Alumni Tom and Tami Thurston didn't care to climb the corporate ladder. They've been on a dog-led ride ever since.

Story by CINDY SPENCE (BSJ '82)
Photo by JIM R. KOHL/AlaskaStock.com

To Alaskans, Iditarod means far-off distant place. Likewise, the dogsled race that follows the Iditarod Trail is a world away from UF.

Yet, last March found UF graduates Tom (BSBA '92) and Tami Eggers Thurston (BSR '93) in Anchorage for the 1,151-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race — a feat so challenging that fewer than 700 mushers have completed the race since it started in 1973.

Count Tom among them. His time: 14 days, 3 hours, 36 minutes, 22 seconds — a very respectable 44th place for a musher who has been racing only three years.

The path to the finish line in Nome was anything but straight. After Tami's graduation, the couple headed for business careers in Orlando. By 1994, they had soured on the corporate world and decided to take a year to roam the United States.

"I wasn't happy wearing a suit, so we decided instead to find a place to live and then find a job," Tom says.

They loaded their VW van and headed west. They got as far as Oak Creek, Colo., just outside Steamboat Springs, before running out of money, and that was just as well. They had found a place to call home.

Tom traded suits for jeans and overalls and began working with his hands, doing carpentry and building houses, eventually becoming a general contractor. When they bought their 40-acre spread, Tom built nearly everything on it.

Then came the dogs. Tom was taking two house dogs to a kennel when some sled dogs caught his eye. He asked dozens of questions, and an idea began to gel. Soon after, the Double T Kennel became a reality.

"I got into sled dogs because they could bring me into the backcountry," Tom says. "I love winter camping, backcountry travel, and it's tough to find people willing to do that even in Colorado."

The kennel started with six dogs in 2000, mostly Alaskan Huskies obtained from a former Iditarod champion. As their breeding line evolved, the Thurstons formed an ambitious five-year master plan: In 2009, they vowed, Tom would run the Iditarod with their dogs.

To prepare for the world's toughest dog race, Tom entered shorter races, learning from his rookie mistakes along the way. In one race, for instance, Tom was in third place when a wrong turn sent him on a 14-mile detour. The mistake bumped him to a seventh-place finish, but Tom blamed himself, not his dogs.

"My philosophy is the dog never makes a mistake," Tom says. "A mistake is solely the musher's fault."

By the 2007-08 season, Tom and his dogs were a seasoned team, finishing with two victories, a sportsmanship award and best-cared for dog team award — a particular point of pride because, although Tom considers his dogs athletes, they are family members, too.

No race in the lower 48 compares to the Iditarod. The race started in 1973 as a way of preserving an Alaskan heritage being overrun by snowmobiles. It takes place along the Iditarod Trail, a National Historic Trail that was once used for mail and supply runs to the Alaskan interior. In the 1920s the trail played a major role in relief efforts to Nome, which had been struck by a diphtheria epidemic. Dogsleds were used to bring serum to the community.

When dogsleds again plied the trail 50 years later for the first Iditarod race, the wind chill measured at minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Weather for this year's race was so severe racers twice were prohibited from leaving checkpoints. There were stretches of 60 mph winds and temperatures of minus 50 degrees. Tom left one checkpoint with a group of other teams. At the next checkpoint — 13 hours and 70 miles later — one team had turned back, another had been rescued and three others were 15 hours behind. Then, just 20 miles from the finish line in Nome, a blizzard hit, making it nearly impossible to see the trail, much less stay on it. Tom got down on his hands and knees, one hand on the gang line holding the dogs, the other searching for a trail marker.

"I knew if I got 10 feet from the dogs, I wouldn't be able to see them. You have to keep your wits about you. A wrong decision can be fatal for you or your dogs. We had to earn it right up to the end," he says.

Thanks to GPS, Tami was able to follow the race by computer. She admits she was relieved to see Tom make it through a gorge the racers knew would be particularly challenging.

For his part, Tom says either a racer has done the work to prepare for a race or he hasn't.

"The harder things are, the more rewarding they are when you get to the finish line," Tom says, adding that the Iditarod finish validated his five-year plan.

Time for a new plan.

Editor's note: The Thurstons registered to participate in the 2010 Iditarod race. It begins March 6. Follow Tom Thurston's progress during the race online at www.iditarod.com.