Nature's Kennel Sled Dog Racing & Adventures

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Thursday, May 23rd, 2013

Nature's Kennel

PO Box 5
McMillan, MI 49853
Tel: 1-906-748-0513
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Adventure Journals

Welcome to the Nature's Kennel Dog Blog! Check out the latest kennel news, stories of your favorite sled dogs, Iditarod training adventures, and more!

Sunday, March 4th, 2012 I have no idea where the time has gone between the UP 200 and Iditarod start! I guess between unpacking, repacking, playing with Nate, shoveling snow, and keeping up with Iditarod emails it just disappears! I’ve talked to Ed quite a bit since he’s been in Alaska, and I do think he’s actually a bit nervous about the race this year. He does have quite a young team, there is a great deal of snow on the trail which can mean for slow going, and he has been working really hard at training this year. For those of you who are following the race by the Iditarod Insider tracker, it’s pretty fun to see all the teams moving down the trail in real time. Whether you are subscribed to the tracker or not, you can still view up to date stats on the “Current Standings” page. There is a lot of information on that page, and I’ll try to give hints on how to best read it as the race progresses. There’s a few simple things you can do to see how Ed is doing compared to the rest of the field. The # of dogs in a team is a good indicator of how the dogs are doing. However, there can be a lot of reasons that dogs may be dropped. For example, Ed has four yearlings on his team (dogs under two years old) and it’s very possible that he may drop them early in the race because they may get stressed out, are more apt to get sick, can’t travel as fast as the veterans and need more rest. It’s pretty common that there are young dogs in many teams and those are often the ones to be the first to be dropped. You can also watch “Time Enroute” and compare Ed’s travel time to the rest of the field. This is another good way to compare how fast his team is moving compared to others. However, mushers can choose to rest anywhere along the trail, so say there are a lot of teams that it takes seven hours to do a run between two checkpoints, but it takes Ed twelve hours. You can be pretty sure that he chose to rest along the trail. The same goes for “Rest in Checkpoint”. Someone may chose to rest five hours in a checkpoint where another musher may stop for just a few minutes, long enough to pick up their drop bags and head on the trail. That musher who did not rest in the checkpoint will rest along the trail, and it will make their time enroute seem very long, and the standings will flip flop once again. So, it’s fun to watch that page, there’s a lot going on and I’ll try to give my best guess as to what Ed is doing as we move along! I don’t have much contact with Ed from here on out, he usually calls from a checkpoint or two and leaves a message with information on any dropped dogs, trail conditions, overall team stats, etc. As soon as I hear anything, I’ll be sure to post it. I will leave for Nome on March 11^th, so I’m usually able to get some first hand information from there as well. It’s hard to believe that for the next 10-14 days the mushers are constantly moving along the trail as go about our daily routines. Posted by Tasha

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