I got busy, so couldn't write everything down last night, but so fun to watch the mushers on the trail, coming through Shageluk in real time and seeing their attitudes. (and watching mushers further back coming in to ID overnight. Squinting at the camera, I think Lev Schvarts might be the checker at ID - he looks familiar).
The front-runner mushers all seemed super relaxed - esp. Jessie who was about to pull through (with Richie literally on his heels, although he stopped and stayed for 4 hours). A local lady asked if they could take a photo and Jessie was super-accommodating - waiting for all the kids to assemble at the front of the team. Also caught him baby-talking to his leaders, which is always fun to hear. I liked him a lot more in this snapshot than when they interview him and he goes into "competition mode".
Later I could hear Brent's booming voice telling that the trail from ID had been really good (I think this might be in one of the videos, but haven't had a chance to look at any of them yet today). Everyone seemed to be enjoying the cooler temps - including the dogs, who all looked amazing coming through there.
Looking at the way they are set up right now - I thought Brent had broken the run from ID to Kaltag into three chunks - resting in Shag, and now on the trail outside Grayling, and then would go to Kaltag in one long run. But it's
115 miles, so that seems a bit extreme, even for Brent. The way he's set up, he'll have to take his 8 in Kaltag and then make a move over to UNK. So maybe he's just outside of Grayling for some peace and quiet, and will still take one more break (maybe a shorter one? Interesting...) to get to Kaltag.
Richie and Pete seem to be on the same schedule, although 7 miles back. Both posted fast times to Grayling, although Pete seemed to be biding his time on the trail last night- although he caught Ryan, he must have snacked and let him go ahead.
In terms of speed - Hunter Keefe, <phew> - his time was nearly 50 mins faster than Brent's to Shag (but he also rested nearly 6 hrs in ID). I'll be curious to see if a) Hunter can maintain this speed and b) do something useful with it? He really mixes it up with his schedule - unsure if this is due to rookie-ness, what he sees in this dogs (he was v. happy with them at Ophir), or just his personal style.
The wild cards are Nic, Kelly, Aaron Peck - all of whom are out of sync with the other mushers, so deceptive as to where they actually are in the field.
Speedwise, it's interesting to see the times between Shag and Anvik - 25 miles - so a snapshot of what the teams are doing:
https://iditarod.com/race/2023/checkpoints/15-Anvik/Of those, Matt Failor's speed was the one that surprised me most, since he appeared to be slowing down a tad; while Nic, who I thought was running faster and resting longer, isn't.