Weekend Update

Wow!  A lot happened in the race over the weekend.  Were you all watching the current standings?  Everyone has moved around in the positions so much that it is still hard to see who is winning.

As of 7:30 PDT (6:30 AKDT), the top 10 includes:
Mitch Seavey (mile 775)
Jeff King (mile 769)
Aaron Burmeister (mile 769)
Aliy Zirkle (Go Aliy!) (mile 763)
Ray Redington, Jr. (mile 762)
Joar Ulsom Leifseth (rookie) (mile 759)
Jake Berkowitz (mile 747)
Dallas Seavey (mile 743)
DeeDee Jonrow (mile 741)
Sonny Lindner (mile 741)
Martin Buser, the leader through most of this race is currently in 11th place.  (mile 737)

The leaders are out of Shaktoolik and heading to Koyuk.  Koyuk is 827 miles from Anchorage and just 171 miles from Nome, according to the website.

So far only 6 mushers are out of the race:
Ed Stielstra (Campbell Airstrip), Scott Janssen (Rainy Pass), Newton Marshall (Nikoali), David Sawatzky (McGrath), and Michael Superant (Iditarod)have all scratched due to concern for their dogs.  Gerry Willomitzer has been withdrawn by the race marshall because he got separated from one of his teammates and was unable to check in at Shageluk.  At least that had a happy ending, as the missing Montego was found safe and sound and reunited with Gerry.

Our current Red Lantern holder is Cindy Abbot, who is in Shageluk.  I'm so impressed with Cindy.  She suffers from a rare disease called Wegner's Granulomatosis, which is a disorder where the blood vessels become imflamed making it hard for blood to flow.  She had a dust up with her sled early in the race that caused some injuries and was thinking about scratching back in Rohn. I'm glad to see she is pushing through to the end.  Keep your fingers crossed that she can complete the race, which is a long-time dream for her.

The weather is finally cooperating some.  For the first time in this race the temperatures have dropped below 0 F.  Sounds terribly cold to me, but the mushers and dogs like it much better when the temperature is down.

So who is winning, you ask?  Heck if I know.  It seems like I have read as many opinions on this as there are mushers on the trail and everyone has a different answer. I've read that the Kaltag to Unalakleet run is the barometer - win that and you win the race.  I've also heard that the faster of the top 2 to Unalaklee ALWAYS wins, but apparently that is out the window in this race.

In an interview with Dallas Seavey (2012 winner) he says he is not in contention to win because he had some injuries with his experience dogs and had to drop some of them, leaving him with a very young team that has never run a long distance race like this.

 Here's what Danny Seavey has to say in a Facebook post from this morning:

I hope you don't have to go to work today. #iditarod has never been this exciting.

I was born two months after my dad finished his first Iditarod. I've been watching or running these things as long as I can remember. I remember listening to radio updates, or waiting for them in the paper. Later we had to call the Iditarod headquarters (and sometimes checkpoints) for updates, where a group of volunteers worked a crazy phone bank.

Then they upgraded to a fax system, and twice a day we'd get an automatic fax. If they forgot to put your musher on there, or he was a mile outside the checkpoint when it was sent, you had to wait 12 hours for another update. It could be torture.

Eventually we got the standings online, and now GPS updates. We told ourselves that each upgrade would make watching it better, easier, less stressful. Yeah right.

Here we are with an update every 10 minutes, and I still don't know who's winning. There are 6 teams that could still pull it off.

Jeff and Mitch are clearly the favorites, and I've never seen two teams more equally matched. Jeff was faster to Unalakleet, Mitch more than held his own going to Shaktoolik. Mitch is adding an hour rest at every checkpoint. Jeff is gaining on the way to Koyuk.

I really have no idea who's winning. I don't even know who's faster. We're going to be glued to those trackers and updates until tomorrow afternoon. Finally it'll be settled.

They've both ran great races, very smart races. I was very impressed with their ability to ignore Martin, stay on the schedule, and do what was best for their teams. Whoever wins, they've earned it, and I think they will feel they got the most out of their teams. I haven't seen any mistakes, anything they could have done better. We really have (at least) two teams that deserve to win.

May the best man win really doesn't seem fitting. Especially when you realize that 1/10 of a mile an hour running time will likely be the difference between these two when it's said and done.

So go ahead and call in sick tomorrow, it'll be worth it.

Danny

I figure if Danny Seavey doesn't have a clue who will win Sebastian Schnuelle doesn't have a clue, AND Joe Runyan can't figure it out, that I have absolutely no chance in figuring it out either.

Stay tuned!  It should all be over tomorrow, but I'll update as much as I can until then.