3rd place in Gausdal Marathon 2011!

Hi Everyone!

Kaia and the team came in 3rd place in Gausdal Marathon 2011!

The trails were slow, it was snowing the entire race, and the start was later in the afternoon than anticipated, so they ran almost entirely in the dark. We had some dogs catch kennel cough in the days leading up to the race, and they were not looking good enough to run so we were lucky to be able to borrow 2 dogs from last years champion, Sigrid Ekran, and one dog from Atle Bjerke.
The dog from Atle was a dog we had run before, so we knew what to expect from him and he knew what to expect from us. The two from Sigrid are fantastic dogs, but were a little thrown off by suddenly running in a race with dogs and a musher they didn't know. They would have gone like crazy if we had done the full marathon, but because they didn't know Kaia, they held back a little on the way out, but finished strong and happy! Thanks to Sigrid and Atle for the loans!


All in all the stars of the team were our leader Soka, Epo, Harry and Laffen (the borrowed dog from Atle). Orion did not pull at all the entire race.

The weekend was fun for me too. I helped Kaia get out, and spent some time doing some interviews for an upcoming mushing magazine article that I am writing about the marathon.
Lars Monsen, Inger Marie Haaland, Sigrid Ekran, Nina Skramstad, Marit Beate Kasin, Bjørn Barlund, Thomas Wærner, and Stein Haavard Fjestad, were among the mushers nice enough to take time to chat with me.

After all the teams had left, I was interviewed by Meho Sortland of friluftblogg.no, and then drove to the checkpoint Astridbekken, and began translating the race updates on the Gausdal Marathon website. After wrestling with internet connectivity problems for a while, it was time to take a break and go and cheer the first teams into the checkpoint.

Just after 9:50 pm Kaia and the team crossed the finishline. She looked thrilled and tired, and the dogs looked happy. the good dogs in the team looked ready tp go out and do it again!

We are just thrilled with how things went, and would like to thank Atle Bjerke for loaning us Laffen who ran in lead the entire way. Sigrid Ekran for loaning us Sezar and BMW. The Vinding family for the use of their sled (after I smashed ours to splinters while training) and numerous other thinsg they have helped us with. Plus our sponsers: Especially, Dr. Tim Hunt and Momentum dog food, and JB Utstyr for the Working Dog race jackets. Inga-marie Mynors for sponsering the entry fee, and everyone else who helped us get there this year.

A special big thank you to Are Dons Søvik for helping out the entire weekend and acting as super-handler while I was translating the webpages.

it may seem like a small thing to run a race, but it meant a lot to us to make it there, and we are thrilled to have had a good race.
So thanks to everyone!

Cheers, Barry and Kaia

Winter Update

Apologies for the lack of posts the last few months!

We have been out training as much as we can the past few months in preparation for the Gausdal Marathon which will start on the 8th of January.
Despite some injuries and a bout of kennel cough, we have still had an ok training season. As of todays date we have 1123 miles of training on the dogs. We didn't start training seriously this season until the middle of October, so we are very happy with the amount of training the dogs have on them, considering everything.

Kajo and Jago have both been injured. Kajo we are still a bit unsure what is wrong. She suddenly started pulling back on her neckline. We can't find any physical injuries, so we are giving her some good time off before starting her up again.
Jago decided that he hated the dog he lived with and start a fight. He missjudged his room mate though and got his but torn up...literally. So Jago will use the next months healing and trying to find a comfortable way to sit down. We are confident he will be able to do both in good time.

The puppies are looking great. We are having a ton of fun when we are out with them, and looking forward to doing some longer training with them in the spring. Right now we are running them just a few miles. We won't push them at all this season because we want them to get the idea that running is great fun. This will set them up well for the future, and what bright futures they have!

Yesterday I did a podcast with Mushing Magazine. That was a lot of fun! Podcasts are something i listen too but not something I am familiar with in other ways, so it was very interesting to be interviewed for a podcast. The interview should be online within the next few weeks.
check it out at: Mushing.com

I will be covering the Gausdal Marathon for Mushing magazine this year. It will be a lot of fun helping out at the checkpoints and handling for Kaia as well as interviewing other mushers, and taking photographs. In the upcoming Mushing issue, will be my interview with Sigrid Ekran. This is one of my favorites!

We have finally started feeding Dr. Tim's Momentum dog food. We are thrilled to be feeding such a good food to the dogs. They are eating well which is awesome, and they are putting on weight, which after the last six weeks with temps down to -30, is a very good thing!

Our new Working Dog jackets came for the dogs a few days ago. We are really looking forward to running the dogs with these jackets and would just like to thank JB Utstyr for sponsering Team Ropphaugen with these jackets! Kodiak models on the right in the harshest of conditions!!













I will update everyone after the race this weekend!

A bit late perhaps but: Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from us at Ropphaugen!


Below is a video of a Christmas day trip with the puppies! I think they all look great!

Winter is Here! (Almost)

Hey Everyone,

Winter is here in force. We still have no snow, but with nightime temperatures down into the - 30's in some places, we are feeling winter settling on our little home.

The dogs are in the midst of our hardest training month now. We are training frequently and training long runs of 6 or more hours on average, with our longest being almost ten hours long.

We have a new lead dog! Soka has come to us from Ketil Reitan. She has finished all of the long races in Europe, in the front of the pack, and is only 4.5 years old. We are hoping that we can have a litter with Soka in the spring and that her puppies will be the next generation of dogs, and the first generation of Ropphaugen stars!

Kaia is training hard with the dogs, as it will be Kaia qho will run the Gausdal Marathon this year instead of me. Contrary to the name, the Marathon is not a standard marathon length, but rather a full 230 km long. The dogs run to the halfway point and rest for 5 hours before leaving again, and cruising back to the start area for the finish early in the morning on Sunday.

Not one to be left out of the action, I have agreed to give race updates in English on the gausdal marathon website! So all of you interested people can keep an eye on how the race is progressing.

I am planning on running at least one race this year, but my main focus will be puppy training. We still have those 20 pesky pupipes running around at Ropphaugen, and they are not so little anymore. They are all ready to start training some short puppy runs soon, and we are looking forward to see what they are made of in their first foray into what will hopefully be a fun and exciting career for them!

We recieved our first shipment of our new dogfood yesterday! I have been working hard with Dr. Tim Hunt to set up a distribution deal for his food, and Kaia has been working hard alongside me as we translate all of the promotional material for the dgfood from English into Norwegian.
Very exciting!

We are also eagerly awaiting the arrival of our new dog jackets. We are working with JB Utstyr to create the best jacket on the market. We have designed this jacket together, and have high hopes that it will be the best we have used! The very first complete jacket should be coming to us today or tomorrow, and then it is testing testing testing to see what adjustments we would like to make to them before the next production of more jackets in February.

Our little buddy Kodiak has been thrilled to get the cast taken off of his leg after a long month of healing after a scuffle in a puppy pen left him with a a clean compound fracture of his right front leg. His leg has heal beautifully and aprt from looking a bit strange with all the atrophied muscle, should be as good as new in short order.

I will be going back to the US in mid December for a quick visit, and Kaia will be going on an extended training/camping trip with the team.

I hope everyone has a wonderfull holiday season!

updates as events warrent.