The Pause Button

When Jeff King arrived first into Takotna just shy of 11pm Tuesday night he proved that he was able to hold a tough lead which he grabbed earlier that day from Sebastian Schnuelle as he left Nikolai with a hour shorter rest. King had also gone into Nikolai with the fastest run time out of anyone in the top 15, he then had the fastest top 10 run time to McGrath, and had the fastest top 15 run into Takotna. Even with all of that, the lead King holds over a large pack of competitive mushers is still just an hour, something that doesn’t mean much when you’re looking at part of that time being erased during the musher’s 24-hour layovers.

Each musher is required to pick a checkpoint on the trail where they take a 24-hour break from the race and it’s at these layovers where the starting time differentials will be made up. King is wearing bib #15 which means that on top of staying in Takotna (assuming that’s where he’s decided to take his layover) for 24 hours, he’ll have to wait nearly 2 additional hours because of his early starting number. If everyone stays where they are, it might actually put Hugh Neff in a pretty good spot as he has a much higher bib number. Neff could be leaving Takotna pretty close to when King does, even though he arrived an hour and a half later.

Hans Gatt and Cim Smyth passed a sleeping crowd in Takotna and continued on to the checkpoint of Ophir. If the top 20 teams (minus Gatt & Smyth) that all arrived into Takotna really are taking the 24, today will be a slower day in the race and not much will happen. It is very likely however, that someone will try and position themselves a bit differently and head onto a further checkpoint – but we’ll just have to wait and see.

You can see the 24-hour layover rest times for this year’s Iditarod (click here)