The stories from Allen’s race are increasing by the day. I talked to him today once he reached Shaguluk. He was tired and hungry but in good spirits. As is his custom, he was more worried about Aliy and how she was doing than about himself.
He said his dogs are looking great! He doesn’t expect any of them to need to be dropped before he leaves for Anvik and Grayling. He says that he is still running Girlfriend and Anvik quite a bit up in lead, but all the dogs are doing very well.
He had a bit of an incident going into Shaguluk. As we have heard, the trail was very barren there, with lots of tundra and stumps sticking up. Only a few miles out of the check point, a stump caught his sled seat. The sled came to an abrupt halt. Allen flipped over the handle bars and landed with Blossom and Hera in wheel. He couldn’t believe he didn’t hurt himself, but he said he is going to be very sore when he gets to Nome.
Aliy left Grayling after 7+ hours to make her way to Eagle Island. She did drop another dog, Sparky – with, of course, a triceps injury. She is down to 9 dogs but a strong 9. Hopefully she can go through a couple of checkpoints now without having to drop a dog.
And so Allen becomes a buck-a-roo!
YEEE HAWWW..or is that GEE HAWWWW
Aliy is down to 9, and Allen still has 15… I would have never predicted that. The yearling team must really crave running on miles of snowless tundra 🙂
Slack
Thank you for keeping the site updated with Aliy and Allen’s whereabouts. I am a new iditarod fan. Moved to AK Aug 2006. Have always wanted to see the start of the race, our family went to the restart in Willow. Children needed to pick some teams to follow for school so Dad and I also chose teams- I picked Aliy for many reasons. Discovered that Allen was also racing so have been following them both. Glad they got to see eachother along the way. Our entire family has been very into following the iditarod race and I love checking out the blogs on this site as well as clips and interviews on insider. Thank you… Hopefully all will work out so that Aliy will not have to drop anymore dogs. From the pics-trails have looked pretty terrible in many spots. These teams are amazing. What great athletes. Thanks for updates.