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Lance Mackey has already passed the Safety checkpoint. So far, Jeff King has not poured on enough speed to make up the 1-hour difference in their starts from White Mountain. So it looks like Mackey’s race to lose at this point.
You can see a spreadsheet we’re updating as we countdown to someone’s victory.
If Mackey does indeed win this race, he will set yet another dog sledding record, with this unprecedented winning streak:
- Iditarod 2008
- Yukon Quest 2008
- Iditarod 2007
- Yukon Quest 2007
You watching the GPS? Has Mackey left the trail or is the GPS map inaccurate? The red line on the map doesn’t follow the Nome/Council Road, but the new data shows Mackey off the red line and still on the N/C road. What’s up with that?
Thanks for mentioning it. I was waiting to see if it cleared up. Earlier this evening King was way, waaaay off the trail, according to the GPS maps. So it could just be a mapping error. Let’s wait to see what happens.
It now shows that Mackey has slowed to 2 mph.
Ah-ha! Mackey just returned to the trail. Looks like the GPS was right — he went off-trail for a bit, following the coastal road, not the formal trail.
He’s back on…got a little worried there. He’s been driving so hard that it would be easy to make a mistake at this point. If I were him I’d just cut off the GPS unit and chuck it to the side of the trail. That would give us “Iditarod Nerds” something to talk about for the next couple of hours…
Oh, Matt — you’re cruel! Without the GPS units on the sleds, what else would I be doing at this hour?
Sleeping? (;
Don’t they stagger the mushers at the restart in Willow? Will this make a difference in who wins, seeing as how the two lead teams are so close?
No, they made up the difference in start times at the 24 hour layover. It’s all real time now. No adjustments. WYSIWYG.