My class sending me well wishes today. Photo Credit: Lynda Colwell

After the news of yesterday, I received an outpouring of messages, well wishes, videos and support from teachers, students, mushers and fans across the country. I cannot tell you how much that all means to me. I continue to be asymptomatic this morning, and after another full day in isolation yesterday, I was again optimistic. But after my morning walk down to the van, the test still showed the same result. I’m still positive. 

One thing that happened as a result of sharing my news last night, was another connection formed. Last year, during his 3rd run on the Iditarod Trail, musher Gunnar Johnson tested positive for Covid. He was unable to finish his quest of finishing the race. I remember it was a very significant year for him running as well. He was featured in my “More Than Just a Race” piece last year. Here is an excerpt from that:

“Gunnar Johnson is using his 2021 Iditarod experience to honor those who have been lost to suicide. Anyone was able to submit a loved one’s name to be put on a list that Gunnar will carry with him for the length of the trail. After finishing the race, he will present and then ceremonially burn the list at the finish line. The ashes will be scattered on the frozen ice so they can be swept out to sea in the spring. This is an incredibly touching and meaningful gesture, especially to support those who have lost a loved one.”

Gunnar must have felt even more disappointed than I did after testing positive. But again, he made sure the list of names continued down the trail. Last year it was fellow musher Nic Petit took the names the rest of the way. This is just another example of people making things happen despite a huge setback. 

As I am becoming quite the “armchair musher” during my time in isolation, I thought I would take some time to talk about how to better use the resources available on the Iditarod website. Today, I want to help those out there who might need help navigating the leaderboards as this is a question I get fairly frequently from both students and teachers alike. “How do I know where the mushers are on the trail?”

Now that the race is underway there are a couple of different ways to do this. 

If you are just using the free resources available on the Iditarod website, then the easiest way is to use the “Race Center” tab and then click on the “Race Standings” to see where everyone is. This can be a little overwhelming to look at if you are new to the race or trying to figure out what you are looking at, so let me try to break it down a little for you. 

Screenshot of the standings on Tuesday.

The first 4 columns are pretty clear, so let’s go over to the “Time” column. This will appear in military time, as the entire Iditarod race follows that format. You can see that for Brent Sass, for example, checked into Nikolai at 9:12 with 14 dogs, and checked out of Nikolai at 9:20 with 13 dogs. Working across, the time matches. So you see that he spent 8 minutes checking in, returning one dog, and completing other checkpoint tasks (like probably replenishing some food and gear). The next column shows how long it took him to get to NIK from Rohn. It also has the time he left there, and the speed he was traveling. All of this is wonderful information if you are teaching upper level math students. There are some great lessons and prompts to go along with those numbers. Also, by clicking the Iditarod “I” logo on the far right, you can find out how far off the mushers were from the all time pace between the 2 previous checkpoints. The layover has not been taken by anyone yet, so there are no √’s in those columns yet. The Last thing to note here are the color differences. As stated in the corner, but sometimes missed, the yellow simply means there was a change to this musher since the previous update.

This is just one option on how to track the mushers. The second way is by purchasing an Insider subscription. There are many levels for this and special educator/classroom options as well. I always recommend the “ultimate” level as it unlocks so many different features. But the best thing, and the feature that I have to stop my students from checking every 10 minutes is the GPS locator. 

Screenshot of GPS Tracker screen from Tuesday.

The GPS locator gives much more accurate accounts of where the teams are on the trail. It has the same colors as the above picture, green indicating the teams currently moving and orange for teams resting. However all of the other buttons and tabs provide so much more of an in-depth analysis. To me, this graphic is much more “kid friendly”, and the positions are in real time. The “analytics” feature also offers additional insights and more potential for math integration. This is something that my students always love to check when they finish their independent work early, so they can see if “their” musher has made any movement since they last checked. 

In addition to the GPS feature available through the insider subscription, another feature worth mentioning are the LIVE feed cameras. As a teacher following the race, this is something that I always have pulled up on my board (muted) so that the class can see what is going on throughout the day, and if we notice some excitement on camera, we can stop briefly and listen in on live updates as well.

Teachers: If you have not yet looked into an Iditarod Insider subscription, it’s never too late. Click here for more info: https://iditarod.com/shop/category/educational-subscriptions/