How do mushers pee on the Iditarod Trail?

McGRATH — It’s happened to most mushers: Someone approaches them, often a total stranger, and asks how they pee. That’s rude; don’t do it. Read this article instead.

It’s not uncommon for newer mushers to cut back on liquids before a race, in the hopes of avoiding pit stops, but pros know that proper hydration keeps you warm, clear-headed and performing at a top level — and that holding your pee can make you colder, quickly, as the body works harder to heat a full bladder.

In other words, the best mushers drink a lot and pee a lot.

Mushers without built-in, stand-to-pee devices often carry theirs in a pocket. One popular option: the pStyle, an open-topped funnel made of hard plastic that doesn’t get misshapen in parka pockets — like softer funnels do — and sells for about $12 online and at Fairbanks’ mushing superstore Cold Spot Feeds. For the individualist, there are countless other portable pee funnels to be found online, possibly because people keep coming up with puns for names — the Tinkle Belle, the SheWee, GoGirl — and then creating products to fit them.

Though word spread a few years ago about Pee Pants, a sort of bike-short-turned-diaper contraption with a draining tube extending down one pant leg, they have yet to really catch on.

And of course, there are plenty of mushers who relieve themselves the old-fashioned way, by removing clothing. With difficulty.

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