Morning Update

Overnight movement has not changed  my view of  how this race is shaping up.  Zirkle went further down the Yukon than I expected, to  Galena, but she  will need a long rest there,  and  Buser  left Ruby ahead of all the teams  that are taking their rest in Ruby. Next out was Burmeister, who also passed through Ruby without  resting.  Sorlie  followed him,  done with his mandatory  8 hour rest and moving well.  As mentioned  a couple of days ago here,   he  is emerging as the team to watch.  King and Lindner will complete   their 24 hour rests this morning and be on their  way,   with plenty of rest for dogs  and drivers,  to give chase.  How those teams  respond to their late  24 rest will  determine if they are  candidates for the top spot.

John Baker is near Ruby at this time,  and Katherine Keith left Cripple,  running a few  hours behind the  leading rookie,  after taking a long rest.

One item of interest  this morning is the reported extra half hour Robert Sorlie took at Ruby.  Taking more than the mandatory  eight hours is rare for the front runners,  and the reason for that delay  will emerge during the day I’m sure.  He might have slept late.

Two teams  who  had fast runs into Ruby are Petit and Redington.    Petit has been hanging around near the front of the pack much of the race, and one big run could put him in solid contention to win it all.  Redington  is a bit back of the front, but he also can’t be overlooked.

Bets Are In on the Top 5

Tonight I  pick the top five contenders to win the  2014 Iditarod.  This is based on current position, speed, history and a bit  of intuition.  There are some who will question these choices, and please feel free to post on the Baker website your choices.  They are probably better than mine.

Robert Sorlie is one of my contenders.  This is based primarily on today’s run, but also on his average moving speed  which  is  the highest in the race.  He has won twice before, he has  had a few years off to get ready for  this year, and all indications are he is on a roll.

Another contender Aily Zirkle is a bit harder to  figure. Today’s run included a stop not too far from Ruby,  suggesting she will  run straight through the village and   stop later. That puts her on a different schedule and also makes it harder to evaluate her chances.  But last year’s second place finish  figures into the decision to make her one of the five.

Jeff King also makes the cut, but this is a little longer reach because he will be a long ways behind leaving Ruby.  What remains to be seen is how much speed he will gain because of  the 24 hour rest he took in Ruby.  It might enable him to  make a big push down the Yukon, where the trail is very good, downhill, and with a tail wind.  His four previous titles figure  in my thinking as well.

Sonny Lindner makes the cut for many of the same reasons as King. He actually will have  about an  hour lead  on King leaving Ruby, and has  been very impressive in a couple of recent runs.   He is the oldest guy left in the race, and   those of us who live in the bush know that  older people have elder wisdom that shouldn’t  be overlooked.  By the way, I am older than Lindner.

The final member of the top five is Martin Buser.  He is likely to be the first team out of Ruby, and  also will likely have his mandatory 8 hour rest completed when  he leaves.  Zirkle might leave  earlier, but if she does she will  likely be stopping soon putting  Buser back in the lead.   His speed is still quite good on recent runs, and the Yukon trail will favor his usually speedy dogs.  His past wins also figure in my thinking, but  that is tempered somewhat by last year’s race when his early sprint ended up slowing him down a lot at the end.

John Baker does not  make the top five cut despite his history of catching up late.  He likely will move up in the next few days, but there are too many good teams ahead of him now to put  him among the contenders to win.   Katherine Keith won’t win, but she sure is  having a good run and is a serious candidate for rookie of the year.

Looking at Speed

Tonight I will pick my list of contenders, but a preview of that is possible  this morning.   King is putting on a  serious move, pulling away from Lindner on the run from Cripple to  Ruby. His speeds have been good.   Buser will have quite a lead leaving Ruby, thanks to his mad dash out of Willow.  It could  be several hours, maybe as many as 6  if he has a good run  today.  But there is speed  behind him.  The two fastest team in sight are Sorlie and Zirkle.  Sorlie  is 23 ahead of  Zirkle according to the tracker and is slowly emerging as the team to beat,

John Baker took his  24 break at Cripple and will leave there tonight.  Katherine  Keith will see  him leave, now done with  her 24 hour rest and  running in 19^th place.  That positioning now  starts to mean something, as she  stands  first among the rookies.  Abbie  West is  close in second, and moving  faster than  Keith.

Baker’s average moving speed of 6.9  mph is significantly lower than other contenders.  Sorlie, for example  is 8.2.  I have asked the  tracker folks to create a new category of chart,  average moving speed for the  most recent  24 hours or 100 miles.  That would tell the fans a lot more than speed over the entire race.  If a team’s speed is trending up,  teams  ahead will have a problem.  If its trending down, it will be a long  run to Nome as teams rarely speed up once they start  losing speed.  Baker’s history suggests he moves better  later in the race.  He is not far off the pace, and if he picks up speed on the Yukon he could still be a factor.

Aaron Burmeister claims the Gold

As predicted there has not been much movement today with most teams on their  24 hour rest.   Five teams moved between Ophir and  Cripple  with Aaron Burmeister arriving first and winning the $3000 in gold.  John Baker was among the  five, making a big move through Takotna last night.  How that  tactic pans out won’t be known  until tomorrow when  all the teams are moving again.

Martin Buser left  Nikolai after completing his rest, and is moving well.  Last year   he  lost speed  by blasting out of the starting line to Rohn.  This year he seems to have preserved his speed.  At this point  he seems to be a solid contender for  the top spot.

Other teams who seem to have been moving well before resting were Zirkle,  Sorlie, both Seaveys and of course Jeff King.   King provided a rare glimpse of  how it feels to be on a sled descending  Rainy Pass.  His helmet cam video is posted on Iditarod Insider and is scary to watch.  I did the same trail with  a primitive sled with no brush bow, meaning I didn’t  glance off trees as well as I should have.  That was a  long time ago, but that video brought back intense memories of the  run down, my first ever steep drop on a dog sled.

Most teams, including Katherine Keith, stopped at Takotna to rest. Pictures of the food spread there are easily found on  various media sites.  Meals are made to order, and homemade  pie is always  available.  I don’t know when that tradition started , but there was  a time when the checkpoint  was  located at the Takotna tavern (now closed)  It was an old time place, with a small bar that seated about 6 people, and a larger back room for dancing and card playing.  When I raced,  there was a local guitar player, a guy making sandwiches, and one free beer for each  racer.   I stopped  at -30, and it was hard to leave.

Part of my description of Takotna hospitality was deemed to  racy for publication.  If you bump into me anytime, ask me to tell the story.  It’s a good one, and of course its true.

Tomorrow evening it will be time to pick five teams from which the winner  will emerge, but  because that will be hard to do, it may expand to  8, and I still might be wrong.

The Race Goes On

Wed morning report--   The growing number of scratches (12 as of now) will  focus discussion for a while on the decision made  recently  to use the traditional  Willow start  instead of switching  the trail to Fairbanks to avoid the Alaska Range.   I don’t have enough of the facts  known to the  race organizers  at the time  they made their decision to second guess.  As  one of the people who has made similar decisions for the Kuskokwim 300  for 35 years,  I know such issues are hard to deal with.   It is not a simple as looking for  the best available trail.  There wasn’t going to be unanimous support for either  starting spot this year.

I do know that after the decision was made the weather didn’t  really cooperate.  Warm temperatures race week surely made the trail worse than it had been.  And for many racers the location of the main area of concern moved from one side of the Alaska range to the  other as race day approached.  But one question  still lingers in my mind: knowing full well  the conditions  ahead, why do so many teams still drive such tiny lightweight sleds during the first part of the race?

Because  racers can send out replacement sleds, why not  have a sturdy sled for the tough going and more of a  racer for the rest of the trail?   When Andy  Angstman ran the race in the low snow year of 2007, he used an all aluminum sled  built like a small tank. Such a device was designed to be more or less unbreakable, and  would have been a good choice for this year.  Not only are such sleds harder to break, they provide the racer more protection from obstacles in tough going.

Meanwhile, the race goes on but with a number of folks moving past  Takotna for  their 24 hour  rest, including John Baker.  That makes analysis very difficult.   It will stay that way for  another couple of days as we see how teams fare in their   first big runs after their break.  Naming a leader right now would be difficult, but two guys driving fast teams last night were Jeff King  and Robert Sorlie.   Those fast speeds were recorded during the run from  Nikolai to McGrath, at a time when long runs and short rests  would have made the dogs somewhat weary. It’s a long way to the finish, but both of those teams should be among the top few  at  Nome.

Tonight, as promised, a report on Takotna hospitality.

Team Baker is proving to be solid and strong

As suggested this morning, the list of contenders is starting to materialize as teams  approach Takotna.   The top ten teams on the current list have all earned contender status, and a handful more also deserve watching.   John Baker is certainly a factor with a strong  move up  today, currently  listed as 12^th.  A handful of teams back in the pack also could contend including Martin Buser who will  likely regain the lead after doing his 24 hour rest in Nikolai.  Kelly  Maixner also bears watching based on his fast dash to Rohn before taking his rest.   Mike Williams Jr.  is not far off Buser’s  pace, but he is down to 10 dogs.

Katherine Keith is solidly  in the running for rookie of the year, currently in the top 20 and not that far  behind Baker.  Her move out of Nikolai after the obviously grueling run into that village shows her durability.

Sonny Linder was the first team out of Nikolai and also first into McGrath, where he  is doing his 24 hour rest.  Lindner is currently the oldest musher in the race at  64, and many consider him to be a serious contender for the top spot.  He has a previous second place finish, and has gradually improved his finishes in the past few years. His  day in the lead caused me to remember two  Lindner  stories that are worthy of sharing.  

One story involved  the Coldfoot Classic  dog race in 1986 when he and I shared a snowbank  for a few hours during a break.  As most  racers will admit, there are times that are less fun than others, and this one of those moments.   Lindner asked me that day to promise him that if he was still racing dogs after the age of 50 that I would  find him in some checkpoint and shoot him.  Of course I promised and I remind him of that every year around  March 1^st.

The other story involves a visit to a bar in Nome after  the All-Alaska Sweepstakes in 1983.  Lindner  had helped  winner Rick Swenson  in the race and I finished back a ways.  We planned to have a couple beers to rehash the race. The young attractive waitress came by and  asked if we were dog racers.  Somebody  said yes, and while looking at Lindner she gushed  “Oh I recognize you, you’re the cute one.”    Guess who got stuck with the tab.

There won’t be a lot of movement tomorrow with a bunch of teams taking their mandatory rest, many at Takotna where the hospitality is unmatched.  Tomorrow’s report  will detail  how hospitality at Takotna has changed from earlier years.

The deck is about to get shuffled...24 hour layovers

Martin Buser’s early  Tuesday arrival in Nikolai is  astounding.    He got there  about  4 ½ hours ahead of Nicholas Petit,  and no one else will be within 6 hours it appears. The next couple of runs will  show whether the frantic pace has taken too much speed out of Buser’s  team.  Recent history  suggests that will be the case. 

The tracker shows  John Baker and Katherine Keith about 40 miles out of Nikolai at  7 am,  which places them in the mid teens in the standings.  It is interesting that the Iditarod has changed the format of the tracker.  It started  by having the teams in order of their bibs, but now it is in the order of placement which makes it a lot easier for fans.   Next they should put numerical position next to each racer.  Spot Trackers are now used for the first time by the Iditarod,  and  the tried and true format used for the trackers in other races was  junked.  This morning  there is a reference to outside interference with the Iditarod website, which has had some technical  issues  from the start of the race.

The Team Baker website also has issues.  No one has figured out how to update the  basic  information from last year’s  site.  Of course,  most have figured out  that the same guy is writing these reports, Myron Angstman,  and obviously  all the dates should read  2014.

Mike Williams Jr.  is currently in the top ten.  He has had a tough  year for training in Akiak on the Kuskokwim.   The last couple of months have been on glare ice, and before that it was only a bit better.  Yet he is running with the front of the pack.  It probably doesn’t hurt that  the trail he is now using is similar to the one he trained on.  Dogs learn to move differently  on ice with a little practice.  My dogs have always  done fairly well on ice, and  poorly in deep snow because of their Kuskokwim training.

Today the teams will start  arriving in Takotna and  the order will be a lot  different than it is right now.  It takes a strong team to keep the current pace of the front runners, rest a few hours in Nikolai and then  drive 75 more mile to Takotna where  a majority of the teams  will take their  24  hour rest.  By tomorrow, predictions start to make a little sense.