SPK Dog Log

It’s 9pm Thursday night.

RED TEAM UPDATE

Aliy and the Red Team pulled in to Galena at 1.33pm. They took five hours, 53 minutes to cover the 50 miles from Ruby. It appears she is doing the mandatory 24 hour rest here.

Padee is our eyes on the Live Feed and saw the team come in to the checkpoint. She noticed wagging tails and ‘yipping’ happy dogs. It lifts the spirits to see the dogs enjoying themselves!

An Insider video shows Aliy giving Champ precautionary wrist wraps once they were settled onto the straw. She explains that she first massages holistic liniment into the joints and feet then wraps in a neoprene wrap. Then, to make is really firm and secure, wraps over the top with vet wrap. Champ was laying back enjoying his massage and looked quite fetching in his blue and pink wraps. This kind of attention is all part of racing, it’s not just jumping on the back of the sled and stopping to feed and rest the dogs every few hours; individual care attention to each dogs’ needs is paramount to any success.

Supplies for a 24 hour stop include about 70-80lb of kibble and about 90-100lb of meat snacks including turkey skins, beef and salmon for multiple meals. She will be trying to get as many calories into them as possible during the break, combined with as much sleep as they will take before getting restless to hit the trail again. We also sent fleece jackets, blankets and vet supplies (wraps, liniment massage oil, foot ointments etc) as well as human food and clothing. Human food for Aliy in Galena includes chicken and sweet potato pesto and grilled cheese sandwiches. The checkpoints will often have lots of food for mushers to enjoy also.

The 24 hours stop is also where the “time differential” will apply to every musher. This is where the difference in start times becomes equalised. Musher number 73 stays 24 hours exactly then each bib lower stays an extra two minutes. When the Red Team takes 24 they will, in fact, have to stay 25 hours and 4 minutes. The Black Team will stay 25 hours and 14 minutes having left 10 minutes before. For those playing at home I found this useful link in the “Edu” pages that helps explain how it all works. The equation I use is
(73-bib#)*2 = additional minutes.

The earliest Aliy and team can leave Galena would be 2.37pm Friday afternoon.

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

The Black Team left Ruby at 4.37pm having spent 6.25 hours resting. Allen still has 16 team members with him and they are moving along very nicely. They are currently 15 miles from Galena and will therefore be at the checkpoint while the Red Team is still there. It will be great for Aliy and Allen to catch up, they haven’t seen each other since Nenana.

There is a great Alaska Dispatch New article where the reporter talked to a few mushers about how they stay warm during the -40F temperatures. Allen said he sings and dances to Christmas songs including Jingle Bells – he said it really perks the dogs up and helps him stay warm. Check the article out here.

It’s 8.30am Thursday.

RED TEAM UPDATE

The Red Team has left Ruby after seeing out their mandatory eight hour rest. Aliy will have been able to get some good sleep herself and is hopefully feeling great now. In an Insider interview yesterday at her half-way camp spot she was concerned that the team was moving slowly, but towards the end of the run into Ruby they had picked up their speed again which will have buoyed her going into the break. Maybe they are now feeling better after “losing their mojo” a bit due to the tummy bug they had earlier. We hope so!

At the time of writing the standings haven’t been updated so I am unsure how many team mates she has with her. EDIT: Race standings show she has left one team mate in Ruby. At this stage we have no idea who it is so we appreciate your patience as we wait to get more information. Often times we won’t know until he or she arrives back in Anchorage and we will let you know as soon as we find out.

If you want to know what it looks like to have 16 dogs stretched out in front of you, Aliy took this video on one of the final training runs on our local trails in Two Rivers. The team isn’t the exact one she has with her now but it will give you an idea of how far the leaders are in front of you. It was a beautiful day too!

The weather forecast from weather.gov for the area shows it is now starting to warm up which I’m sure will be welcomed by the mushers and volunteers, but if it gets too warm can start to sap the energy and speed of dogs so resting during “the heat of the day” will become important.

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

The Black Team is back on the trail to Ruby having camped for five hours. As I write they are just over 15 miles outside of Ruby and moving nicely.

It’s midnight Wednesday night.

RED TEAM UPDATE

The Red Team pulled in to Ruby checkpoint at 11.23pm tonight in 9th position. As expected, they camped out on the trail for about four hours half-way through the run.

Teams will be starting to take their mandatory 24 or 8 hour stops and for the next few checkpoints we will see lots of leap-frogging in positions as some teams rest earlier and others rest later. Only once everyone has done both the “Yukon 8” and their 24 will we have a better picture of actual positions.

Overnight the Insider crew are sure to have some video of them arriving so we’ll hear more about their run then. This will have been Aliy’s first night on the Yukon River and she will be pleased to get that hurdle cleared.

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

The Insider crew interviewed Allen at Tanana and he talked a bit about his team and how their speed is really good currently as he is resting longer than some of the front running teams. He said he will give them another 100 miles of longer rests and “maybe start racing a bit, which will be fun”. This is what he is great at in the Iditarod: pushing a younger team just enough to test them but not too much to make it too challenging and too hard for them. He will push a little and back off a little as needs must. Scooby, Five and Hotshot have already gone further than they have ever raced before and that is an exciting milestone for them. Allen says that once a dog has run 1000 miles they can do anything!

He was asked about the cold and he talked about having just come off the Quest and so these cold temperatures “didn’t seem that bad” and that he should be used to it, but that the wind got up a bit on the river which makes it feel colder. The white pants you see Aliy and Allen wearing are wind blockers and help trap warmth inside.

The Black Team is currently resting at mile 301 so it appears he is breaking this run into three, having stopped on the trail for four hours earlier, in the warmth of the day. The next checkpoint for them is Ruby. By stopping here they may go through Ruby and camp on the other side, or do a series of shorter runs then rests to help keep up their speed. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Kennel friend and Decaf sponsor, Dawn, volunteered in the Communications Team for the Iditarod last year and she wrote this:

If you want to pass this along to your readers… I thought I’d share what I learned about the danged race standings entries while I volunteered in Comms last year.

• We stared at the race standings screen…(much like I did from home before and after volunteering.) 
• We stared at the GPS Trackers wondering why we hadn’t been updated on this mushers entry into a checkpoint…(much like I did from home before and after volunteering.)
• Ding!!! We would get the email from the checkpoint or in the case of the far out places with no internet, the satellite phone call.
• Now we could enter the musher’s info including time in (sometimes the time out happened in the same email), and dogs in (and out if same time)
• All of the calculations of time en route, time in the checkpoint, etc. were done by the program. Good thing or I would not have been able to volunteer for this task!!!
• Sigh. Back to staring at the screens!

We could make NO updates unless the information came from the checkpoint which in some cases involved the person checking in musher, handing information to the runner, who ran into building or tent to send us the email. There were some cases where the emails might be missing a dog count, and we’d have to email them back to get all the info. Then wait for the reply, but in the meantime that runner went back outside. I thought I’d be in the first to know when Aliy & Allen would be getting places. Nope. Same as all of you. I might have been 30 seconds ahead of you. I type pretty fast.

I promised myself after six shifts in Comms to never, ever, get mad at the data entry people again. The remote villages took time to wind up the internet and get information to us. The more I learned about it all, the more I was amazed at how fast we get information from the remote of Alaska. No really. It is pretty darn fast.

Also note that it is not required for a musher to physically “check out” of a checkpoint so out times and dog counts are sometimes missed. I think we forget sometimes that this race is in the Alaskan wilderness – we get used to such good coverage that when things are a little slow it can be frustrating. Thanks Dawn for explaining how it all works.

The Red Team was the first of our teams to arrive into Nenana just as the sun was beginning to set at 5.36pm on Monday.

Just ten minutes later the Black Team came off the river into the checkpoint.

Nomex settles in for a nap; Scooby and Clyde

Both teams settle in for a rest on the river in the setting sun

It’s 9am Wednesday.

RED TEAM UPDATE

Aliy and the Red Team stayed 5.5 hours in Tanana checkpoint and left there at 2.25am. They are now on their way towards Ruby.

In an Insider interview she said she will most likely do the run in two 60 mile hops with a rest in between so will probably go another 10-15 miles before camping. She did mention that the dogs have a touch of the gastro bug similar to the Quest so she is hoping she is on top of it early enough to get them over it quickly. She will ensure they are well fed and hydrated and will rest them when they need. (Edit: once the dogs got over their Quest illness they showed no more signs of it between races, they all passed thorough vet examinations and blood panels, were eating well and had great weight on them)

It’s been another cold night here in the interior but it is forecast to start warming up from here. The trail conditions between Tanana and Ruby are reported to be “good” so the teams will hopefully move along nicely. Aliy says of camping in such cold that it’s fine, just challenging. But, we all know how much she likes things to be challenging and she believes she thrives the harder it is.

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

The Black Team pulled in to Tanana at 2.05am and maybe saw the Red Team briefly as they were about to leave. They have been resting about 6.5 hours and will likely leave in the next hour or so. He may be seeing out his mandatory eight hour stop here, in which case they would leave at around 10.05 this morning. There are a bunch of other teams also in Tanana but from here the field will start to spread out over several checkpoints as the front runners start to pull away from the bunch.

It’s 10pm on Tuesday, Alaska time.

RED TEAM UPDATE

After staying at their camp spot at mile 175 for just over four hours, Aliy and the Red Team continued along the river to the Tanana checkpoint, a run of around six hours – about 50 miles, where they are currently stopped for a rest.

Tanana is the first checkpoint on the Yukon River and teams can take an eight hour mandatory rest here, Ruby, Galena, Huslia, Koyukuk, Nulato or Kaltag. Getting back onto the Yukon River will be a big deal for Aliy so we are sending all good vibes to her now.

You can see from the map below that the next checkpoint of Ruby is 119 miles from Tanana. It seems unlikely that the team will make that run on one go and is more likely to break it and camp on the trail.

Map courtesy of the Alaska Department of Natural Resources

Photos from the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer in manley show that she moved Dutch up in lead with his sister Junior, and Kodiak put back into swing with Izzy. She has a lot of leaders to choose from and will likely mix up the team line-up to keep things interesting for the dogs and to take advantage of different moods and attitudes.

The next checkpoint for the Red Team is Ruby

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

Allen and the Black Team stayed just half an hour in Manley as Allen restocked his sled ready for the trail ahead. He stopped his team around the same place as Aliy and they rested for five hours. They are now back on the trail heading towards Tanana are are currently about 40 miles out. It is forecast to be cold again tonight on the river.

The next checkpoint for the Black Team is Tanana

Another thing to keep an eye on, as if you don’t have enough screens open already, is the daily photos from Jeff Schultz and his team along the trail. We can’t use them on the blog but make sure you check back often for more amazing shots of the teams. There are a couple of great pics today of the Red Team at Manley checkpoint.

Chemo and Outlaw

Scooby and Willie

The Black Team travelling the trail in Allen’s sled bag; Very important job – Alex fixes the GPS tracker to the sled!

Allen with daughters Jennifer and Bridgett; Half the team enjoying the sun waiting for the start

Allen with Chemo and Waylon – all three looking cool

Waylon and nephew Chemo

Fire litter siblings Tinder and Chena

Scout and niece Lydia

Chipper and Scooter (not closely related at all)

Willie and Olivia (siblings but a year apart in age)

Fire siblings Nomex and Hotshot

Outlaw and his nephew Five

Clyde and his son Scooby

It’s 12.30pm Tuesday Alaska time.

RED TEAM UPDATE

Since we last saw the Red Team pulling out of Nenana and mushing into the cold night they continued along the Tanana River for another five hours and stopped at what we presume was Tolovana Lodge for around four hours. Tolovana is not an official checkpoint but a cabin that has been opened up for mushers. I heard reports that mushers said it was down to -50F on the river overnight! While we were driving home last night we watched the temperature gauge rise in the hills and drop dramatically when we went back down to river level.

Red Team leaving Nenana (wearing their Head-lites collars)

Aliy and Allen talked a lot about strategy for the early part of the race and, as for all races, they came up with several contingencies and plans b, c and d depending on trail conditions, dog speed and weather. Incidentally the strategies did not take into account what other teams are doing at this early point in the race.

There is a great Insider interview with Aliy at the Musher Banquet in Anchorage where she talks about how you have to be flexible with your strategy on this unfamiliar section of trail, depending on run times and trail conditions and how important it is to run your own team. When challenged about that, about saying only “run my own team” she retorts “Oh no, I want to beat Dallas, I want to beat everyone! I want to run my own team but I want to beat them. Without a doubt, I’ll be honest, I want to win this race, and I’m going to try really hard to win it“.

Stopping at Tolovana enabled them to “blow through” the Manley checkpoint, stopping only to restock and supply Aliy’s sled with essentials to camp along the way to the next checkpoint. The vet team will also have gotten hands-on with the dogs and they ask mushers as soon as they arrive if there are any issues or if they need to drop any dogs.

As I write this the team is currently resting 15 miles outside of Manley and will be enjoying some warmth of the sunshine for the dogs to stretch the muscles out and get a good rest.

Aliy and Allen often choose to rest outside of checkpoints. They will make a schedule of run and rest to suit the dogs’ rhythms and if the rest coincides with a checkpoint then they will stop there, if not they will go through and camp when they believe the dogs need to stop. They both enjoy camping out on the trail and say that often the dogs will get a better rest away from the hubbub of a checkpoint.

There are several mandatory checkpoints rests along the way: one 24 hour break at any checkpoint between Manley and Safety, an eight hour stop at any checkpoint between Tanana and Kaltag and one eight hour mandatory stop in White Mountain before the final run home to Nome. Other than those stops, mushers can choose to rest in or out of a checkpoint.

The next checkpoint for the Red Team is Tanana.

BLACK TEAM UPDATE

Currently Allen and the Black Team are enroute to Manley. They stopped at Tolovana for a five hour rest are are 15 miles away from the checkpoint. They are moving along at a good clip around 9.5 m/hr so the trail must be pretty good. Last night both Aliy and Allen reported the trial was “as they expected” – a few faster sections and mostly deep snow and “punchy” trail (where the dogs punch through deep snow). We’ve had a lot of snow around our home trails so the dogs are accustomed to it.

In an Insider interview with Allen in Nenana he describes the conditions right then as “perfect” and the warmer it gets the slower the dogs will go. He said to combat that he might have to run more at night but it all depends on where they are and what’s happening. As with Aliy, he said there are a lot of factors to consider.

If you are an Insider with GPS function, the “Analytics View” is where to go to get run/rest information and speed trends. I am refamiliarising myself with all the functionality available now so that towards the end of the race I know exactly where to go to get the info I need!

Below you can see clearly the rest times, and all the little “blips” down are when the tracker captures snack breaks.

Next checkpoint for the Black Team is Manley