The top athlete in the world is not in the Olympics. He's on the Iditarod, and he doesn't have a Kennel Club pedigree, notes a recent article in Outside magazine.
It's 6:15 A.M. as I approach the home of one of the world's greatest athletes. His name is Tony, and he lives in a tiny plywood shack about 30 miles outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. By all rights, he should be exhausted. He got up at four and ran 22 miles in a mid-September, pre-dawn chill, and he wasn't running on nicely paved roads. He ran across fields and through muddy ruts on dirt trails while he and a few teammates tugged against harnesses attached to an ATV. By any measure, it was an absurdly tough workout, and it was even more remarkable because this was Tony's first hard run in months. So I'm amazed to see him standing outside his door, looking refreshed and eager.
As you may have guessed, Tony is a sled dog, which means he's a mutt, with a little Siberian husky in the mix, who's been specially bred for speed, desire, and resilience. When Tony's in peak condition, his VO2 max—a measure of his ability to take in and use oxygen in the bloodstream—tops out at more than 200 milliliters of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute. (Back when Lance Armstrong was racking up multiple Tour de France wins, his famously high VO2 maxed at around 85.) Tony may be a little flabby now, but in a few months, when he's competing in the Iditarod, he'll be able to run an average of 100 miles a day over eight or nine days, working at 50 percent of his VO2 max for hours on end. As part of a team, he can run sub-four-minute miles for 60 or 70 miles.
It turns out that DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency -- is studying sled dogs to see if they can find out how to improve the performance of humans under war-time stress.
Also interested in sled dogs is the Diabetes Action Research and Education Foundation. And here's why:
YOU WOULDN'T KNOW IT to look at Tony, because he's pretty slight, but he's fed a diet that's mostly fat—up to 60 percent. "You'd kill a pet dog with that," says Erica McKenzie, a professor of large-animal medicine at Oregon State University who's studied sled dogs with Davis. If people ate such a diet, we'd all be diabetics living—not for long—on Lipitor. "
The Iditarod Sled Dog Race starts Saturday, March 6th and goes for about 12 days as the dogs run the 1,600-mile long course.
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