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King on the Move

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            I got a call recently from my older brother, Dan, who is traveling the trail by snowmachine.  He saw King and Buser 23 miles north of Eagle Island and at that point King had added a little over 15 minutes to his lead and, “was clearly moving faster.”  The man is on a roll.  One observation I think is noteworthy is that since his 24 hour break King has logged 34 hours of run time and been stopped for less than 21 hours.  Another key point is that he clocked those 34 hours in only three runs.  It is quite impressive that he feels has the strength at this point in the race to make moves like this.  To me, this resembles the move he made last year out of his 24 only it seems to be working even better.  I am curious to see how it turns out for him this year on the Coast as I felt very strongly last year that King was not pushed the final few days of the race so we really didn’t see how much gas he had left in the tank.  I am confident that he will be pushed this year and there are plenty of strong contenders who should be giving him a run for his money. 

            Certainly King is not the only one running in a major rest deficit.  In fact, most of the teams in the top right now are pushing the limit trying to jockey for position on the fast river trail.  Dan also told me that they are running into a 20+ knot wind, and even though there isn’t a lot of snow to drift into the trail this can take its toll on the dogs’ morale.  Tough leaders are always important but in adverse weather they become key.  The racers comprising the front pack theoretically should have leaders to spare, but where this is going to play out the most is on the teams in the middle pack who are pushing hard and asking a lot of their dogs but whom may have a short leader roster.  This is especially true of teams coming from small kennels.  This may become a big issue with the tight group of mushers in Grayling right now.  The teams currently in 20th through 28th are all running between 10 and 12 dogs and they all came into Grayling in a 3 hour span.  Assuming the Iditarod stats have some bearing on reality (sometimes I have my doubts) all of these teams have chosen to camp here and will likely be leaving in a fairly tight knot.  What makes this otherwise homogenous pack really interesting is that the racers grouped in it range in Iditarod experience level from 5-time champion, Rick Swenson, to Rookie of the Year hopeful, Silvia Willis.  That is Iditarod for you.  

Tyrell Seavey, for UltimateIditarod.com 

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