Jeff Reid developed a way of journey at a young age rising up in Martinsburg and listening to his grandfather inform tales about his time within the Korean War.
Reid performed numerous workforce sports activities for the Spring Cove School District throughout his youth and loved looking and fishing.
That thirst for uncommon, thrilling and harmful endeavors led him on a journey that included a profession within the Navy SEALs and now locations Reid in a spot seemingly unimaginable for a Blair County native.
Reid, 34, will compete within the 52nd Iditarod — a path sled canine race in sub-zero temperatures that covers roughly 1,000 miles by means of the rugged snow-covered terrain of Alaska — starting on March 2.
The race often lasts eight to 14 days and assessments the dedication and endurance of a musher and his workforce of 12-16 dogs.
Jeff Reid, seen silhouetted by the Northern Lights in Alaska, will compete within the 52nd Iditarod starting March 2.
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“This has been a goal for the last six years,” Reid stated by telephone from his home in Two Rivers, Alaska. “I may be running toward the back of the pack (during the race), but I’ll get to see a lot more of the state of Alaska and get to do something only a small group of people get to experience.”
Reid doesn’t have any false hopes about his possibilities of profitable the race.
The present area of 42 mushers entered contains many women and men with way more expertise and sources than Reid, together with five-time Iditarod champion and record-holder Dallas Seavey, together with the final two 12 months’s winners, Brent Sass and Ryan Redington.
Reid stated his foremost focus would be the well being of his dogs, so he has developed a “conservative” race plan.
“If I’m at the front of the pack, then the leaders must be in a lot of trouble,” he stated. “I’m planning on giving my dogs a lot more rest (than other mushers). They’ve never done a race this long, and they’ve never been on this trail before. With the bond we’ve created, I know I can never ask them to do more than they can do because they trust me, and you can’t break that trust.”
Reid
Cove native
Although Reid now lives 4,000 miles from Martinsburg, he nonetheless has sturdy ties to the world.
His spouse of 11 years, Jeri, can be from Martinsburg, and the 2 dated in highschool. Jeff’s dad and mom, Jeff and Patty, and his siblings, April, Nathan and Emily, nonetheless reside within the space, in addition to Jeri’s dad and mom, Anita Baker and Jay Baker.
Jeff performed basketball and ran observe and was additionally a starter on the Central High School soccer workforce as a large receiver and defensive finish his senior 12 months of 2006-07.
“You could tell how tenacious he was,” former Central soccer head coach A.J. Hoenstine stated. “He was a real scrap iron. His senior year, he was undersized for a defensive end, playing at 5-foot-9, 150 pounds. I remember one time he had to go up against a big tight end that was going to Pitt, but he always laid it on the line and gave all he had.”
Jeff Reid is seen with a workforce of dogs on a path in Alaska. Reid did two excursions of Afghanistan as a Navy SEAL, the place he had a fateful assembly with a rescue canine named Frank. His bond with Frank and the affect of Gary Paulsen’s guide, “Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod,” led Reid to embark on his dream of shifting to Alaska to turn out to be a canine musher.
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Nearing commencement from highschool, Reid confronted a dilemma. Although a lot of his friends had been making selections about school or coming into the workforce, Reid didn’t assume these choices supplied an opportunity for him to meet his goals.
He as a substitute wished to comply with the same path to his grandfather, James Reid, who had fought within the Korean War and earned a Bronze Star Medal with Valor and a Purple Heart, so he determined to affix the navy.
“I was terrified to go into the workforce and work a 9-to-5 job,” Jeff stated. “That wasn’t for me. I didn’t want to end up in a world where I’d be out selling something.”
Testing his resiliency
Reid didn’t wish to simply be within the navy, he wished to be a part of a particular forces unit. At 17, he was not old sufficient for the U.S. Army “Green Berets,” so when he turned 18, he enlisted with the Navy Sea, Air and Land particular operators.
Jeff Reid holds his canine, Frank, whom he rescued whereas deployed in Afghanistan. He went to nice lengths to get Frank — believed to be an Anatolian shepherd combine — out of Afghanistan and to the United States. “If it weren’t for that first deployment, there can be no Iditarod for me proper now,’’ Reid stated.
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“Everyone knows how difficult it is to become a SEAL,” Hoenstine stated. “But I knew he had the mentality for it. He was worried about his swimming (qualifying test), but he worked on that and went out to (Naval Amphibious Base) Coronado (California), and he made it through.”
While within the SEALs, Reid obtained two fight deployments in Afghanistan. The first one — within the Kandahar Province in 2008 — didn’t contain quite a lot of gunfire, however he stated he needed to take care of many improvised explosive gadgets.
His second deployment concerned extra energetic warfare, together with having a rocket-propelled grenade narrowly miss a Chinook helicopter through which he was driving. The RPG exploded and shook the helicopter, he stated.
Reid labored in Afghanistan as his workforce’s major joint terminal attack controller, calling in air strikes. When he lastly left the war-torn nation, he stated the airbase he left from was being shelled by mortars.
“We were under heavy fire,” he stated.
Jeff Reid was a starter on the Central High School soccer workforce as a large receiver and defensive finish his senior 12 months of 2006-07.
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Although his first deployment wasn’t as intense because the second, it made a extra lasting impression on him due to a really particular encounter he had with a canine named Frank.
Reid helped rescue Frank, believed to be an Anatolian shepherd combine, from a warfare zone and have become shut with him. He stated he went to nice lengths to get Frank overseas and convey him again to the U.S.
“If it weren’t for that first deployment, there would be no Iditarod for me right now,” Reid stated.
Frank turned Reid’s service canine and adopted him wherever he went whereas he continued his service profession working in Virginia Beach for a number of years.
Heading to ‘The Last Frontier’
Just a few months earlier than Reid was set to transition from the SEALs to civilian life — in 2017 — tragedy struck. Frank was hit by a automobile and didn’t survive.
Reid was devastated.
“When he died, because of how tight we were, I figured there would be no point ever having another dog,” Reid stated. “I could never have another bond like that.”
But then Reid stated he learn a guide, “Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod,” written by Gary Paulsen.
The guide particulars Paulsen’s distinctive bond he developed together with his sled dogs and the way they overcame many close to disasters in finishing the Iditarod with Paulsen being a novice musher.
“I thought, unless I do something like that, I could never have that bond again,” Reid stated.
Having separated from the SEALs and never wanting to affix the civilian labor pressure, Reid couldn’t cease desirous about Paulsen’s experiences.
“I was lost in the sauce,” he stated. “My wife asked me what I wanted to do, pick anything. I said I wanted to move to Alaska and become a dog musher. She said, ‘If you come up with a real plan to make it work, we’ll do it.”’
After sending out emails to numerous kennel house owners in Alaska, Reid related with Aliy Zirkle, the primary girl to win the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest — the second greatest canine sled race — and a three-time Iditarod runner-up, and husband Allen Moore, a three-time Yukon Quest champ and common Iditarod competitor.
The two function SP Kennel in Two Rivers, Alaska.
Zirkle and Moore supplied Reid an opportunity to study from them, so he and Jeri, who had lined up a job as a doctor’s assistant, moved to Fairbanks, Alaska, in the summertime of 2017.
The first 12 months in Alaska, Reid labored and discovered from Zirkle and Moore and finally started coaching their foremost race workforce, which Moore mushed to a first-place end within the 2018 Yukon Quest.
“I learned a lot from them,” he stated. “I was so lucky to get that rare opportunity.”
In 2018, the Reids bought property and moved to Two Rivers — a census-designated place roughly 30 miles to the northeast of Fairbanks — and began their very own Frozen Trident Kennel. They purchased and skilled their very own dogs — 12 of them originally — and Jeff competed in his first 300-mile race, the Copper Basin 300.
Training
Being capable of compete within the Iditarod doesn’t simply occur in a single day.
The Alaskan husky dogs usually are not pure breeds however fairly a product of varied different breeds — resembling Siberian Husky, Greyhound and German Shorthair Pointer — which are chosen for various useful sled canine traits. This is so the workforce of dogs is well-rounded and may carry out numerous duties effectively — very like a workforce in sports activities like basketball, soccer or baseball.
Reid stated when the dogs are first born, they’re skilled in a single large pen with one large doghouse and eat out of 1 large bowl. This helps them turn out to be social animals and kinds a stable bond among the many pack.
When the dogs are a 12 months old, they’re launched to the harness, Reid stated, and so they begin on some “fun” runs of 20 miles or much less. When they’re 2, they will begin happening longer runs.
“I have three ‘no chews’ — the (tow)line, harnesses and each other,” Reid stated. “They learn pretty quick.”
In 2019, Jeri gave start to their first son, Atlas, now 4, and their second son, Max, was born in February 2022. Starting a household put Reid’s quest to race within the Iditarod on the backburner for a number of years, however the objective didn’t change.
Over the final 5 years, Reid has performed many coaching runs together with his dogs and located himself in a number of predicaments.
One time he fell by means of ice in 25-below temperatures, and the shoelaces on his boots froze when he bought out of the water. Needing to vary his soaked socks earlier than his ft froze and with nobody round to assist him, he was compelled to get again within the water to undo the shoelaces.
Another time, he stated he was compelled to shoot a moose that charged at his workforce, and one other time, he needed to pull his dogs away from a useless caribou after they scared off three wolves that had been feasting on the antlered beast.
He’s additionally competed in a number of races just like the 200-mile Percy DeWolfe Memorial Mail Race, Two Rivers 100 and Two Rivers 200.
To qualify for the Iditarod, a musher should full two 300-mile races and one 150-miler whereas additionally receiving an excellent report card from race marshals and veterinarians on his or her total take care of the dogs and chilly climate survival abilities.
Last February, Reid met the Iditarod qualifying commonplace by working within the Yukon Quest 300, a shorter model of the 1,000-miler. Reid stated his workforce completed one place forward of the final finisher, however it was successful.
He wrote on social media after finishing the race, “We battled lots of overflow, glare ice, the worst wind storm I’ve ever been in, and cold nights on birch creek; but all 12 of my fuzzy companions ran across the finish line with wagging tales, smiling faces and the desire to keep going.”
The Last Great Race
Having certified, Reid formally entered his workforce within the 2024 Iditarod this previous September and has been coaching for it since then.
The race begins in Anchorage two weeks from now and can culminate in Nome, almost 1,000 miles to the northwest of Anchorage.
The path runs north by means of the inside of Alaska till it meets the Yukon River after which heads west alongside the river and finally reaches the Bering Sea. From there, the path wraps up across the western coast of Alaska till it concludes in Nome.
The path was initially a provide route for Alaskan coastal cities and inside mining camps. In 1925, when Nome skilled a diphtheria epidemic, a portion of the path was utilized by mushers and their dogs to ship serum to the distant metropolis when the usage of different modes of transportation was unfeasible.
It was in that spirit that the Iditarod, nicknamed “The Last Great Race on Earth,” started in 1973 and has since been held yearly. Since 1996, each winner of the race completed in lower than 10 days with Seavey setting the official file in 2017 in 8 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes, 13 seconds.
Mushers begin the race with 12-16 dogs and should end with at the very least 5 dogs both on the towline or being hauled. One musher should full the complete race with no outdoors assist.
Along the route, 19 checkpoints are arrange the place mushers can have their dogs examined by a veterinarian, fed and/or rested. Dogs which are injured, fatigued or ailing, are left with the veterinarians after which flown to race headquarters in Anchorage, the place they await the return of their house owners. Distances between checkpoints can differ from roughly 20 to 100 miles.
Reid has already ready drop luggage that might be delivered at numerous checkpoints. These drop luggage include such gadgets as pet food and human meals, booties for the dogs, gloves and straw, on which the dogs can relaxation.
Race guidelines mandate {that a} musher and his dogs should make one necessary 24-hour cease, an 8-hour cease alongside the Yukon River and one other 8-hour cease on White Mountain.
Reid stated he plans on stopping at every checkpoint and in addition may arrange camp between sure checkpoints. He stated he’ll make certain his dogs get loads of relaxation.
“Once I get the straw laid out, take off all of the dogs’ booties, prepare their food, that may take about three hours,” Reid stated. “If we take a six-hour stop, I might get two hours of sleep.”
Reid, although, stated he’s used to functioning with little sleep, however not from his time as a Navy SEAL.
“Actually having kids is the best way to deal with sleep deprivation,” he stated.
A sport plan
The entrance payment for the Iditarod is $4,000. Factoring in journey prices, pet food and kit, coming into a workforce within the race is an costly enterprise.
The prime finishers within the Iditarod sometimes earn a reward of $40,000-$50,000 with the final group of finishers incomes probably half of their entrance payment.
Reid stated his foremost sponsor, Team Dog, which sells pet food, has helped make it doable for him to pursue his dream. He additionally has individual sponsors for every of his dogs, and his mother-in-law, Anita, has held fundraisers at her place of business, Spring Dam Brewing Co. in Roaring Spring.
Anita and Jeff’s dad and mom are planning on touring to Alaska to assist deal with the youngsters whereas Jeri works and Jeff competes within the race.
“To do this, it’s just not me,” Reid stated. “It takes a whole village.”
Reid stated the plan he developed for his race can have him end in roughly 11 days — if every little thing goes effectively.
“The pace I laid out is conservative — I’ll be stopping more than others,” he stated. “My main goal is to make sure my team and I get to the finish line. But a million different things could go wrong to prevent that from happening.”
Reid stated he has one of many smallest kennels among the many race contributors. With 19 sled dogs at present in his kennel, it doesn’t go away a lot room for error.
“I’m going to be leaving only three on the bench,” he stated. “I can’t afford to have any get injured during training.”
But Reid stated he’ll have the assist of his fellow mushers in the course of the race. Although he’ll be mainly alone together with his dogs within the backcountry of Alaska for many of the race, he stated the camaraderie amongst mushers is not like most different sports activities.
“That’s one of the best parts of the race,” he stated. “Some of my neighbors do this, and when you see them on the trails you give each other high-fives. It’s nice to be out there with them. When you’re traveling for 1,000 miles, there are going to be several low points, and it’s nice knowing you have the support and encouragement from your fellow mushers.”
Whether Reid is ready to end this 12 months’s race or not, he isn’t prepared but to decide to competing within the Iditarod once more, and he isn’t trying too far into the longer term. He stated he’s simply taking it year-to-year.
“The main thing right now is accomplishing a goal,” he stated. “We’ve been working on this for six-and-a-half, seven years now, and the goal is to see it through to its end. The whole purpose of this started with Frank, to form that solid bond again — being out in the wilderness with the dogs, traveling with them and creating memories.”
