We all know what the dogs do—they run—but the person driving the sled has to get ready for a brutal challenge, too. The labor required to manage and train a team is like CrossFit on ice. - Online Article 
How Mushers Train Their Bodies for the Iditarod
For dogsledders, our dogs are our bodies; they’re our muscles, our engines, the hair that rises on our necks when we sense an animal in the trees. We study their movements like poetry. Without experiencing a dog team firsthand, it’s hard to fathom the amount of sheer power that mushers control, the way that we order chaos (usually) into something streamlined and beautiful. Our human bodies are afterthoughts.
But my human body, too, will be crossing a thousand miles of Alaskan wilderness this March when I run my first Iditarod.
So how do I prepare this body for the race? Some mushers train by running marathons in the off-season or come to mushing from various professional sports. Others see their bodies primarily as vehicles for labor. “Ibuprofen,” a former Iditarod champ muttered when he overheard me discussing this topic at the Alpine Creek Lodge, the Alaskan wilderness camp where I’m training for the race. “That’s all you fucking need to know.”
For the most part, I focus on the massive amount of physical work it takes to keep a dog team going. What strength I have is gained from chopping frozen meat with an ax, hauling 40-pound buckets of water and food, muscling the sled around corners, stacking a thousand pounds of dog food in a day. I do exercises while driving the sled, half to build stamina and half to stay warm. I’ll do ten squats each time I pass a mile marker or jog beside the dogs on steep uphills, leaping back onto the runners to catch my breath.
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