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OPHIR - Who is Juan Alcina? That was the question being asked along the Iditarod Trail this week as a new name ran with the big dogs in Alaska's most fabled sled-dog race. Alcina, who's been running as high as fifth, was in 15th place Friday, a few spots ahead of perennial top-10 finisher DeeDee Jonrowe. He lost a few positions while on his mandatory 24-hour layover here, but there's no sign he is fading. "They probably think I'm going to burn out, or I'm going to run out of gas," he said. "But I know what these dogs can do." As the dogs rested comfortably in the warm sunshine near the log cabin and clapboard sheds that comprise the checkpoint here, Alcina pulled a carefully penciled, day-by-day race plan from his pocket. It put him in Nome on Tuesday in just under 10 days. "I am right on schedule," Alcina said. If he can hold it, a top-10 finish is possible and a top-20 finish is likely. Thursday night left left Cripple in 19th place. So who is Juan Alcina? An airplane mechanic at Anchorage International Airport, a father, a husband and another victim of the late Joe Redington, the father of the Iditarod and the man responsible for getting many a musher started. Back in 1992, Alcina said, "I came here to get my pilot's license, and I met Joe Sr., and I got more hooked up in the dogs than the license." Life was about to take a big turn for the transplanted Spaniard, who'd spent the previous 10 years of his life as a mechanic for the Spanish Air Force. Before he knew it, Redington had talked the young man and his wife, Maureen, into helping care for Redington's huge kennel of dogs in Knik. The Alcinas spent three years doing that. Then Maureen got pregnant. "There's not that much money as a dog handler," Juan said. He was forced to go back to work, but by then the seeds of the Iditarod dream were deeply planted. The Alcinas found a place in Willow and started collecting dogs. By 1998, Juan had an Iditarod team ready. He finished a respectable 24th in his rookie race - only four spots behind rookie-of-the-year Mark May. The next year was supposed to have been Alcina's breakthrough, but almost everything that could go wrong did. He broke two dog sleds in accidents. Then he lost his best lead dog to an injury. Problem after problem demoralized him, and the team picked up on it.Not until Kaltag did they begin to regain their enthusiasm. "Last year," he said, "I had so many problems, I thought, 'It can't be any worse than this."' So far, this year has been the opposite, and Alcina's mood this year is contagiously upbeat. Everything is going well, and his "bunch of gypsies," as he calls his team, seem to be feeding off the musher's enthusiasm. "They are eating good. They are drinking good. They are running good," Alcina said. "I think (10 days) is doable. "The dogs will do it on their own. ... I just try to run them when they're happy." If the team does well, he plans to celebrate. If not, he might start looking for something else to do. "If everything works, we will keep going," he said. "If I don't have a breakthrough this year ... I don't know." The mushing lifestyle is a grind, not only for Juan but for the entire Alcina family, which now numbers four. Juan works four 10-hour days each week in Anchorage and commutes to Willow to train dogs. On two days a week, he barely sleeps, driving straight from work in Anchorage to get on a dogsled to train and reversing the process at the end of his days off. If Maureen were not a saint, he said, it would be impossible. "November to February are pretty tough," Juan said. He runs one team of 10 or 12 dogs, comes home, hitches up another team and hits the trail again. To get the required 1,800 miles of training on the dogs before the 1,100-mile endurance race, he spent almost every minute of his free time on a dog sled or a four-wheeler through the fall and early winter. "And I hate four-wheelers," Alcina said. "It doesn't help my back much. "I have worked very hard. I have studied a lot this race." Now all he wants to do is put the hard work and study to use. That's a tough challenge in a competition where mushers like Alcina are up against full-time professionals like Jeff King and Rick Swenson. Almost every team in front of Alcina on Thursday was driven by a professional musher. In fact, it is so rare to find a true amateur running in the front ranks these days that Dave Sawatzky of Healy, another 40-hour-per-week working man and top-20 finisher the past five years, was shocked to discover that Alcina had a full-time job. As he hooked up his dogs and prepared to leave this checkpoint, Alcina told Sawatzky, parked next to him, he had to beat it to Nome so he could get back to Anchorage in time for work. "You're a full-time worker, too?" asked a stunned Sawatzky, an equipment operator at the Usibeli coal mine. "Yeah," Alcina said. They both laughed. "Got to keep the wolves away," Sawatzky said. And then Alcina was off down the trail.
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