According To Objectivism Man Exists

If you think dogsledding is something tourists do on vacation, come across Dallas Seavey. At 25 years old, he's the youngest winner ever of the Iditarod—completing the 1,000-plus mile dog sledding race that spans from Anchorage to Nome in just ix days. That'due south near the aforementioned distance between Washington D.C. to Miami, but with extreme weather condition: snowfall upward to your knees, 50-degrees beneath, and no civilisation in sight.

Dogsledding isn't anything new to Seavey—he grew up watching his grandpa and father race, both of who participated this yr as well. "My dad just told me, 'We have two chances of winning,'" he says.

So how'd he beat the grueling atmospheric condition to come out on tiptop? Seavey shared his tips with us. (Try this xv-minute workout to prep you for the slopes.)

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Command What You Tin can

"If y'all allow your surroundings run through your heed, you're going to panic," Seavey says of the Alaskan desert. "And then what do you focus on? What y'all have command over." For Seavey, this meant his 12 Siberian-Croaking crossbreed dogs, the 40 pounds of equipment that he wears, and his attitude, perhaps the hardest element to control of all. To control his mental attitude, he kept his focus on the dogs. "If I focus on what I tin do, and what my next best motility is, good thing volition happen."

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Prep with a Routine

"I never focused on the checkpoint, I focused on what's going to get me to the checkpoint," he says. What got him to each checkpoint—anywhere from fifteen to 100 miles apart—was keeping a routine despite extreme burnout. His pre-race prep? 14 to sixteen hours of hunting, and caring for his dogs in his sled each solar day.

Sleeping was part of that routine, likewise, since he knew he'd merely get anywhere from 45 minutes to ninety minutes a day on race days. "Information technology's like having an outer-trunk experience," he says of the burnout. "You're in a cloud. Your torso simply goes through the motions." To help prepare for the lack of sleep, he'd go on iv day training trips with his dogs, napping 45-minutes every four hours. (Here'due south another pre-skiing workout.)

Before the race, Seavey would exercise dropping plastic-wrapped burritos in boiling water to thaw them and eat them on the get. The burritos were packed with moose meat—which, yes, he hunted himself.

Work as a Team

His conditioning was chopping hundreds of pounds of meat, then doing 90 reps of a 30-pound carry lugging buckets of dog nutrient each day in 40 pounds of layered winter gear. (That's like ninety reps of a heavy farmer'southward walk wearing a weighted vest . . . in unmarried-digit weather.)

"Your troops are your concern," he says. "And if I train my dogs correctly, I'll naturally be in shape, also," he says. And don't worry, Seavey is trained in dog CPR in case any of them need it. "Simply as much equally I tin can do as a human athlete, I'm nothing to the scale of the race."

More from MensHealth.com: From the Gym to the Slopes