Jonrowe tops field in Tustumena 200 CLOSE RACE: Smyth eight minutes behind to take second place.

Entering her 33rd year as a musher, DeeDee Jonrowe has a long and storied career with many accomplishments: three runner-up Iditarod finishes in the '90s, a Copper Basin 300 victory in 2001, and, perhaps her biggest wins, returning to the trails after a near- fatal car crash in 1996 and beating breast cancer in 2002. Jonrowe can add a Tustumena 200 title to her resume after crossing the finish line with her full team at Tustumena Lodge with a time of 27 hours, 7 minutes to best a 14-team field.

Runner-up Cim Smyth, a two-time Tustumena champion, crossed eight minutes after Jonrowe.

"It's wonderful. I've won most of the mid-distance races at least once but never this one," she said via cell phone. "It's nice to see how well the team came together this close to the Iditarod."

The 2011 Iditarod will be the 57-year-old's 30th and younger mushers would be foolish to count her out.

Jonrowe said she and 54-year-old Paul Gebhardt, who topped the 11-team Tustumena 100 field on Sunday a week after taking the top spot at the Kuskokwim 300, spent some time reveling at Race Central that their sport allows them to still be competitive in their 50s.

"It's kind of exciting for us," said Jonrowe, who began racing in 1978, more than a decade before fellow competitor Kolby Morrison was born. "I think some of my best years are ahead of me."

That's remarkable given the hardships Jonrowe has faced and overcome:

• multiple mushing injuries (back surgery, broken hand, frostbite, to name a few)

• a 1996 car crash that killed her grandmother, injured her husband Mike and left Jonrowe with a ruptured intestine

• a cancer battle that included a double mastectomy followed by months of chemotherapy.

Jonrowe attributes her competitive longevity to a combination of determination, experience and her more recent training regimen to compete in triathlons including the 2006 Ironman World Championship in Kona, Hawaii.

"It took my fitness to another level," Jonrowe said of training for the 2.4-mile ocean swim, a 112-mile bike race and a 26.2-mile run. "I've had plenty of things take me in the other direction heath-wise, so it definitely helped. I mean, you don't get your chest and part of your intestines removed and not notice."

Jonrowe, who finished third last year, was racing to win but didn't consider herself a pre-race favorite because the field included the 34-year-old Smyth, who along with brother Ramey have won five of the last 12 Tustumenas.

"Anytime you're racing against (one of) the Smyth brothers it's not going to be easy," said Jonrowe, who didn't count a darkhorse from the rest of the field either. "When you've done this as many years as I have, you learn that anything can happen. You never know."

The 200-mile Tustumena, which has a $20,000 purse and is the only qualifier on the Kenai Peninsula for the Iditarod and Yukon Quest, has humble roots and a disputed origin, according to the race's website.

Depending on who you listen to, its genesis was either a 1984 beer run into the hills amongst former Iditarod winner Dean Osmar and friends or a springboard race created by Osmar so local mushers, including son Tim, could acquire the 500 race miles needed to compete in the Iditarod.

Kasilof's Gebhardt finished the 100-mile race in 9 hours, 53 minutes. Ninilchik's Merissa Osmar, granddaughter of race-founder Dean Osmar, crossed 15 minutes later.

In the 50-mile Junior Tustumena, which finished Saturday night, 14-year-old Conway Seavey of Sterling edged Eagle River's Alea Robinson, 15, by just five seconds.

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