I just left Ruby where most of the teams are now taking their mandatory 8 hour break .  If you aren’t familiar with the Iditarod rules, each team must take an eight hour break at the checkpoint of their choice, somewhere along the Yukon River.  Two favorite places to take this break historically have been Ruby and Kaltag. This year Ruby will be the favorite for most teams as it has been a long run from Cripple checkpoint and Ruby is in the right location for a nice rest before heading out on the Yukon River.

As the race info will show, Aliy Zirkle decided to take her break at some other point farther down river and blew right through the Ruby checkpoint.  This has added a new drama to the race as we’ll see if her move will throw the other teams off and at the least they won’t be able to see her team up close and personal to size up their condition.  It’s always great when a team tries something a little different in their run/rest schedule just to shake things up.  As Aliy went through Ruby she seemed in great spirits, alert and happy.  One detail I saw was that she was well organized and had already made a written list up on the trail of the things she needed to pick up for her run down the river.  Her dogs were alert, full of energy and wagging  their tags as they waited to head on down the Yukon. I flew over Aliy and her team as she was on her run to Galena and they were moving along at a nice steady pace.  A really nice looking outfit and a team any musher would be proud to run. She is one of the teams that has a strong chance of winning this years Iditarod. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the next 36 hours as the teams come together over on the Bering Sea coast.

There were a lot of really great looking teams that pulled into Ruby with this first pack.  As I’ve said before, teams cycle back and forth during a race of this length having good runs and not so good of runs. One team will look like the team to beat at one checkpoint and another two or three checkpoints later.  At Ruby the strongest looking teams to me as far as energy level goes were Dallas Seavey’s, Aaron Burmeister’s, Aliy Zirkle’s and Jeff King’s.  We’ve got a great dog race going on here and we’re a long ways from saying which team is running the best plan which will lead them to a championship.  

I’ve now jumped up ahead of the racers to Nulato so I can see them move through this checkpoint tonight. As the teams head on down the trail to Kaltag, I hope to travel the trail by snow machine so I can see them as they run to assess how they’re moving.  Keep watching, there’s one heck of a race breaking open here!