Sanka W. Dog

How can the first team to cross the finish line be the winner if teams depart from the start at 2 minute intervals?  Teams are required to take a long rest.  For the JR Iditarod it’s 10 hours and for Iditarod it’s 24 hours.  A time adjustment is added to their departure after the long rest.  To get the idea of how this works, let’s use the JR Iditarod with eight mushers.  The last musher to leave the start will not have any extra minutes to serve after the long rest.  The first musher to leave the start will have fourteen minutes added.  The rest of the mushers will serve two minutes for each position the are from the final musher.  Make a chart of the JR Iditarod mushers to see how the differential works. Here are the mushers and a hypothetical starting order – Anna Stephan, Sierra Bobby, Grace Hill, Bjorn Keller, Anna Coke, Ida Kohnert, joanna Badalich and Cassidy Meyer. 

Anna Stephan Starting the 2018 JR Iditarod

Answer to How Many Booties

The length of the Southern Route is 998 miles.  With changing booties every 50 miles, there would be 20 changes.  Twenty changes multiplied by 14 dogs with 4 feet each would equal 1,120.  To meet the requirements of Rule 16, eight booties multiplied by 14 dogs would be 112.  The minimum number of booties needed for traveling this route would be 1,232.