Actually, Mitch didn’t gain much, and will have to rest on the trail to Nulato, so Aliy is still ahead of him coming off her 8-hour in real terms.

I would start watching Jeff King, whose team had the fastest time between Ruby and Galena, which is one of the benchmark runs at the end of the trail. Aliy’s time on the run isn’t clear because she stopped and rested before Ruby, and you can’t be sure how long her run really was. The rest are making it after 8 hours of rest, so that gives you a good indication of team speed at this point.

Dallas is sprinting again, but he will need longer rests for the dogs when he does that. That’s how he lost last year – his dogs got tired and faded at the end of the race.

Anyway, my “to do” list can’t match with yours, but yesterday turned out to be one of THOSE days where unexpected things came up all day. I didn’t even have a chance to check your blog once, so I missed all the action yesterday! So Aliy is hanging in there! …. Okay, I just went and checked the standings at 8:08 EST, and she’s had her 8 now, and she’s still in second place. Yahoo. But she’s a couple hours behind Mitch so it looks like he might be the one this year.