Blogs

2011 Iditarod News, March 10, 2011 - 2004 Iditarod Champion Mitch Seavey was forced to withdraw from the 2011 Iditarod this morning at 4:11am after badly injuring his hand while cutting open a bale of hay for his dogs. Here's a quote from the Official Iditarod website:

Earlier this morning Seavey was cutting open a bale of straw at Ophir Checkpoint and severely injured fingers on his hand. Nordman determined that the injury was severe enough to warrant the decision.

2011 Iditarod Standings, March 9, 6:40pm - I'm not sure what happened while I was out today, but the current Iditarod standings have changed quite a bit since the last time I posted the standings. Here's the current leaderboard:

2011 Iditarod News - In other Iditarod news I haven't had a chance to write about, five-time Iditarod champion Rick Swenson suffered a broken collarbone in the race on either March 7 or 8, 2011. At the time of this writing on March 9, 2011 at 6:35pm Alaska time, Mr. Swenson is still in the race, currently in 23rd place.

Here are some quotes from the story I found on the adn.com website, including something I've read about before -- veterinarians having to tend to human patients:

2011 Iditarod News: So imagine, here you are, an Iditarod musher, just cruising along, minding your own business, when a fellow musher starts catching up to you. Being a nice guy, you pull over to the side of the road to let the other musher pass. So far, so good.

2011 Iditarod Standings, Day 4 (March 9, 2011) - For me it's 9am on Wednesday, March 9th, and for the Iditarod mushers, they're on Day 4 of the race that started Sunday afternoon in Willow, Alaska. (Technically the Ceremonial Start to the race was Saturday in Anchorage, but I'm not counting that.)

The lead Iditarod mushers have passed through the checkpoint in Takotna, 370 miles from Willow, and then they're on the way to Ophir (25 miles) and then the town the race is named for: Iditarod (90 miles from Ophir).

Last night I realized that I left Kentucky one year ago yesterday, and began the long drive to Alaska. I actually left Kentucky twice. I left once around March 2, 2010, to see my family in Illinois, then came back to Kentucky to see one of my dogs one more time before I left.

Recently someone asked me what the name Iditarod means. My response was something like, "Um, er ...", followed by silence.

After a little research I'm still not exactly sure what the word Iditarod means, but here's what I've been able to find out.

2011 Iditarod News (March 8, 2011) - I'm open to people having their own opinions, and I generally support a lot of things that PETA stands for. But when they start saying the Iditarod race needs to be ended, I think they're plain wrong.

In regards to a very dumb thing a dumb person in Canada did in killing their sled dogs when their business suffered because of the bad economy, the Anchorage Daily News reports a PETA "senior campaigner" as saying:

2011 Iditarod prize money FAQ: How much money does the Iditarod race winner win?

I've been digging around, and found some more 2011 Iditarod prize money ("purse") information. As mentioned in my earlier Iditarod prize money article, the total Iditarod purse for 2011 is $528,000. This is down from a record high of $875,000 in 2008. (This information came from the MSNBC website.)

2011 Iditarod News - March 8, 2011, 4:35pm - I just read that three Iditarod mushers have just scratched from the race. Here's the quote from the APRN.org Twitter feed:

"Paul Gebhardt now out of Iditarod; stops in Nikolai. Zoya DeNure and Melissa Owens scratch in Rainy Pass."

Here's a link to the APRN.org Twitter account.

More 2011 Iditarod race news as it becomes available.