Earlier today during a live feed update from Bruce Lee and Greg Heister, they were talking about how it could be beneficial for a musher to make their team smaller at this point in the race. A dog team can only go as fast as their slowest dog, so by choosing to leave dogs at a checkpoint (making the dog a “returned/dropped” dog), the musher is left with a core team that can run faster. If a musher has only 7 dogs to feed and tend to vs. 11 dogs, then they will be able to spend more time resting. Don’t be surprised if you see more dogs left at checkpoints! Each musher needs to have at least 5 dogs on the towline when crossing the finish line in Nome.
Unalakleet is a beautiful town on the Bering Sea Coast and it’s the largest town I’ve visited since leaving Fairbanks. The population here is 750 and I’m pretty sure most of the town came out to watch Jessie Holmes and Matt Hall come into town. Tomorrow I get to sit in on a practice for the Native Youth Olympics!
Lesson Idea: Today I received an email from a teacher in Glyndon, Minnesota who has been using the Iditarod in her classroom for years, but implemented a new activity this year that she wants to share out with the education world. This is a pick-your-own-adventure activity where students “mush” around the school to different checkpoints where they are faced with a decision to make. Depending on their decision they move on to another checkpoint in a different location of the school and find out what their new position is in the race. You can find the activity here to make a copy. Thank you, Kayla Lauer!
I want to hear from you! Send me a message at emailtheteacher@iditarod.com
