Running with Champions: A Midlife Journey on the Iditarod Trail

Lisa Frederic has been blessed living the Alaskan dream. After coming north for summer employment, she spent the next two decades fishing for wild salmon off the coast of Kodiak Island. She and her husband built a home in an isolated bay, eight hours by boat from the closest town. They make their own electricity and get mail once a week by seaplane. There are more bears than people in their neighborhood. A vacation in 1997 turned Lisa’s life upside down when she visited Nome to see the end of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. Five years later she was shocked to find herself committed to driving a dog team across the state. In 2002 she completed the 1,049-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race as a rookie at forty-two years old. These days she writes and gives tours inside Denali National Park, trains sled dogs for Jeff King, and commutes to the ocean waters around Kodiak to fish commercially. Lisa is making plans for her next midlife Adventure.