I think I have gone against my own morals....

boy do i have dog race fever.... Ok so I spent the last six months or so studying. Looking back at my journals and maps I am seeing a few patterns as to how these mushers race against the elements with a team of 13 or more dogs with individual personalities of their own...My journals look like a football coaches white board and here is what I am noticing for this race... Many mushers did not show. The ones racing this year are the "die hard to Nomers" and a few Rookies with teams that have linage of the "old timers dogs"....this means we have 67 dog teams left on the trail and 64 of them are top speed dogs, or come from top speed dog linage...the reason I am finding this race so much more interesting is the mushers this year are secondary to the teams. Most of these teams have made this trip at least once 39 of the teams have made this trip more than once. Three of the teams are from Nome and are heading home...an advantage to the musher as his dogs will smell home and pick up pace at the end of the race. This year trail conditions are snow covered and unkown if you stray from the trail blazers path, which appears as a dog sled this year instead of a snow machine like last year. My theory...After watching all the big names slow down and stop while the Rookies and under dogs passed them made me begin to wonder...were the old timers having a moose meat roast on the trail side? I scrambled for my notes and realized the tactic here...the Rookies were breaking trail...the old timers knew the bad part of the trail and held off till a couple Rookies made it through...was that a bad move on their part? As they fell further behind due to a wreck in the pass. Which explained why all the markers got caught up in the mountain longer than usual on the way from Finger Lake...but a lot of time was made up last night cruising down the river....I am still under the belief that Mackey and King are going to be the high light of this Iditarod again...but Burmeister, Neff and Sebastian Schnuelle are running some top notch dogs....All three have ran before and all three I as sure, have dreams of up seating the "Big Boys" One race I am glad I did not put any money on...