Record Run? Maybe…

Here’s a comparison between the 2014 Record Run of Dallas Seavey who finished in 8 days 13 hours 4 minutes and 19 seconds. BUT Wait and hold on one second…

Long time Iditarod Fans will remember that Dallas was running third to a fast Jeff King and Aliy Zirkle, who, except for that crazy storm that sent Aliy Zirkle to hold up in a cabin and Jeff King out of the race, would have had an even shorter record run.

Consider this for a second. Jeff left White Mountain at 5:02pm after the 8 hour mandatory layover. He had great speed into the checkpoint and there would have been no reason to think, except for the storm, that his speed would have continued. So to speculate and take Pete’s record time from White Mountain to Safety (5hrs 28 minutes), Jeff could have had a time into Safety at 10:30pm.

Now take it a bit further and take Pete’s 2h 27minute Safety to Nome Run, puts Jeff, in a storm-less scenario at possibly as early as 1:00am into Nome. A full three hours earlier than Dallas’ run in which realistically, without the storm, would have been the third place finish.

Now let’s look at this year. Aliy is about 4 hours behind her pace of 2014 which was a pretty fast pace and she was leading the race at that time as well. If all thing stay as good or better than the race of 2014, could we have a record run?

I am thinking so. No apparent weather in the forecast. Some wind on the coast, and right now the only variable that is troublesome is the condition of the portage between Kaltag and Unalakleet. It was a bit of a challenge for the Iron Doggers, but we will see tomorrow how our Teams will fare over that section.

Bottom line is that if we begin to see mushers in Unalakleet tomorrow afternoon, we are looking at a record run. I’ll keep updating this spreadsheet to see how we are doing.

In Pete’s case, he is having his own record run. His times are great and the dogs look the same. A long break out of the heat of the day before the Yukon River run can only be a good thing.

Go Team Kaiser!

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