A pod of planes on the river are unloading supplies, so we have another 5 minutes before loading.  “it’s hot out there today in the sun,” says a fan in the checkpoint, a fact that cant be ignore in covering our front runners.

With a clear sky, the sun is intense at 2PM.  We can imagine Mitch and Aliy paring down the layers as they labor up the long climb on Topkok.  Dallas Seavey, who is a musher that runs, told me that running and standing on the runners with one leg and skating with the other never replaces a dog in the team but “I can see on the gps that you might get an extra .2 miles an hour (two tenths).”

Since the run is going to be about 10 hours, the strategy has to be slow and steady wins the race.  With a dog team its definitely easier to catch the one if front, then leave somebody behind, given the dogs natural inclination to follow a scent trail.  I figure that Mitch knows aliy will probably catch her so he’s not going to be doing much talking to his dogs.  RAther, he just wants to ease them into the run.  If Aliy catches a ride behind him, he still controls the front and he has a really hard headed leader in Tanner.

Aliy, on the other hand wants to draft off of Seavey as soon as possible.  She could tag him all the way to Nome but the danger is she might not be able to pass him in “no man’s zone” outside of Nome.  i dont know exactly how they have it set up this year, so i am going to have to research the no man’s zone as soon as I land in Nome.

Before that critical couple of miles before Nome, however, Aliy can approach seavey and request the trail.  SEavey, by sled dog convention etiquette and the rules, must relinquish the trail to the  overcoming team. I f she does that, Seavey coulod draft off of her.  I’ll bet aliy wants to pass, and hope she can pull away from him.

More, as we view the teams from the air in ten minutes.