St. John Valley Times - March 3, 2005
by Mary Jo Shafer
FORT KENT- Fifty-three year old Larry Murphy of Fort Kent has spent 25 years coaching athletes from Little League to the college level. These days he's also coaching a team of a different sort. 21 sled dogs that are clustered in a dog yard behind his house. Twelve of these dogs will compete in the Can-Am 250 this year with Murphy, while Murphy's son-in-law, Jason Bennett. will attempt the Can-Am 30 with some of the younger team members.
Murphy was tricked into taking up the sport of dog sledding.
One whiter day Murphy went out with two Ontario mushers for what he thought was to be a leisurely ride in the sled. The Murphy family had volunteered to host the mushers who were in town for the Can-Am. After the race, Murphy asked for a sled ride. ''My idea was to sit in the basket and get a scenic ride," he reca1ls sitting in the kitchen of his house perched on a hill off Violette Settlement The mushers, brothers Brian and AI Tipping, had another idea. They asked Murphy to stand on the runners while they adjusted some things, and before he knew it. Murphy was rocketing along the trails, chasing the Tippings' other team. "I nearly fell down on my face;" Murphy laughs, reca1ling how the team ran after the other dog sled, careening around comers and zooming through the woods. Murphy managed to stay upright on the runners. ''What do you think'!' they asked him when they got back to Murphy's house. "Well, it scared the hell out of me," Murphy replied, "but I want to do it again."
"It was like the carnival ride that scares you and makes you sick but you keep going back," he says.
That was six years ago and Murphy was hooked. He now has 21 sled dogs in his Chubby Buddy kennel and he's competed in two Can-Am 6O-mile races and three 2505, as welI as assorted other races in New England.
When he's not mushing, Murphy is the Fort' Kent Elementary School assistant principal and the district's athletic director for grades five through eight .
He got started out in dog sledding by asking fellow Fort Kent musher Steve Kennedy if he could help him out with the dogs and learn from him. A year later, Murphy drove Kennedy's dogs in the Can.Am 60. Kennedy started Murphy out with small teams, gradually increasing the number of dogs until Murphy was up to 12. After each run the two mushers would sit and talk about it. part of a training strategy of "do, discuss and don't repeat the mistakes," Murphy says.
After two Can-Am 60s, Murphy says he "got the hankering to do a big race." He bought two lead dogs from Michigan and Minnesota; two states known for accomplish~ dog sledders. The dogs were well-trained and well-seasoned veterans and Murphy put them in front of Kennedy's yearlings. He was ready to try the 250. .
His first attempt turned out to be somewhat of an adventure, and not necessarily a pleasant one.
"My first 250 I almost died," Murphy says. He got hypothermia and was stranded for hours in the woods because of bad weather and impassable roads. One of his dogs even had a heart attack and actually stopped breathing before an EMT gave him CPR and revived him.
In retrospect. Murphy says he was too slow out of the checkpoints and that he paid too much attention to the other mushers. "I was watching them when I should have been looking after myself," he says now. Murphy was the last team out of the Big Machias checkpoint Soon the weather, inexperience and fatigue conspired to put Murphy in a precarious position.
The 2002 Can-Am weekend saw brutal weather. Snow, rain, high winds, thunder and lightning, and then freezing temperatures that coated roads and the trail with ice. Murphy describes the weather that year as "ungodly."
The snow got so thick and heavy and waterlogged that even snowmobiles "were having a hard time getting through the heavy, deep, thick slush," he says. His dogs started to limp. Fifteen miles out of Maibec, Murphy decided to scratch, or drop out of the race. He got to a road where he could be extracted from the trail and the long wait began. 'They couldn't get to me because of the extreme weather," he says. 'There was glare ice everywhere and trucks were going off the road." While Can-Am volunteers knew where Murphy was because he had told a "sweeper," who travels the course looking for teams, that he was dropping out. they couldn't get to him. Unbeknownst to Murphy, he .was becoming hypothermic. When he started hearing voices and seeing things in the sky, Murphy says he realized "something was up." Luckily an EMT soon reached him and quickly had him out of his wet clothes and wrapped in six blankets. Volunteers ready to bring him out finally got to Murphy at midnight. He'd stopped at 3 p.m. They still didn't have a way to get his dog team out though (the dog truck had gone off the road, too) and Murphy refused to leave them. He was left with a pickup truck to stay warm in and John Kaleta brought Murphy and his dogs out by 3 a.m.
After that experience "people said 'have you learned your lesson?' Maybe you're not cut out for this at 50," Murphy says. Murphy told them that he learned from his mistakes and started to plan for the next year's race. "It's a hard thing to. explain," Murphy says of the motivation that drives mushers to attempt grueling races year after year. "Why do people climb mountains, hike the Appalachian Trail, swim the English Channel? You get addicted to it and have to do it."
Besides the pleasure and camaraderie of being with the dogs day after day and the joy of being out on the quiet snow blanketed trails, there is a huge sense of accomplishment at finishing a race of the Can-Am 250's caliber. On his third try Murphy finished the Can-Am last year, winning the Red Lantern award for finishing last. Finishing itself was reward enough, Murphy says. Cresting the hill three miles out from the finish line in Fort Kent, knowing that the home stretch is before you, is an emotional experience, he says. "I was whooping, cheering and crying," on those last few miles, Murphy says. Finishing was "incredible," he says, but the biggest reward was pulling into the finish line. with nine happy dogs, tails wagging, smiling and rolling in the snow. "That's what I was most proud of," Murphy notes.
Happy dogs are important to Murphy. As he feeds and waters his kennel on the Saturday morning before the race, Murphy takes the time to pet and talk to each member of his team.
Tails wagging, the dogs leap up to be scratched and petted, or wiggle with excitement in anticipation of food. As he dishes out food to each member of his team, Murphy talks about each dog, summarizing their characteristics and their strengths and weaknesses. They each have a distinct personality, likes and dislikes; some dogs are cut out to be leaders, others prefer the position close to the sled, in the back where they can demonstrate their pulling ability. Honing the different dogs into ~ finely tuned racing machine is one goal of a musher. Murphy has gradually built his team up from the two dogs he first acquired. The kennel now includes two dogs that are grandmothers and several brothers and sisters. They have the lean and athletic look of a distance runner; long, powerful legs, sleek bodies, muscled torsos. They are all shapes and sizes with different colors and markings, some are shy, some gregarious, some mischievous, several of Murphy's dogs have striking ice blue eyes, and all are now part of the extended Murphy family, which includes elder statesman Buddy, the house dog. Goose, Reggie, Dawn and Merlin, all females, will rotate the chore of leading on the 250 this year.
Raising, training and racing a sled dog team is an endeavor that takes time, dedication and persistence. Murphy says the support of his family has been key in his foray into the world of dog sledding. His wife, Irene, a biology teacher at Fort Kent Community High School, routinely helps in the dog yard and was Murphy's "main support person last year," as he attempted the 250 again. There were several nights when Murphy would return from a training run and see a headlamp bobbing up the path as Irene came out into the night to help out with the team, he says.
Murphy starts training in the fall as soon as the temperature is cool enough, hitching the dogs up to a four-wheeler. When the snow comes, Murphy starts taking his team out for longer runs. Once the dogs are in shape, Murphy takes them out on maintenance runs to keep them tuned up. The pre-season is swallowed up by training, which includes teaching the dogs how to follow directions, how to hold the line out, turn right and left and obey commands. For distance dogs, Murphy also teaches them to rest, taking them out on run~ and then "camping," with them for a while on the trail, spreading straw and feeding them. This helps to condition the dogs for the checkpoint environment in the 250 mile race. By race time, Murphy will have put in more than 1,000 miles with his team.
One week before the races, Murphy says he is looking forward to a "very competitive race this year." With all of the 90 slots in the three races filled, the races promise to be biggest ever in the 13-year history of the Can-Am. The 250 will include three former winners and "a lot of well established teams," Murphy points out, including several previous top ten finishers. The race is "overflowing with good teams this year," Murphy says. "The amount of quality mushers and quality teams is incredible. This should be a Can-Am 250 that has a really good race in it. You can expect to see first, second and third jockeying throughout the race." With several former winners, as well as veterans "who know where the challenges lie," Murphy says he's "expecting one of the most exciting races ever."
Murphy had hoped to try and finish in the money this year, bolstered by a fifth place finish in the first annual Eagle Lake 100 in January, just three minutes out of third place, but the competitive field and illnesses that his dogs are getting over has caused Murphy to change his game plans. Murphy's team scratched in the Greenville 100 earlier this year because of illness, so with the Can-Am just a week away, Murphy says he is not sure where they're at. So, he'll be taking especial care with his dogs as they he~d out onto the 250 trail. He says he's going to watch. his team closely to gauge "how close to 100 percent they are and the rest time they require."
"My goal now is just to finish," he says. "Finishing in the money is a bonus, but finishing is rewarding in itself.
"It's probably the most challenging thing that I've done. There's not many 50-year-old rookies."