March Madness--Iditarod!

It's March and my version of the Madness is to follow the Iditarod! It's been running for a week now, and the leader is at the Grayling checkpoint, 429 miles to Nome!

Lance Mackey is leading the way again for the third year in a row. He's the only one in the top 10 to still have all 16 dogs running. He has taken both his 24 hr and 8 hr mandatory stops. His closest competitor who has also done those steps is about 15 miles (2-3 hrs) behind him. He could still be beaten, but his team is looking awfully strong.

Martin Buser, a 4-time winner and the holder of the record for speed, briefly took the lead close to the half way mark, while the others were taking their 24 hr break. But since then he has again dropped back in the pack, currently at 22nd. BUT 9 of the teams ahead of him have not taken their 8-hr break on the Yukon, and he has, so he's really 13th...

It gets confusing at this point about who is really ahead, but once they're out of the Yukon, and those mandatory breaks are complete, the picture will get clearer. There's one more mandatory 8 hr break that every team has to take at the White Mountain checkpoint (77 miles from the finish).

The lead contender for rookie of the year was a 38-year-old woman but she has since been passed by two other rookies, so things happen along the trail.

For the past few years a legally blind woman has been making the race and she has a companion dog sled team that goes with her. She'll likely never win but she loves the dogs and the race. Good for her!

I broke down and bought the "Insider" package which gives me the ability to check the mushers on a map with their GPS position. Mackey's GPS went a little funky at one point and he admitted at the next checkpoint that he fell asleep and the team lost the trail, so he had to turn them around, costing him an hour or so. Hasn't hurt him yet, though. He also joked about the hallucinations the mushers get from fatigue. Saw one girl reading a book along the trail and she waved and spoke to him.

Part of me hopes Lance gets a little competiton soon to keep it interesting! But the rest of the top 10 are close together, and there's still a lot of racing to do....