Mansfield native and St. Peter’s alumni Matt Failor, and a three-time competitor in the Alaskan Iditarod, addressed an audience of students and faculty at St. Peter’s School on April 24. Failor shared stories of his adventures as one of the world’s best mushers.
After his presentation, Failor was the honored guest at the school’s Third Annual Urban Iditarod, a mashup of running, shopping carts, two-legged sled “dogs,” and a truckload of charitable donations.
Failor spent about an hour visiting with students, explaining a simple life in Alaska where his team of 30 dogs have become a family for him. “They are the world’s greatest athletes. No other animal on earth can travel one thousand miles in less than ten days,” said Failor.
When asked by a student where one learns to become a musher, Failor explained that while there are some schools in Alaska that offer classes for mushing, it is a skill that takes a tremendous of time and commitment. Failor said it is one where “you don’t make a lot of money. You might want to consider becoming a doctor or a dentist… something like that.”
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As it turns out, much of a musher’s pay goes toward food for his or her team. “Last year, I had a team of 22 dogs. I bought two tons of meat for the team and 100 bags of dog food. It cost me about $8,000.”
Inspired three years ago by Failor’s first Iditarod, the students and faculty of St. Peter’s invented a whole new sport–the Urban Shopping Cart Iditarod. Students are divided into teams of six to eight, and work to collect and raise money for food for the needy. All of the food collected goes to the Catholic Charities food pantry, which serves families all over Richland County.
The timed racing was competitive and fun, with the teams completing their approximately one-mile run by climbing Crouse Street up to the church parking lot. It isn’t a thousand miles in the Alaskan wilderness, but the effort showed in the faces of the racers, and ultimately, filled the bed of a full size-pickup truck.
