Gerry Willomitzer has been mushing since 1996, but it wasn't until 2004 that he took his first leap into professional mushing, when he took on both the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest in the same year.

Willomitzer has been doing this for well over a decade, and hasn't tired of the racing lifestyle just yet.

"It's not like a snow machine that you can turn off and put back in the garage,” said Willomitzer. "When I started running dogs I did it because I had the racing on my mind.”

And it's stayed on his mind from the beginning – this year Willomitzer is training 36 dogs for his main team. He's working on a large group of younger dogs this season that he hopes to a chance to gain experience at the Iditarod, which he will also run a few weeks after the Quest in March.

"There could well be two separate teams for the Quest and Iditarod,” he said.

As for his Quest team, Willomitzer is confident he has the dogs he wants.

"I've got a pretty good veteran group of dogs,” he said.

Training is practically ongoing for Quest competitors, and Willomitzer is no exception.

"A lot of people aren't aware that we start training in August,” he said. "A lot of people think we wait till the snow hits the ground.”

It would have been a long wait for mushers this year. Starting in the summer, Willomitzer says his team is doing well.

"Training started as usual,” he said.

Willomitzer is coming back from a training year that he called "pathetic,” and will start off the season soon in the Alaska Copper Basin 300. He is one of the very few mushers lucky enough to have a sponsor, Skookum Asphalt, support him financially for his racing season.

Willomitzer is quiet about where he thinks he'll place this year, and experience has taught him the road to the number one finish will be tough.

"It's a small field in the Quest right now, but that doesn't mean its going to be easy,” he said.

The challenge every musher faces when entering the Quest is not knowing what plans their fellow racers have hatched over the training season.

"Everybody is cooking up a different thing every year,” said Willomitzer. "Every year you gotta be ready for surprises, and you've got to be ready to surprise everybody.”

All he can do is train his dogs, and develop his own race plan.

"I'm looking forward to seeing how my dogs stack up against them,” he said.