Awesome Aliy

I do not want to jinx my gal but damn, she is running one fine race so far!!! She and Jeff King have been playing hopscotch but right now she is ahead. He is resting his dogs at the last checkpoint--Koyukuk, with two more to go before the trail leaves the Yukon to cut across to the coast. Aliy rested on the trail, as she often does, between Huslia and Koyukuk and went thru the checkpoint in four minutes flat! Not yet in are Burmeister, and the two Seaveys--that group again making up the top five. I stand by my earlier thought that this year's winner is in that group. Other serious contenders are leaving Huslia today and heading down river as well--quite a bunch of them. And the rest trail back to the run from Ruby to Galena. No telling who will get the Red Lantern this year.

The Race Watcher team got some good shots of Aliy ski-poling along the river this morning. They call her "spiderman" for those two busy arms helping the dogs. She is the only one I have heard of who uses two poles. Some use one but most pedal like riding a scooter. The method  must be working because she is still running all sixteen dogs!! I have to add that Jeff is too but I have a faint hunch he may drop some soon. They are going good but were described as glad to bed down in the straw when he stopped this time. Apparently he more or less ran straight thru from Huslia without a real stop after his 24 rest at Galena and a shorter pause at Huslia. The total distance from Huslia to Koyukuk is about 170 miles. In twenty four hours with some short rests...is that moving and grooving or what?

So the real race is on now. The two Seaveys are still challenging each other as if no one else was running but some say Dallas, the son, is going to bust loose once he gets to the coast and run like crazy. We'll see.

One kind of tear jerking tale involves the two Mackey brothers whose dad Dick was one of the first Iditaroders along with the legendary Joe Redington. If memory serves he won in the by-a-nose decision, the closest race ever back in the early 1970s. Anyway, his son Lance is a cancer survivor seeking a comeback (past winner) and cut a hand badly a couple of years ago busting up frozen meat for his team so he had to scratch. This time he has gotten severe frostbite and it is likely his racing days are near the end but brother Jason is running with him and doing all the hard hand work like booting and unbooting both teams of dogs. It is legal for mushers to help one another but no outside help is allowed. Jason said he would get Lance to Nome this one last time. Now that is brotherly love and the best of the musher creed in action. Godspeed to them and a safe run now.