I’m currently training for a pretty brutal 80 mile winter ultra. The weather conditions can vary significantly from year to year, but it’s always snowy and miserably cold. Last year it was negative 12F at the start and dropped even colder over night. Given the extreme conditions, everyone has to carry 20-30 pounds worth of emergency supplies just in case things don’t go as planned.

The tough part about training for this kind of race is that it’s not all that convenient to routinely drag 30 pounds of stuff behind you on training runs. This year in Minneapolis, it’s been an unseasonably warm start to Winter, so even at just 5 weeks out from the event, we haven’t had enough snow to get in a practice run with my sled. I don’t have a tire either and have no desire to add a giant tire to my already overflowing apartment, so my outdoor options for sled pulling are non-existent. So, I had to figure out a way to train for an 80 mile sled pulling race while indoors.