Iditarod 2019 – Day 11

by Bryan

6 comments

1 JuanitaM { 03.12.19 at 11:10 am }

Oh my god, I can’t believe Petit scratched! I would have thought he and the dogs could have had a good long rest and still been able to finish in the upper middle group. Oh well, I’m sure he had good reasons. Obviously, I wasn’t there! 🙂

The News Miner and Anchorage Daily News have blocked me now. Apparently, I have seen my quota of stories at this point on both my computer and phone. lol. I’m cheap, I don’t pay for anything.

I notice that the Berington twins are once again traveling in tandem as is their usual routine. Teaming up apparently works for them. They almost always finish in the upper half.

I keep saying this, but every year, I’m always amazed at how far these dogs run in the Quest and the Iditarod. It boggles the mind, or at least it does mine! It would be like me running my dogs from Virginia to Texas. Or someone sledding from upstate New York to Ft. Lauderdale. My dogs might make it to the North Carolina border, maybe. There’s a British guy on YouTube that is living in the US right now, and he talks about the size of the American states, and how many are larger than a standard country. He was shocked when he took a look at the area of Alaska (he was comparing states to the UK). I just don’t think most people really understand that.

2 Bryan { 03.12.19 at 2:52 pm }

It is almost exactly 1000 miles from Indianapolis, Indiana due South to Fort Walton Beach, Florida. When I was in Frankfort every other European country was within 8 hours of driving.

Nic was cutting it too close with rest. His puppies could probably have made a top 10 finish, but he was in no condition. A 6 hour rest is only 4 hours of possible sleep as the first and last hours are needed for dog care. Also at one point the GPS was showing a 16mph speed on the sea ice which makes me suspect the team left without him.

If you run 6 and rest 6, a healthy sled dog can go forever. You just have to have 20K calories to feed each of them every day. They are the perfect endurance athletes.

He probably left off the Aleutian Islands and the southeastern group that includes the capital, Juneau.

3 JuanitaM { 03.13.19 at 9:29 pm }

I just ran across his video during the race, and his caption piqued my interest because it mentioned something about how many states were larger than the entirety of the UK. So I wanted to hear what he would say about Alaska! I really don’t remember whether he included the Aleutians or not. But I do remember he was suitably gobsmacked and assumed some of his British cousins weren’t really aware of just how ‘uuuuge this place was. He discussed the fact that people in Europe consider it a crying shame that US citizens for the most part can’t speak a foreign language, but since he has lived here for a few years, he understands better that they can drive and travel approx half of a continent and never need to speak another language (except when they get to the south and parts of Canada, that is 🙂 ).

Congratulations to Pete Kaiser for his first win. He must be thrilled. He’s been racing a long time and had several finishes in the top ten.

And Jessie Royer came in at a solid #3 doing about 60 miles of a white-out, and this after having also ran the Yukon Quest this year. Good for her. How she and others manage to run them back to back like that, I can’t imagine. I consider myself a moderately active person, but these people…

And dogs.

4 Bryan { 03.13.19 at 10:22 pm }

Pete is the first Yup’ik musher to win the race, so there will be a huge celebration when he goes home to Bethel. The Yup’ik are Native Alaskans from the southern part of the state.

Aliy’s in and Paige will be in Nome early tomorrow our time. Martin Apayauq Reitan also ran the Quest as a rookie this year and is doubling up with a rookie run on the Iditarod. It must be nice to be that young and healthy.

I’m a bit concerned about Blair Braverman. She’s somewhere between Koyuk and the coast and her beacon hasn’t worked in a day. The beacon could be broken but she should have reached the coast by now.

5 JuanitaM { 03.15.19 at 11:19 am }

Blair is in at Koyuk now, but wonder what happened to her out there. She has a Facebook page, Twitter, and Instagram, but no one is updating those with any information about her.

Did you read about the pianist/composer friend of Blair that was helping with her other dogs? Apparently he was exercising them and the sled flipped, he reached for the hook to try to hang on, but his finger got wedged. It cut his finger off! The doctors managed to re-attach it, but no one knows at this point how much flexibility he will get back. What a tragedy for a pianist. Well, for anyone, but you know what I mean.

Since Blair is a writer, I expect that she’ll be writing about all this in the coming days so we should hear what happened out there before long.

The bulk of the teams are safely in at Nome but still a few out there. The two competing for the Red Lantern have left Shaktoolik, and I really hope they don’t cut anyone off like they have done in the past. I know they want to have the dinner and everything done but dang if that doesn’t seem so unfair when teams have run most of the race!

Richie Beattie looks to be the rookie of the year at #21. It must really be fun for a rookie to get Rookie of the Year. You know they go in having no idea how they’re going to do for the first time and probably don’t expect to win anything, they’re just thrilled to be there chasing a dream.

6 Bryan { 03.15.19 at 3:56 pm }

Here is a story she wrote about one of her dogs, probably for a children’s book.

She was running alone for a very long stretch of the race, and that isn’t good for mushers or dogs. You can start to hallucinate with lack of sleep, and the trail from Kaltag to the coast is a whole lot of white nothing this time of year. It is very disorientating, like flying in clouds. At some point she may write about it.

Richie and Ed are both Quest veterans, so they and their teams know about mushing 1000 miles. The Iditarod is a lot flatter and the checkpoints are a lot closer together than the Quest. Of course, the Quest does have Dawson in the middle and a 36-hour layover.

They are a group of 4 chasing another group of 4 and there have been weather issues, so it would be really stupid for the ITC to cut them off. Of course, if they did it, it wouldn’t be their first stupid move 😉