IDITAROD Snippets and Links

[elsietee]

Iditapod: Taking 24-hour rests, as Aliy takes the lead


Aliy Zirkle heats water for her dogs in McGrath, AK. (Photo by Ben Matheson)
In this episode, we have a race update as mushers start to take their mandatory 24-hour rests at different checkpoints, part of the strategy of running the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, and we talk to the mushers at McGrath and Tokotna. Early Wednesday saw last year’s runner-up, Nicolas Petit, in the lead for a time, heading into Ophir. But three-time second-place finisher Aliy Zirkle left that ghost town checkpoint before Petit and was mushing in first place prior to taking her 24. Plus, we answer a listener question about how the race accounts for a staggered start at the beginning.


https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/03/06 ... -the-lead/

[flowerpower]

Update from Jake Berkowitz: https://www.adn.com/outdoors-adventure/iditarod/2019/03/06/jake-berkowitz-whos-really-leading-the-iditarod-nows-where-the-race-gets-interesting/?fbclid=IwAR0eHp4EJ-VG9ZGJQwV6RAZcecBSPWfIn6Uv5Rzf3s12EKV79NiifJkaEHI


But I have a question--why does ADN refer to Joar as Leifseth? I know that's his middle name, but he doesn't go by that, does he?

[flowerpower]

Myron Angstman
4 hrs
For those of you who have something better to do than check race stuff all day, here is most of what you need to know about who to watch in the rest of the Iditarod. Moving average speed as measured by GPS is not always perfect, but by this point in the race it is a fairly good predictor. Joar has the best, at 8.9 miles per hour. Ryan Redington and Travis Beals and Richie Diehl are next at 8.7. Matt Failor is alone at 8.6 and then a bunch at 8.5 including Petit, Kaiser, and Seavey. Jessica has the best speed among the top three rookies by far at 8.4 Current leader Zirkle is way down at 7.7. Lots of other factors figure in but don't bet against speed.

[elsietee]

Scratched musher's sled keeps rookie in the race:

https://www.ktva.com/story/40088418/scr ... n-the-race

[fladogfan]

The above report took me to this one;

https://www.ktva.com/story/40082112/any ... m-a-friend

Karma!

[flowerpower]

From Karen Ramstead:

I remember many years ago being in a checkpoint on Iditarod. Like all the other mushers around me, I was dirty, stinky and exhausted - but getting my chores done.
A few very lovely and very enthusiastic fans that had flown into the checkpoint came over and started going on about 'GIRL POWER' and how I was out there 'showing the men how it was done'.
I looked around me as they were talking and was surprised to notice that all the other mushers around me were men.
I remember being confused and uncomfortable by the idea of being separate from them somehow.
As I sit on my couch watching a celebration of 'International Woman's Day' on TV I'm struck by the fact that Iditarod and it's total disregard for the sex of it's participants is the GREATEST celebration a woman could ask for.
I have never once on the trail been made to feel like I was a WOMAN musher by my competitors - I was a MUSHER. It is only ever the fans and spectators that seem to notice.

Now, there was that one time in a bad storm at the base of Little McKinley when I stopped to chat with a snowmachiner about trail conditions. Both of us were bundled beyond belief with nothing more then our eyes showing and howling winds distorting our voices (I bit later I lost the trail in the storm and spend 17 hours or so camped in a thicket of willows waiting for it to pass). As our conversation finished he eyed me up and down and yelled "Are you a dude or a chick?". "A chick", I replied, "Why?". "I wanted to take a leak" he said.
But he was a local, not a musher - a fellow musher likely would have just turned a shoulder and taken that leak!

So on this 'International Woman's Day' I want to say "Thanks' to all the male mushers over the years that never made me feel like I was ever anything different from them on the trail - crazy, dirty, and stinky as that was.

[flowerpower]

Not many new videos so I was catching up on some older ones. When Jesse Holmes got into Nikolai he said it was a great run, except at one point he realized he had lost his trailer sled, so he had to turn around and go back to find it . "I didn't know if it was one mile or ten miles back down the trail. I had passed Mitch and he was moving really fast. Then I had to turn around and go back. We had a bit of a tangle because I have a female in heat. I asked him where it was and he said 'its back there at one of those creeks' and I was like 'thank god' . I still got here in 8 hours and 17 minutes".

[flowerpower]

DeeDee on the trail from Ophir to Iditarod. https://www.ktuu.com/content/news/Dispatches-from-the-Trail-Ophir-Iditarod-rough-going-506862211.html?fbclid=IwAR1f53QZH0xS1hJAOyOpErCYad5dU4RkzhPNsfnZuDVFMtQFzyoxqGU-zQ4

Just about that time, she hits a tussock, boulders over, so she gets herself back up. I throw my headlight on the line of markers that are off to the right of us, because I know that dogs will head to the markers, and that way they won't be sucked over to something broken down on the far far side of the trail, which was us, and she goes right on by, and actually I was jealous, I wish I was on that dog team, because I've got 36 years of massaging a team down the trail, abut it's all about the bond and the trust and I look at that machine and I'm going, 'I don't think she's bonded to me too much, and I don't think there's a lot of trust there.' I'm not really sure what the next step is.

[elsietee]

S-S-Slippery Pete Makes a Break for It! Ryan Air Saves the Day!

http://kaiserracing.com/2019/03/ssliperypete-ryanair/

[oddjob]

hhttps://www.adn.com/outdoors-adventure ... TxOMwiQwUY
With Dallas in Norway the race is going to be tight one for Nome