Jake Berkowitz: The Iditarod gets interesting right about now. And who’s actually in the lead?

It’s been three days since the Iditarod mushers left Willow Lake and began their trek up and over the Alaska Range and into the Alaska Interior. The pace has picked up, and the race is shaping up to include an incredibly competitive push to Nome.

The lead pack has separated itself, with race followers closely watching Joar Leifseth Ulsom, the defending champion, and Nicolas Petit, last year’s runner-up.

So who is actually leading the 2019 Iditarod, and how did we get here?

Since the start on Sunday, Leifseth Ulsom and Petit have made it clear theirs are the teams to beat, and they were not scared of taking control from the start.

Leifseth Ulsom has been resting between three and four hours at all of his stops, and has also kept all of his runs relatively short — the longest being 8.5 hours from Nikolai through McGrath and into Takotna, where he declared his mandatory 24-hour rest at 7:08 p.m. Tuesday. He has taken roughly 17 hours of rest through Takotna (Mile 329).

Petit — in true Petit fashion — has not been as predictable. His run and rest times are more sporadic. Petit, unlike other mushers, doesn’t usually come into the race with a strict schedule. He essentially wings it, judging everything off what he sees from his dogs.

Petit has put in some longer runs of 10-plus hours and some longer rests along the trail as well. He has taken roughly 18 hours of rest through Ophir (Mile 352), where he declared his mandatory 24-hour rest.

As the race sits right now, Petit is nearly five hours ahead of his 2018 Iditarod pace and Leifseth Ulsom is about three hours ahead of his 2018 race — which he won by about two hours.

So although these two mushers have run completely different races up to this point, they are on a similar trajectory to their finishes in Nome. The big question is when will they converge?

Most likely, Petit will arrive in the checkpoint of Iditarod ahead of Leifseth Ulsom. Petit has set himself up nearly perfectly to take advantage of his 24-hour rest and slingshot himself ahead with a straight run to Iditarod, potentially arriving at an ideal time around noon Thursday.

Leifseth Ulsom, who will be coming off his rest 23 miles farther back on the trail, will most likely blow through Ophir while Petit still has two hours left of his mandatory rest. Leifseth Ulsom could make his big move then, making the full run to Iditarod straight from Takotna, but more than likely he will rest near Don’s Cabin (a shell roughly halfway between Takotna and Iditarod), putting him into Iditarod around 1 p.m. Thursday.

Most likely both these teams will depart Iditarod within an hour of each other, beginning the race to the Yukon River and the coveted “First to the Yukon” award in Anvik.

Aliy Zirkle is the wild card. As of midday Wednesday, she is unofficially “leading” the race, pushing past Ophir on her way to Iditarod or beyond before taking her 24-hour rest. That would be 16-plus hours of running from McGrath with only a two-hour break in Ophir.

The move of pushing to Iditarod worked well for Leifseth Ulsom last year. But Zirkle is six hours off his pace and is likely hoping that being the first across the trail to Iditarod will give her a better trail -- or that she can make it into Iditarod before a storm hits and the trail disintegrates behind her.

Here are other top teams to watch, some of whom will be chasing Leifseth Ulsom with a very similar race to Iditarod, and some who will be following Petit out of Ophir with a straight shot to Iditarod:

The Takotna crowd and Leifseth Ulsom’s chasers

• Jessie Royer – 2.5 hours behind Leifseth Ulsom

• Pete Kaiser – 3.5 hours behind

• Richie Diehl – 4 hours behind

• Matt Failor – 4.5 hours behind

• Ryan Redington – 4.5 hours behind

• Mitch Seavey – 4.5 hours behind

• Matt Hall – 5 hours behind

The Ophir crew and Petit’s chasers:

• Aliy Zirkle – 6 hours behind Petit

• Jessie Holmes – 6.5 hours behind

• Aaron Burmeister – 7 hours behind

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that Jake Berkowitz is predicting that Nic Petit will arrive in the checkpoint of Iditarod, not Nome, ahead of Joar Leifseth Ulsom.