Handler is down on 4th Avenue in Anchorage for Iditarod’s Ceremonial start.  That leaves me some time on the computer.  So far I’ve checked out Iditarod Insider for video clips of all the action and of course I shopped a little at the on line Iditarod store.  And just to stay current on the events, I’m watching the ceremonial start on television.  This is a huge event here in Alaska, every network is broadcasting from the starting line.

With the race officially starting tomorrow, I just wanted to remind you about how Iditarod reports times.  When you check race stats, you’ll see some strange numbers – 0005, 2315, 1750 or 1330.  It took me a while to remember that times are reported in MILITARY rather than regular time.  Here’s how it works.

The main difference between how regular time and militray time works is how hours are expressed.  Regular time uses numbers 1 to 12 along with AM and PM to differentiate before noon times and afternoon times.  Military time hours are numbered from 00 to 23.  Regular and Military time expresses minutes and seconds in the same way.

Here are some examples to help you along.  Midnight is recorded as 0000; 1:00 AM is 0100; 2:00 AM is 0200 and so forth up until 11:00 PM which is 2300 hours.  Let’s try the others listed in the second paragraph – 0005 is 5 minutes after midnight or 12:05 AM; 2315 in regular time is 11:15 PM; 1750 equals 5:50 PM and 1330 is 1:30 PM.  It’s easy enough to figure this out if you simply subtract 12 from the hours of any time listed that’s greater than 1300.

It seems like military time is a great way to avoid confusion between AM and PM times.  No wonder Military and Emergency workers use Military rather than regular time.

Born to Run,
Sanka