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Norwil

Pat Calls from Anchorage
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This is Pat Norwil, live from Alaska. Thursday night the racers met at Chilkoot Charlie's Bar and went over pre-race socializing. Chilkoot Charlie's is pretty much the typical Alaska frontier bar: sawdust and peanut chips on the floor, bearded guys hunched over the bar, staring into their glass of beer.

Forty-two ultra-endurance racers met at the smoke-filled bar's backroom to discuss what they are going to do. And what happened was 29 bikers, 10 runners, and three skiers showed up. Seventeen are saying they are going to Nome. There's about 11 veterens, so the field is really strong with rookies. The Canadian contingency of Dave Pramann, Greg Blackwell and Kevin Vallely were hitting the beer suds pretty hard, shots were flowing.

Dan Bull, race promoter, was back at it with his mantra of minimalist-not-much-support-bike-racing-promotional-wonderland canting. Most of the hardcore guys were just interested in posturing and not really talking much, but it was a fun, social event. Dan sort of filled us in on some of the mysteries of going to Nome this year, and the mysteries of McGrath. Some of the mysteries are, he's not telling us where we're camping Sunday morning or Saturday night, which is the official start. So that's going to be sort of fun. Last minute preparations are always a nightmare, when dealing with Dan Bull and his style of race organizing.

But the gist of it is, still at the $2,500 purse for the first racer to McGrath, and another $2,500 for the finishers in the impossible race to Nome. All the runners are rookies, skiers are all rookies, and about 11 veterans are on bikes. So, it's a pretty young field.

Temperatures are about 5° in Anchorage, and balmy 23° in McGrath. So the trail's in hard, good hard, condition. It looks like it's shaping up for a pretty fast-paced race. Dan, once again, has chopped out a few drops; so there's two drops from the start to the finish in McGrath, which means a big load going over the Alaska Range. But I will post another dispatch in the next couple of days. So, stay tuned, bye.

—Pat Norwil, MountainZone.com Correspondent

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