Iditarod 53 - March 12 Discussion
Hi again Iditarodos!
We are currently 9 days, 7 hours, and 32 minutes into this year's race. Jessie Holmes is still our current leader, he's at mile 979 with 149 miles to Nome. However, this is about as close as this race has been the last few days and Matt Hall briefly passed Jessie just a few hours ago, but decided to rest soon after. There are 26 teams on the trail.
Let's get right to it: Matt Hall has made this race very interesting. If you haven't seen it already, I posted another video showing the race progression for the last 24 hours, and I'll use that in my spiel here. All times AK time and approximations.
- Holmes arrived at Unalakleet (mile 866) at 7:08pm on March 11. He left almost immediately thereafter.
- Hall arrived at Unalakleet at 8:20pm on March 11. He also immediately left.
- Hall stopped on the trail to camp at 10:12pm.
- Hall starts running again at 1:15am.
- Drobny arrived at 1:15am as well. She ran through Unalakleet.
- Holmes begins running again at 2:59am March 12. This is a GPS shot of the moment Holmes began running again. It is difficult for me to work out how close they were when Holmes started running again, but I'd have to say within a mile of each other, and probably within sight of each other (weather should have been clear).
- Both Hall and Holmes reach Shaktoolik (mile 908) at about 5:43. Looking at the official check in (here) it looks like Holmes made it into Shaktoolik about 10 minutes before Hall. Both left Shaktoolik in 10 minutes.
- Drobny arrives at Shaktoolik at about 6:50am.
- Hall rests on the trail at 8:12am. Here is a picture of that moment. Holmes created a gap of about 4 miles between them at the time Hall rested, so probably out of sight of Hall.
- Drobny leaves Shaktoolik at about 9:18am.
- Hall begins running again at about 11:05am. Here is a picture of that moment. Drobny is probably about 5 miles from Hall, and I'd guess out of sight from each other.
- Holmes arrives in Koyuk at 11:31am. He rests.
- Hall arrives at Koyuk at 4:11pm. He runs through.
- Drobny arrives at Koyuk at about 4:30pm, she rests.
- Holmes departs Koyuk at 4:45pm. Here is that moment. I see about 3-4 miles between Holmes and Hall.
- Hall rests on the trail at 6:49pm. It looks like there was about a mile between Hall and Holmes. Hall led at the time he rested.
- Holmes takes the lead from Hall at about 7pm.
Okay, after that recap, here are my takeaways:
- Holmes and Hall were very close to each other for two large chunks of today: midway from Unk until maybe 10 miles out of Shak. Then out of Koyuk. They could probably see each other most of those chunks.
- I can't really tell whether Holmes was reactive the first time Hall approached him. On both occasions that Holmes ran right as Hall came into eyesight. Which leads me to point 3.
- Holmes rest in Koyuk was about 6 hours long (after about an 8 hour run). That is a huge period of rest, especially at this stage of the race. I'd almost say it's risky, and normally I'd say a team would only take that amount of rest in the lead if there was something wrong with the team. However, he ended his rest right as Hall reached him at Koyuk, which to me suggests that Holmes is intentionally using his speed to retake the lead from Hall immediately after losing it, then using his freshly rested team to just outlast Hall. That is a heck of a strategy if that's what Holmes is doing. Going as far as you can, rest until 2nd catches up, then turn on the burners. It might be a winning strategy just based on how much Hall stretched himself yesterday with his long run.
- Sadly, it looks like Drobny isn't really in contention much. I almost thought about leaving her out of my recap bullet points. She's still in the picture, but it would be an outside shot.
Now to my outlook for the next two days. I think this is still Holmes' race. Hall is playing catch-up, maybe by Holmes' design. White Mountain is at mile 1057, and Holmes is now at mile 987, so about 70 miles away, and 100 miles away from Koyuk (where Holmes began his current run). Holmes could try to make it to WM all in one run. I think his dogs have the rest to do it, honestly. It would be a hell of a stretch, but possible. Or, I'd guess that he will camp midway between Elim (mile 1008) and WM and wait for Hall to catch him again, but I would say that's extremely unlikely to do again this close to WM. I say that because all teams must stop at WM for 8 hours rest, so you're usually better off spending the entire team battery as you step into WM, because you're going to get a recharge once you're there.
I'd expect Hall to make his run to WM in just one run from where he's at (mile 976), about 80 miles.
The stretch to WM over the next 12 hours very well could decide the race, and historically the first to WM usually wins it all. Fantastic race this year.
Weather in White Mountain tomorrow
~
Stay warm!