In the past 43 Iditarods, we have seen the race go from 20 days to 8 1/2 days. The race's record has been broken 14 times in 43 years, most recently by Dallas Seavey's time of 8 days 13 hours 4 minutes in 2014. Will that mark fall again?
Iditarod is commonly referred to as a chess game with a 1,000 moving parts, but in reality the number of possibilities on the trail from Willow to Nome is infinite. Aside from three mandatory stops, it is the musher's discretion on how long or short the dogs will run and how long they'll rest.
Here are the three mandatory stops:
• 24-hour stop: Can be taken at any checkpoint. All 24 hours need to be done consecutively.
• Yukon River: Teams must stop for eight hours at one of the Yukon River checkpoints — Ruby, Galena, Nulato, or Kaltag this year.
• White Mountain: An eight-hour rest is required before the final 70-mile push to Nome via Safety (a checkpoint seldom used unless there's an emergency situation, as seen is in 2014 when Seavey grabbed the lead from Aily Zirkle, who was hunkered down in the Safety Bar after a harrowing run through a wind-blasted section known as the Blow Hole.)
Many race strategies have been tried over the years. Some have resulted in championships; others have left the musher catching an early plane back to Anchorage. Most strategies are thought out months in advance. More often than not, the musher is brewing them while still mushing to Nome and thinking about next year's race.
Here are a few early-race strategies race fans should watch for this year:
The Buser/Rohn Experiment
In 2013 Martin Buser shocked everyone by running all the way from Willow, through Skwentna, through Finger Lake, through Rainy Pass, before finally stopping in Rohn for his mandatory 24-hour rest. That run lasted 19 hours and 53 minutes. Most top 10 Iditarod competitors averaged around 10 hours of rest prior to Rohn, affording Martin a huge lead and casting him as the rabbit everyone was hunting.
I remember sitting in Finger Lake that year with two-time Kuskokwim 300 champion Pete Kaiser and 2011 Iditarod champion John Baker while Buser neared Rohn. We all looked at each other, speechless.
We wondered if we were witnessing a new way of running Iditarod, secretly hoping we weren't. That was the year Buser ended up getting passed in Kaltag by Mitch Seavey, who went on to the win while Buser rapidly descended to 17th place.
This strategy was employed again in 2014 by Nicolas Petit, who elected not to take his 24-hour rest until Ophir another 160 miles farther down he trail. He ended up scratching on the Bering Sea Coast.
The Buser/Nikolai Experiment
First-time experiments seldom yield the hoped-for results and to Buser's credit, it seems he took what he learned in 2013 and adapted it with a slight twist a year later. Buser left Willow and traveled all the way to Rainy Pass, where he took a four-hour break, a run that lasted 14 hours and 34 minutes. Buser then ran from Rainy Pass to Nikolai, with a run time of 15 hours and 26 minutes and declared his 24-hour mandatory rest.
The Nikolai experiment worked better; he ended up finishing an incredibly strong sixth.
Three things to consider when watching for either of these strategies:
• The last time a musher who was first into Rohn or Nikolai won the race was in 2007. Lance Mackey was the first team into both Rohn and Nikolai that year, the first of his four consecutive titles.
• In a year where the amount of snow throughout the Alaska Range is at the forefront of everyone's minds, look for more mushers to adopt one of these strategies. Getting through the Alaska Range — including such tricky sections as Happy River Steps, Dalzell Gorge, and the Farewell Burn — before too many teams scrape away the limited snow cover makes sense.
• Let's be happy that Buser didn't have a third child named Ruby or he might run straight to the Yukon River for his mandatory 24-hour stop. (Buser has two sons Rohn and Nikolai, both named after Iditarod checkpoints).
The Mackey Formula
Winning eight 1,000-mile races (the Yukon Quest 2005-08 and Iditarod 2007-10) in a span of six years earns you gobs of trail cred to run the race however you want. Mackey was notorious for reading his dogs, reading the situation, and executing perfectly. At many points during that impressive six-year stretch it seemed as if Mackey had no game plan at all and yet he came out on top of every time. Some notable moments during that unmatched stretch:
• The Bering Sea March: In 2007 Mackey ran from Unalakleet to his eight-hour mandatory rest in White Mountain, covering 166 miles with one 3 hour, 8 minute rest in Koyuk.
• The Elim Sleeper: In a tight 2008 race, Mackey snuck out on a snoozing Jeff King in Elim.
• The Challenge: The 2009 Iditarod was by far Mackey's most dominant performance and one of the most dominant wins in Iditarod history. Mackey left his 24-hour layover at Takotna and two-and-a-half hours later picked up a bale of straw and food at Ophir and headed down the trail toward Iditarod. His short stop in Ophir signaled to his competitors that he was planning to camp farther down the trail and breaking the run to Iditarod into two segments. However, in true Mackey fashion, he tossed his bale of straw to the side of the trail (in essence challenging everyone else to try to stay with him) and ran the entire way from Takotna to Iditarod, a challenge no other musher accepted. By the time he reached Iditarod, Mackey had nearly a four-hour lead. He ended up growing that lead with a bold move on the Bering Sea, venturing out into a growing storm that shut down most other teams in Shaktoolik. He ended up winning by 7 hours and 27 minutes.
Seavey Strategy
Whether it be Dallas Seavey or his father Mitch, both mushers tend to run a much more traditionally the first 300 miles. This strategy lends itself to giving the dogs ample amounts of rest (both Seaveys tend to average roughly 20 hours of rest prior to Takotna) which in return allows the dog team to ease into the rigors of the remaining 700 miles of the trail. The goal of this strategy is to "build the monster" (as Dallas has coined it) and to take down everything in your path on the way to Nome. A fast team at the end of the race going 7.5 mph compared to its competitors going 6.0 mph will make a much larger impact than the teams at the beginning of the race going 11.5 mph versus 10.0 mph. Although it's a 1.5 mph difference for both scenarios, over a 100-mile stretch the difference between the teams speed at the beginning of the race (11.5 mph vs. 10.0 mph) is only 1 hour 19 minutes where as the speeds at the end of the race (7.5 mph vs. 6.0 mph) is a difference of 3 hours and 20 minutes. Key to the strategy: Be fast at the end.
One other thing to consider this year for Dallas Seavey that might be a game changer: This season, he's used a climate-controlled freezer truck treadmill that is long enough to accommodate an entire 16 dog team. This has allowed Seavey to train his dogs throughout the summer while the other competitors are forced to take time off because it's too hot for the dogs to run.
Will the treadmill allow the younger Seavey to build his "monster" prior to the race and in return not need the first 300-500 miles to do so — allowing him the ability to hit the ground running and exert his force from the time mushers leave Willow Lake.
Carrying Dogs
Sleds have gone from heavy, tough, freight-haulers built from the trees behind your cabin to sleek carriers built out of some of the toughest, lightest materials around. In addition to materials, the design has changed considerably and the person at the forefront of that change is four-time champion Jeff King. King has brought a sense of art, fire (literally, handlebar warmers on fire), and coolness to the sleds he drives, making previous sled designs near obsolete.
King's latest creation, which many saw in the 2014 video of him tumbling down the Dalzell Gorge, is a trailer towed behind your sled in which you can carry dogs comfortably on a bed of straw instead of inside your sled bag. The thought behind this innovation is that you don't really need 16 dogs pulling you and your sled the first half of the race. The trailer is used to rest key dogs for extended periods, leaving them fresher and rested for the final push to Nome. Iditarod legend Bud Smyth, the father of racer Cim Smyth in this year's Iditarod, thought of this many years ago when he showed up at the starting line with a sled filled with kennel crates to haul dogs. At the time, Iditarod did not allow it.
Today, the question has become how many dogs can you rotate and how effectively? Can you rotate four dogs in the trailer and 12 dogs on the line and essentially have line substitutions similar to what occurs every two minutes in the National Hockey League? Will we get to the point where teams only need to stop for their mandatory rests and rotate dogs, allowing for four incredibly long runs only broken up by the mandatory stops?
Jake Berkowitz is a three-time Iditarod finisher, including an eighth-place finish in 2013, when he was awarded the Alaska Airlines Leonhard Seppala Humanitarian Award. He has finished the Yukon Quest twice, both times in fourth place, and won the Rookie of the Year award in 2012. This is his first year of Iditarod commentary for Alaska Dispatch News. Look for his commentaries daily during the race.