The leaders are getting to Nikolai. Their strategies seem to converge here. And VERY different strategies they were. Nicolas Petit did a huge long run all the way to Rainy Pass, then followed by a short run to Rohn, now running nonstop to Nikolai. His travel speed is still up.
what goes down
Dallas Seavey has done 4 runs, of about equal length with with very rhythmic 5 hr beaks in between. His travel speed is around 9 mph on this fast trail coming into Nikolai.
Mitch Seavey has taken one more run, a total of 5 runs and has taken the most breaks of anybody in the front. His team is really moving.
Hugh Neff has done one long run into Finger lake, followed by one long run to Rohn. His speed has dropped significantly compared to the other teams. It also looks like he did one short stop en route to Nikolai.
Pete Kaiser stopped even more than Mitch. He is on his 6th run. Up to this point he had kept all of his runs very short with small rest breaks. Wade Marrs has taken 5 runs to get here, doing one long run from Rohn to Nikolai; all of his runs before were much shorter.
must go up… without snow
Aliy Zirkle, Lance Mackey are the next teams in line, and they have pretty much run the “ traditional schedule “, of either stopping before Rainy or in Rainy Pass, then going through Rohn and camping out. Now doing about a 60 Mile run into Nikolai, before the heat of the day.
Time to get down to the checkpoint,
