Alaska News

Which team will try a 12-hour Iditarod sprint?

Former Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race champion Martin Buser is set to lead the pack out of Takotna on a midnight train schedule. Fortified with a slight time buffer, a big string of dogs, and the experience that comes from four Iditarod victories, Buser is setting the rhythm of the race. All others must respond to his move.

As a spectator, I have to admit that this has been the most boring and stuporific 24-hour break in recent Iditarod history. Essentially, the entire lead pack spent the desultory day feeding their dogs, sleeping, belching, and wandering back and forth to the Takotna kitchen for more homemade pie and ice cream, leaving a vacuum of redundant nothingness for the Iditarod fan.

My fellow commentator, the retired four-time champ from Montana, Doug Swingley, and I communicated by phone and agreed that there really were not any side bars of activity to the front of the pack that deserved mention. We thought certainly that a Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race musher, for example, would read the reports of excellent hard trail to Iditarod, and decide, "Well, I might as well get further up the trail while the rest of the pack sleeps in Takotna. I should take advantage of perfect conditions."

After all, it really isn't a huge accomplishment to make it less than 400 miles to Takotna, hardly more than one-third of the race distance. The Yukon Quest, in contrast, has an established midway rest at Dawson, Yukon Territory, Canada, almost 500 miles from the start.

Quest mushers have smaller teams, bigger loads, and less opportunity for re-supply, and they make 500 miles on their first leg on a regular basis. So we were confounded why so many in the pack would dead head in Takotna, if for no other reason than because it was assumed that the lead pack had a strategic reason to push there.

Are there no contrarians left in Alaska?

Finally, intrepid mushers Kelley Griffin, Trent Herbst, Robert Nelson and Cim Smyth decided at noon that it would be a great adventure to be on the trail first. They rested in Takotna, departed for Ophir and beyond. By viewing their GPS data, we can surmise that the trail is indeed as fast as advertised. They must be having a beautiful, solitary, and quiet interlude.

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We have also heard that James Bardoner, the 62-year-old musher now bringing up the vanguard of the Iditarod pack, broke his sled and maybe busted himself up a little at the head of Rainy Pass. Over time, he fixed the sled, descended the Dalzell Gorge and is now moving briskly toward Nikolai with 16 dogs from the Swingley kennel. That was a great story and every fan over 60, including me, is rooting for him.

To those following defending champ Lance Mackey, we did hear from a very credible contact deep in the Mackey camp that he is very confident his remaining 12 dogs can haul the mail to Nome. He admitted that the four dropped dogs were not key veterans. Still, he chose them at the start over others because they demonstrated overwhelming raw physical talent.

But back to the lead pack. We have heard that some Iditarod bloggers are opining that the lead pack is leaving at a perfect, calculated, strategic planned hour. Both Doug and I disagree, and think the mushers are leaving at a horrible time. Check your house dog at midnight or 1 a.m. and see how frisky it acts. Look out in the dog yard at 1 a.m. How many dogs do you see running around their pickets and jumping on the dog house? Like humans, dogs think midnight is a terrible time to be up.

The best time to depart on a run is at 5 or 6 in the evening or at 5 or 6 in the morning. The best times to sleep are around midnight and noon. So, the lead mushers have a bit of a job putting their teams back on schedule for the rest of the race.

With between 600 and 700 miles left, Thursday is going to be an interesting new day with the lead pack bunched around a three-hour window. For practical purposes, the slate is clean now that the mandatory 24s are behind us. It's like a new start. How is the pack going to play it? What will the eventual winner be considering?

Historically, a move to Takotna for the 24-hour mandatory break is based on several premises. It's only a little over 300 miles from the start so the idea is you move there as quickly as possible. In this way, a time advantage is hopefully accumulated (as Buser demonstrated so very well). After a 24-hour break in Takotna, the lead musher typically makes a giant run, a huge powerful statement, and moves 100 miles in essentially one long extended push to Iditarod.

This normally takes 18 hours, but in a compressed, extended run, that time could be anywhere from 12 to 14 hours. Iditarod fans will remember when Mackey and fellow four-time champ Jeff King broke the race open in past years with phenomenal 12 hour runs to Iditarod. This put the rest of the field in disarray and boosted them four to six hours into the lead. The trick is, you have to have a great team to do it.

This is what all the front runners understand. They can either commit to a 12-hour run to Iditarod, fresh off the 24. Or, they can conservatively run 18 hours, with a six-hour rest somewhere in the tundra, just off the trail to Iditarod.

They all know, too, that somebody is going to try it in 12. For sure, somebody is going to try it in 12. And if you're in the lead pack, and if you don't go with that musher, and his move works, you could be out of the race.

It's a great predicament, and all the lead pack has given up the only remedy. They could have gone to Iditarod before taking a 24 and positioned themselves to be resting when the pack left Takotna, but that choice is now history. It's gone.

Therefore, Doug and I are going to watch for an extended run to Iditarod of about 12 hours. We think that's what Martin will do to bury the competition. Mackey will be his shadow. Who amongst the others will flinch and lag behind, and who among them will try to hang on to get into position to win an Iditarod?

Joe Runyan, champion of the 1985 Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race and 1989 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, worked with former Iditarod champion Jeff King on his book, "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" as well as with defending Iditarod champion Lance Mackey on his autobiography, "The Lance Mackey Story", and is providing commentary and analysis of Iditarod 39 for Alaska Dispatch.

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