On Saturday, Californian Cindy Abbott will be hitching up her dog sled team to race 1,000 miles across the Alaskan wilderness.
She's participating in the 2013 Iditarod dog sled race where mushers vie to be the first to make it from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska.
They're expecting tempatures of a chilly 50F below zero but Abbott is no stranger to tough challenges.
At the age of 48, she was training to climb Mt. Everest when she found out she had a serious and rare disease called Wegener’s Granulomatosis.
Abbott continued her training and two years later, to the surprise of her doctors, she stood on the summit of Mt. Everest holding the banner for the National Organization of Rare Disorders.
Today, on Rare Disease Day, Cindy Abbott joins the program from Anchorage, Alaska.
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