The race is on from Ruby

9 teams are now resting at the Ruby checkpoint on this 6th day of the 2010 Iditarod sled dog race. At this point, the character of the race changes. The next 150 miles of trail mostly follow the Yukon river, and each team will be required to take one 8 hour layover at one of the 4 checkpoints on that stretch. Right now, it appears most will be taking that break at Ruby. That appears to be a good strategy, as most of these teams have taken several long runs over the most remote section of the Iditarod trail to get here. According to Jon Little, there is roughly 15 hours of running time between Ruby and Kaltag where the teams will leave the river and head toward the coast. That sounds like a good estimate to me. we expect most teams will rest again in Kaltag as they retool for the 80 to 90 mile stretch over Kaltag portage into Unalakleet, so how they choose to split the Yukon stretch up should be key to determining the pecking order in Kaltag.

Jeff King is clearly in the drivers seat at this point, and I suggest other teams will be keeping at least one eye on his progress when determining whether to stick with their own strategy. Jeff arrived in Ruby first with the second fastest trip from cripple, and he still has 15 solid dogs on his team. Look for King to try to reach Nulato 100 miles down the river to try to keep his chase pack behind him. Assuming both take their 8 in Ruby, Lance Mackey will depart Ruby an hour and 15 minutes after King. Mackey likes to take long runs at this point in the race, but a 15 hour run into Kaltag is probably even a bit too much for him. He might decide instead to follow King to Nulato, and cut his rest short there to close the gap on him. Hugh Neff was 10 minutes behing Mackey into Ruby, and has spent thousands of mile in long races staying within the vicinity of Mackey. We don't see that tendency changing at this point in the race. Mitch Seavey might be next. Mitch marches to the beat of his own drum, so guessing his strategy at this point carries some risk, but he may try to break the run up into 3 segments to keep good speed on his team. Hans Gatt should be next out of the chute, and he had the fastest team coming into Ruby. Gatt's strategy late in the game when winning this year's Yukon Quest was to run long with short rests, and his team was faster then anyone else who tried to duplicate that strategy. Look for Gatt to move up in position. Others in the mix currently are Sonny Lindner, Sebastian Schnuelle and Ken Anderson.