Tracking the mushers

After the excitement of the start in Anchorage, I've been really into tracking the progress of the race, I think especially because I'm going up to Nome for the finish! It's really weird to think that the mushers left Anchorage just a few days ago, and while I sit around working and watching TV, they are out their on the Iditarod Trail! Still! And they'll meet me in Nome, 1000 miles away! Holy smokes.

The Anchorage Daily News's website has pretty great coverage of the race, with lots of good stories about the backgrounds of the mushers. Experts had picked 4 favorites to win, dubbed the "Gang of Four"--Doug Swingley (four-time winner who has already scratched due to broken ribs and a dislocated thumb), Jeff King (who won last year, for a total of 4 wins), Robert Sorlie (two-time Norwiegan winner), and Martin Buser (four-time winner who holds the record for fastest finish). There is also an official Iditarod page that tracks the current standings of all the racers. It shows when the mushers check into and out of all the checkpoints, and provides all sorts of other stats, like average speed between check points, amount of rest, number of dogs, etc. This weekend I read Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen (yes, he also wrote Hatchet), who ran the Iditarod a few times then wrote a book about it. It was a little cheesy for my taste, but provided a description of a lot of the trail and checkpoints, so now it's fun to read about the real mushers being in all of those places!!

Anyway, I have a favorite musher, who I'm rooting for--Zack Steer. He and his wife are owners of the Sheep Mountain Lodge, where I visited a couple of weeks ago. I got to hobnob with him (although I didn't yet quite comprehend the coolness of meeting a musher at the time), and saw his dogs!


Zack Steer's dog team
Originally uploaded by t-dawg.

At the moment, Zack is ahead of all of the Gang of Four! Think good thoughts.