Iditarod 52 - March 12 Discussion
Good morning Iditarod hooligans!
We are 8 days, 13 hours, and 24 minutes into this race. There are 32 teams on the trails (whew, we had a lot of scratches in the last day!)
Here are my notes:
• Dallas made a non-stop run from Mile 820 to Mile 898 (While Mountain), which preserved his lead.
• Hall likewise made a nonstop run from Koyuk (Mile 804) to Mile 898.
• Dallas arrived at WM just over 4 hours ago. You are required to stay in WM at least 8 hours before leaving, so he has a little under 4 hours to go until his final run to Nome.
• Hall arrived at WM about an hour after Dallas (Edit: 3 hours after Dallas, my mistake!)
• Jessie is arriving at WM right about now, so he’ll be four hours behind Dallas.
• Beals is at mile 870, well off the lead of this race and basically out of contention for the win.
• Hall is still in contention for a win if he can turn on the afterburners and if Dallas makes some sort of mistake. (Edit: I realized my mistake above, there’s more like a 3 hour gap between them, so Dallas’s lead will be tough to overcome)
• With Dallas leaving in about 4 hours, and Nome 77 miles away, we can expect a winner to arrive in Nome in about 11 hours if the winner makes a nonstop run from WM to Nome.
• Aaron Burmeister scratched yesterday, citing the mental wellness of his team. He said his team had been running “flat” the entire race, and he couldn’t figure out how to motivate them. He basically said they didn’t seem enthusiastic, and he didn’t want to force them to continue if they weren’t into it. I believe this is the first time in his long, storied career he’s ever scratched. On a personal note, Aaron is the musher that got me into the Iditarod, so he’ll always be my favorite, so I’m sad to see him out. However, I admire the respect and care he has for his dogs, and I have no doubt he made a good decision.
This will probably be my last update this year! Thank you everyone!
Special shoutout to /r/CompSciHS, I’ve really enjoyed reading your in-depth analysis and insightful comments this year!
I also want to pause and thank everyone participating in this subreddit. I started doing these updates about 10 years ago because I saw there was an Iditarod subreddit, and I was excited to talk with other redditors about the race, but I realized that the sub was basically dead. At the time I think it had maybe 200-300 subscribers. So I just started the discussions myself, and slowly the sub grew. This year has been the liveliest I’ve ever seen the subreddit, and I am so grateful to finally have a community here to discuss and enjoy this race we all love together!
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Stay warm!