Most importantly, biking is not running.

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But, oh, the lessons I learned along the 240 kilometers from Haines Junction, Yukon, down the “Haines Highway,” briefly through British Columbia and to Haines, Alaska, on June 21.


Easier to some extent but more difficult in others.

Since I had run the entire Klondike Road Relay 110 miles phone number list solo previously, and the race’s more recently adopted 40-mile solo event, I figured I could possibly bike half the Kluane.

“It is just a long bike ride,” Juneau rider Brandon Ivanowicz said.

Lawrence Butler on his inside-the-park homer, A's win




Ivanowicz and riding partner John Bursell, also of Juneau, had placed first last year in the two-person team men’s division with a time of six hours 31 minutes and 55 seconds and fourth overall among 323 teams through multiple divisions.

This year, team “J & B” finished third in the two-person and sixth overall in 7:23:07. Roughly 284 teams competed, down slightly due to factors that included an Alaska Marine Highway System schedule change and amid ongoing political tensions between the U.S. and Canada.

“The opinions of Washington, D.C., are not the same as your neighbors here,” Haines Mayor Tom Morphet told the post-race banquet crowd. “Whether you are from Whitehorse, the Yukon, British Columbia, anywhere in Canada — you are welcome here and we are one in the North.”

The overall winning duo was 16- and 17-year-old Whitehorse lads, Heron Land-Gillis and Nicolas Giangrande, who teamed up under the moniker “The Bonk Bros” to defeat their solo-riding coach, Hudson Lucier, at the finish line in a sprint with a combined time of 6:43:52 to Lucier’s 6:43:53.