Hi Boys and Girls,

Everyone is heading to Fairbanks today for the Restart tomorrow. Since today is a quiet day, I thought I’d go over the Race update sheet. Once the race starts, you can go to:

http://iditarod.com/race/current-standings/

for the latest updates. There are no updates yet so I am using one from last year.

The first thing you will see is the date and time of the update. Updates happen often so the time and date are important. The following is how to read and use the update form.

Pos – This is what position a team is in at the time of the update.

Musher- the person in that postion.

Bib- This is the Mushers bib number

Checkpoint- The Checkpoint the team last checked into.

In- Time- This is the time the team checked into the latest checkpoint.

   – Dogs-   This is the number of dogs the team arrived with

Out- Time- This is the time the team left the checkpoint. If this area is blank it  

         means the musher is still at the checkpoint.

         -Dogs- This is the number of the dogs that left with the team. If there is a

           Change in number, then a dog or dogs have been dropped at that  

          checkpoint.

** The time listed may look very weird to you. If you look at the example, Dallas checked into Koyuk at 19:31. Have you ever heard of 19 0’clock? This is called 24 hour or military time. Starting with 1:00 in the afternoon, that’s 13:00, 2:00 pm is 14:00. This continues through 11:00pm which is 23:00. So for this example Dallas left at 19:31 or 7:31pm. An easy way to remember is to subtract 12 from time given.

Rest in Chkpt- This is the amount of time the team stayed at the checkpoint.

Time Enroute- The amount of time it took the team to travel between the last checkpoint and this checkpoint.

Checkpoint- The checkpoint the team was in before the present one. If you look at the example, the teams were currently in Koyuk. The check point before that was Shaktoolik. The time enroute is the amount of time it took the team to travel between these two checkpoints.

Previous Time Out- The time the team left the previous checkpoint. In this example Shaktoolik.

Speed (mph)- This is how fast the team moved between checkpoints.

Layover Completed- When the team finishes their 8 hour or 24 hour layovers, you will see a  check. No check- hasn’t finished it yet.

Status- For the active teams update, this will be blank. If you go to the bottom of the update you will see Out of Race. These are the teams that have dropped out of the race. Typically you will see the word Scratched. The other reasons a team may have stopped racing is they were Withdrawn or Disqualified.

I hope this helps you follow the race better. There is a lot of information in these updates.  If you miss some updates, you can go back and look at the ones you missed.  The most important thing is to have fun!

Off to bed for me!  I wanted to be well rested for the start tomorrow.

See you in Fairbanks,

Gypsy