It is pretty impressive to look at the teams of the front runners. Looking at the first top 20 teams, 17 of them are running big strings of 13 to 16 dogs. There is 3 mushers whose teams shrank to 9 or 10 dogs, and if you take an even closer look at that, all 3 teams were part of a group who pushed really hard early. Pushing hard early is a risky move, it works for some, but not for all.
Mushers like Kelly Maixner, Martin Buser, Jeff King and Nicolas Petit also pushed hard early, yet they are still driving big strings. It is hard for me not to notice one common thing those teams had. The ability to haul dog. Personally I have never driven a caboose sled, capable of hauling dogs, but it is hard denying the numbers. And many times I did see those mushers with some of their canines riding in the caboose. If you have a dog who is dinged up a bit and you rest it for 4 hrs in a checkpoint, than let it rest another 7 hours while running and getting another 4 hrs of rest after that, that means this dog has had 15 hrs of total rest. For a sled dog that is a lot, and thus they are ready to go again.
Once the dogs get trail hardened and into the rhythm of racing, then being able to haul dogs becomes less important. Some of the mushers have already swapped their sleds and left the cabooses behind.
Robert Sorlie en route to Cripple
Very impressive is the runtime from Robert Sorlie to Cripple. 8 hrs and 9 minutes, that is close to 9 miles an hour. Yes, the trail is fast, but his total runtime from Takotna is a bit more than 10 hours. That is really fast. It took most other mushers 12 hrs and even that is really moving. Robert has some amazing speed in his team. That for sure will shake things up, if he can keep that speed up.
Halfway… and the racing is about to heat up!
Happy trails!
