Mackey rolls into Ruby

"I'm first here by some kind of luck," he said, "because my team isn't 100 percent."

Dogged by unusually warm weather in which dogs are prone to overheat, most of the lead mushers in the 1,100-mile race from Anchorage to Nome have been struggling with strategy. Originally, Mackey said, his had been to take his team all the way to Ruby, spend the race's one mandatory 24-hour rest there regrouping and then make a charge for Nome.

As it turned out, the Mackey gang ended up taking the 24 in the quiet village of Takotna, about 150 miles back. Whether that move proves to be the right one remains to be seen.

A big pack of teams -- some of which were with Mackey in Takota, some of which did their 24s either a checkpoint before at McGrath or a checkpoint after at Ophir, and the early leaders who pushed to halfway at Cripple -- were charging toward this village even as Mackey started digging into his Yukon River feast.

"I've had friends and family who have won this award, and they have always had someone to eat with but have yet to finish every meal," said the long-distance racer and cancer survivor.

"Because I've been known for my good appetite, I was thinking, maybe, what if I ate everything?" he asked. "Is there a bonus?"

People in the checkpoint laughed. There was already a stack of money on the table in front of Mackey.

For a moment, he stopped eating his chicken and wild mushroom terrine to gaze at 5,000 crisp $1 bills.

"Lance, you're the first person (since) we've upped our prize to $5,000,'' said Brooke McGrath, food and beverage director for the Millennium Hotel in Anchorage. The prize used to be $3,000, but it has always come with the chef who flies out to fix the gourmet meal some mushers find more of a reward than the money at this stage in the demanding race.

Mackey was enjoying both the food and the cash.

"That's wonderful," Mackey said of the expanded cash reward. "(But) I wish that wasn't public so my wife knew it was only $3,500. I'm still unsure what to do with this money. I've considered buying a sit-down sled. My feet are so beat up. I'm leaning over the handlebars doing everything I can to take the pressure off my feet."

Mackey believes he is suffering from lingering damage from frostbitten feet on the way to victory in the 1,000-mile Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race just weeks ago. Though he's hobbling a bit, it hasn't seemed to hurt the defending champ's performance in this race much.

When he eased his dog team into this village on the bluffs above the river around daybreak, he was hours ahead of when he was expected. Mackey's dogs had devoured the 110-mile run in from the halfway point of Cripple.

"Don't count me out just yet," said the winner of last year's Iditarod and four straight Quests.

Mackey said his dogs are suffering some digestive problems in the warm conditions, but he added that they're still moving well.

"We still have some issues but the enthusiasm is still there," he said. "I'm just taking advantage of the dark, cool and nice trail that's firmed up. It shows with the times. I can't complain."

Temperatures at Ruby in the morning were near 20 degrees. Across the Interior, they have been climbing into the mid-30s, sometimes the 40s, at midday. Mushers worried about dogs overheating have been trying to alter their schedules to avoid racing in the warmth of the day.

Just behind Mackey, four-time champ Jeff King rolled out of the Cripple checkpoint about midnight, and a GPS tracking device on his sled showed him only about 10 miles out of Ruby. Expected to be with him or somewhere close were five-time champ Rick Swenson from Two Rivers and former Quest champ Hans Gatt from the area of Whitehorse, Yukon.

Never before a major factor in this race, Gatt was with a group of Canadians who left the Ophir checkpoint with Swenson on Thursday. All went miles out, camped through the heat of the day and then pushed for Cripple.

A couple of those mushers decided to rest their teams at the halfway point, but Gatt and Swenson, in a bold move to take advantage of the cool of night, blew through Cripple and kept going.

Mackey reported that they likely found a pretty good trail -- firming up in the cold and getting faster.

Mackey set his dogs off on a 14-mile run along that trail to get in here by dawn, and he said the team seemed to do just fine.

"I don't think that was too much,'' he said. "I made up almost 45 minutes on (Kjetil) Backen, and it didn't take that long to do it.

"I changed leaders twice on the way from Cripple. When I found the two that were willing to go, I wasn't willing to stop. Lippy hasn't been impressive at all until the last 100 miles. There was a lot of stopping and switching dogs, trying to find that combination."

As their reward for teamwork, the dogs got a hearty meal and a long rest. Mackey immediately declared the 8-hour layover mushers must take somewhere along the Yukon. His timing could not have been better. His team will rest through the warmth of the day and then head downriver as the day begins to cool.

By 8 a.m., Mackey was busy caring for the dogs in an effort to buy himself some time for his own reward.