Racers from Interior Alaska dot the lineup in this year’s Iron Dog

FAIRBANKS — Arnold Marks has been dreaming of competing in the Iron Dog snowmachine race for as long as he can remember.

“I’ve been wanting to do it forever,” the 25-year-old school teacher from Tanana said. “When I was little, I spent my elementary years as a kid in McGrath and my high school years in Tanana, so I’d see the Iron Dog come through all the time. We thought those Iron Dog racers were the coolest, toughest guys there were, like legends. They were kind of our heroes.”

Now Marks is trying to make a name for himself in the world’s longest, toughest snowmachine race.

He and his older brother, 31-year-old Aaron, are among 30 two-person teams that will be competing in the 2,000-mile Iron Dog when it starts in Big Lake on Sunday.

They are among five Interior racers entered in the Iron Dog. Defending champion Tyler Huntington of Fairbanks will be gunning for back-to-back victories with his partner, Chris Olds of Eagle River, while Kyle Malamute of Fairbanks and Vernon Albert of Ruby are hoping to crack the top 5.

While they have no intention on winning as rookies, both the Marks say they won’t be sightseeing, either.

“Our plan is just to listen to our machines,” Arnold Marks said, referring to the 600cc Polaris sleds they will be riding. “We’re not going to try to go full throttle the whole time. We’ll go as fast as they let us go.

“Our main goal is to finish,” he said. “We hope we get Rookie of the Year.”

Both brothers grew up in Tanana and are teachers at Tanana City School. Arnold teaches secondary English, history and math while Aarron teaches elementary school. It was Arnold who talked Aarron into signing up for the Iron Dog after watching friend Huntington win the race last year.

“For the past five years I keep saying, ‘I’m going to do it next year, I’m going to do it next year,’” Arnold said. “Now I finally have the means to do it.”

He was originally planning to do the race with another older brother, Archie, but that plan fell through. It was while he and Aarron were watching their friend, Huntington, win last year’s race, that they forged a partnership.

“We went to Fairbanks and watched Tyler win and I said, ‘Aarron, let’s do it,’” Arnold said.

Even then, they had to get permission from Aaron’s wife, Ginger.

“I made him ask his wife because I knew she was the boss,” Arnold said with a laugh.

The two brothers have put close to 4,000 training miles in, covering most of the Iron Dog trail in the process. They rode from Tanana to the Bering Coast village of Shaktoolik and back during Christmas break.

“We were planning to go to Nome but we had a clutch problem and turned around,” Arnold said.

The Tanana twosome also made a trip from Tanana to Nikolai, breaking trail most of the way. They went 30 miles past Nikolai to check out the Farewll Burn. Two weeks ago, they traveled to Big Lake and ran the first 130 miles of trail to Finger Lake with Huntington and Olds.

“We’ve driven over 70 or 80 percent of the Iron Dog trail,” Arnold Marks said. “That’s half the fun of Iron Dog, ordering parts and driving all over the state practicing. It’s cool seeing different kinds of country. We’re used to this river riding around here. It’s fun to get up in the mountains.”

Huntington and Olds, fellow Polaris riders, have been a tremendous help in preparing for the race, going so far as to provide them with the list of spare parts they take.

“We wouldn’t be nearly where we are today without their help,” Aaron Marks said.

Malamute, who finished eighth with his brother, Todd, as an Iron Dog rookie in 2007, will be competing in his third Iron Dog while it will be Albert’s second. Albert scratched in 2008 while Malamute scratched in his second run in 2009. They will riding Polaris machines.

“It was a last-minute decision,” said Malamute, who works in the parts department at Compeau’s. “Me and Vernon had been talking about it all summer, but we weren’t financially set to do it.”

Malamute ended up selling one of his previous Iron Dog machines at the last minute to get the money to pay his entry fee. He and Albert have never raced together but they grew up in neighboring villages — Malamute in Galena and Albert in Ruby —and have raced against each other numerous times.

“He’s always been a solid racer,” Malamute said of Vernon. “We’re good enough so we should be in the top 10. I’d love for a top 5 finish.”

His two previous races have taught him what the key to success in the Iron Dog is, Malamute said.

“You’ve got to save your machine for the last half of the race,” Malamute said.

Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Racers from Interior Alaska dot the lineup in this year’s Iron Dog