Ruby, Ruby, Ruby

Mackey was the first one into Ruby, and this afternoon he was the first one out of Ruby. Mackey, coming off of pushing very hard over two long streches of the trail took his manditory 8-hour layover at the first available checkpoint out of the four that are along the Yukon River. Mackey led the race today by over two hours to Jeff King who arrived mid-morning, its still Backen in third however his grip on the other two has loosened quite a bit since a few days ago when everyone was just about half hour apart… Backen arrived into Ruby 6 hours after Lance arrived, and only 2 hours before Mackey was set to leave. Kjetil, who got in at 1:37pm is now running much closer to Mitch Seavey & Hans Gatt who arrived respectively at 1:57pm, and 2:09pm.
Down in the comments of an earlier post, Lee asked

“..Why would the leader put up with the loss of race focus (and alcohol with each course) when caring for his dogs, checking equipment and resting are the real priorities? As an outsider with no expertise whatsoever, I’d get a raincheck for the meal, a receipt for the cash, one photo with the cash and a huge grin and get back to race priorities. Especially if I had only 14 dogs and a hungry Jeff King was close behind with all 16 of his. But then, I’ve always been strange!”

The truth is Lee, sometimes a musher coming into this checkpoint (Ruby even years, and Anvik northern years) will do just that, grab a quick bite and pose for a quick photo before heading down the trail. Mackey left Takotna a few days ago and saw the pace at which other teams were running (Backen and King) and thought that he might be able to run through Ophir and Cripple and into Ruby even though it wasn’t part of his original plan. When he left Cripple King was a few hours behind him and was in the middle of resting his dogs. Mackey knew that both of them were going to have to take those 8 hours off sometime over the next day or two once they got to the Yukon River, and if you’re going to do it, you might as well do it at a point when you can fill up on some good food. In short, he felt like it wasn’t irresponsible to take his “8″ at this point in the race, had he felt differently I’m sure he would have breezed through like others have in the past. Turns out that King is also taking his 8 hour rest at Ruby as well and there was no time lost – there was plenty of time left in his layover to get some sleep and tend to his team!

P.S. While writing this report I’ve been listening to today’s Iditablog Song of the day: Ruby by the Kaiser Chiefs.