs. We always think of the dogs first, my health comes second. I can get frostbite. I can take a couple beatings on the trail and be fine. But the fact is those dogs look to you to take care of them just like you’re family. And I think that’s always been where a lot of our success comes from is not caring about the race. I don’t run races. I run my team. And I see a lot better success with that now because I’ve decided that it’s not about the race. It’s about the dogs.”
Putting yourself second, or 13th, takes a toll. But that is a sacrifice Vitello gladly makes every race.
“If I don’t feel like a zombie, I did something wrong. You know, you have got to put yourself out there and dump everything you’ve got into them [the dogs] because they’ve given you so much. You’ve got to give it back,” said Vitello.
The dogs-first strategy has become a winning one. As strange as it may seem Vitello said that by leaving it up to the dogs, success has come naturally. If the team wants to go for the win Vitello lets them. He never pushes them harder than they want to go. But the group of canines he’s assembled are sled dogs through and through. They live to run.
“I have one dog, Frog. And he pulls 300 miles and looks back and asks for more at the end. That dog is a natural-born gifted animal,” said Vitello.
Up next for Vitello and his team is the Montana Race to the Sky, the final race in the Rocky Mountain Triple crown. After that he will head home to New Hampshire after being on the road for more than 70 days. And next year the Super Bowl of mushing awaits. The Iditarod. A 1,000-mile race across Alaska. For Vitello it is simply the next challenge. The Musher said he has yet to find a race hard enough to make him quit. And in a way he seems to be chasing that. He’s raced across America. He’s raced in France at the world championships. And the Iditarod is the last box left to check.
“I’m looking for the next challenge,” said Vitello. “I’ve never feared any race. There’s always something that says, ‘well that’s really dangerous.’ Like in the France they were telling us you need to wear a special avalanche gear and have transponder gear to be able to go rescue people in avalanche with dogs. And that made me nervous, but there wasn’t fear. I know my dogs can get through anything as long as we work together.”