Iditarod
 

Brent Sass won the Iditarod this year. Dallas Seavey was hot on his trail but just couldn't catch up. Came in about an hour later. Took about 8 ½ days for a winner to be declared. The next 12 hours will probably see another half dozen or so mushers come in. And they'll trickle in over the next few days. Last person to complete the Iditarod gets the 'red lantern' award.

One definitely unique aspect of the Iditarod: it's the only race I know of in which you might have to kill something:

https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/20...r-near-galena/

I like dogs and I've gone out with some friends who have teams, but a race of > 1,000 miles through the Alaska wilderness does not sound like fun.

But it's better than running the Iditarod trail myself. I have a couple of friends who are into long-distance running and she has this sled that she attaches to her waist. She has run the Iditarod trail to Nome in the past. She carries a sleeping bag, stove, food, etc., sleeping out on the trail at night. She said it took her a couple of weeks. Thanks, but no thanks.

Anyway, details about the race and standings, etc., are here:

iditarod.com

Man I remember when Lance Mackey came to our school and told us stories. Dude was severely on drugs but his stories were wild. I’m glad he got better

What an endurance race. Looking at the standings it gives information about number of dogs checked in. I see some mushers with 9 dogs and others with as much as 14. I know very little about the race, but wouldn’t more dogs be better? I mean dogs kept fresh are weight, but a rotation seems beneficial.
Or am I interpreting this all wrong?

I do the vacation Iditarod twice a year. Usually in Jamaica and Mexico. It consists of waking up around sunrise, starting to drink immediately (bloody Mary’s, pineapple mimosa’s, and coffee with rum cream), then continuously drinking rum and diet all day, and still making it to the finish line at 1-2 am at the club and then back to the room for sex before passing out. Then I restart the vacation Iditarod all over again, until it’s time to go back home.

That's a good question without a real easy answer. You have to have at least 8 dogs to finish. If you have to drop a dog and you are left with 7 dogs, you are forced to scratch.

That said, there are different reasons to drop a dog. First and most obviously, some dog might not be feeling well or might be injured. They can get injured from the terrain, from being kicked by a moose, from getting tangled in the leads and the musher can't stop the rest of the team in time. Every musher I know absolutely loves their dogs and if they don't think a dog is doing well or if they have reason to think the dog might be injured, they will drop a dog at a check point. There's a whole group of volunteer pilots that use their planes to fly supplies to check points and return with whatever needs to be returned. Sometimes, that's a dog.

Sometimes, a dog might be too young to make it the whole way and so you run them in race conditions knowing that you'll drop them along the way. It helps train the dog and gives the musher an idea of what the dog is capable of.

Dogs sometimes escape and sled dogs .... there's no real gentle way to put this, but they're crazy. Every sled dog I've encountered is just bat shit crazy. And if they get out of the harness, they might run alongside the team or they might just run toward the last check point. There are numerous mushers who have lost hours searching for dogs that have escaped. And a musher might decide that a dog that has escaped once is just too much of a risk to carry.

Those are some reasons to drop dogs. And I can understand why thinking that more dogs means that you make better time, but that depends. Having 10 dogs that are disciplined and trained (as well as sled dogs can be) can make better time than having 14 or 16 that are not disciplined and trained.

The maximum number of dogs a musher may start the race with is 14 and a minimum of 12 on the line to start the race and at least 5 must be on the towline at the finish.

Wait...How was he able to do that and also get Justin Reid signed for the Chiefs?

That man is amazing!

Carl used to just take off for Scotland and forget all about his responsibilities.

Not Brent Sass. He's making phone calls while on his sled.

But then again maybe this is why we have a new Frank Clark contract.

(Not sure who was originally responsible, but Butt Bleach is the best name I have read so far.)

Having went through a couple courses at The United States Army Northern Warfare Training Center, **** any sort of cold weather shit in Alaska. I had my fill of all of that shit, cold weather leaders course. 11 day course, with 6 straight days living in sub zero temperatures. Suck my butthole.

The Ikilledadog- Jim Rome

I keep meaning to do this, but I never remember when the race starts.

Heh. How are the animal rights organizations not all
Over this race??

They have tried different stuff in the past.

Yeah, Rome says that but he never comes up here and he never sees it in person. He never sees the vets that donate their time to ensure dogs’ welfare. He never sees the mushers that mush for miles with a dog in their arms because they are concerned about that dog. He never sees the award given for the musher who best takes care of his dog. No. He just flaps his jaws from SoCal without having the goddamn guts to actually come up here and look at what actually happens.

Well, **** Jim Rome.

I’ve said before that sled dogs are bat shit crazy. They run. They run like nobody’s business. They live to run. They were born to run. I visited a friend the first winter I was up here. He lived in Kotzebue (north of Nome) and he had a dog team. He took me out for a run and I served as ballast. To prevent the dogs from running away with the sled while the musher is harnessing other dogs, they use boat anchors to anchor the sled into the snow. My friend used 2 boat anchorage, one off each side of the back end of the sled, to prevent the dogs from running. And yet when those dogs got into the harness, they were straining at the harness so hard, they were wanting to run so bad, that they dragged boat anchors through the snow. I’ve never seen anything like it.

I remember that run. A snow storm came in and we were running in white out conditions. You could not tell up from down. I know that sounds nuts but it looked like the dogs were climbing a ladder so you could not tell up from down. Yet those dogs knew the trail. Their ability to find the next mile marker was incredible.

Every musher I know mushes because they love dogs. And idiots like Jim Rome sit in their comfortable chairs and cast judgment with no knowledge of what actually happens. Well, I learned all I needed to know about Jim Rome when I saw Jim Everett beat the shit out of him. Jim just cowered. Hell, Jim wants to bitch about the Iditarod, let him run the Iron Dog: 2500 miles on a snowmachine from Anchorage to Nome to Fairbanks. No dogs. 2 man teams. Just hop on, Jim. You’re a big man. You have all the answers from your fat, cushy life in SoCal. You want to critize the Iditarod, at least show you have the cojones and the capacity to do an endurance race in the Alaska winter.

Jim Rome is a coward and a fraud and he can just rot.

Yea, I was wondering what PETA has to say about it too.

They are, but it never seems to gain any traction. I did hear a whiney story on the local socialist news radio station a couple of weeks ago. Like any of these racers give a **** what some weepy twat in Chicago thinks about dog sledding.

Also, Alaska is a touch on the remote side. I really don't think the PETA freaks want to travel thousands of miles to tangle with the folks involved in these races. Millions of square miles to bury bodies.

I keep seeing this thread in the list and it reads "Idiotard".

Who is this "Rod" person, and why is he an idiot?

Dyslexics untie!!

When we did our Alaskan cruise, we visited a sled dog camp as one of our excursions. Part of it was riding in a "sled" pulled by a dozen or so dogs. The main thing I took from that was how much the dogs seemed to enjoy running and pulling that sled. They were constantly barking from the moment that they were harnessed up. It was a pretty cool experience and you could tell the trainers really cared about their dogs.

I agree, **** The Clones too

Decent article on the Iditarod from a recent issue of GQ. I say ‘decent’ because it gives too much credence to PETA and other groups. As far as I’m concerned, they aren’t from Alaska. They don’t know Alaska. They couldn’t make it Alaska so they can just **** right off. I’ll listen to PETA when they volunteer to arrest and prosecute the 1300 lb brown bear that just dis-respected the rights of the young moose by eating it alive. Until then, I hope PETA dies in a fire.

But it’s a good profile of Dallas Seavey from a family whose name is inseparable from the Iditarod.

Also, for this year, a Redington won. That’s another name that’s Iditarod royalty. And Jason Mackey, Lance’s brother, ran on his behalf. Jason won the Red Lantern, the award given to the last finisher of the Iditarod. The Iditarod is such a grueling experience that even last-place winners get recognition. Part of the reason I mention Jason is that his sister-in-law works with my wife. Lance was a real Alaskan. He was of a type that is unfortunately disappearing in this Great Land. His brother ran in his memory.

https://www.gq.com/story/dallas-seavey-iditarod

PS: I do find it interesting that the author writes about snowmobiles and uses the phrase snowmachine. As far as I know, that term, and ‘snow-go’, are uniquely Alaskan.

I was working in Fairbanks years ago during the Iditarod And saw a Pepsi truck go through an intersection and kill some dogs .

I do the same thing. In Belize. With Instagram models.

Iditarod started yesterday. It's the second day of the race and Dallas Seavey had to shoot and gut a moose on the trial. There are specific rules about what to do when you have to shoot wildlife on the trial.

I am unfamiliar with any other premiere race or sporting event that has rules about what to do when you have to kill an animal in the middle of the race. Not saying that no other event has such rules. Maybe the Baja 1000 does - what to do if you hit a deer. I mean, you never see them having to stop the Kentucky Derby and kill a wild animal.

https://www.adn.com/outdoors-adventu...oose-on-trail/

And for those who don't read the article - the moose is gutted, race officials are notified, and locals will go take the meat from the animal so it won't go to waste.

Even with this issue, Seavey still won for a record 6th time.

So it was in the way and that's why he shot it? Or did he hit it?

Hollywood Brown spotted at the Iditarod!

I read somewhere that it got tangled in the dog harness.

This says that he got a penalty for not gutting it properly: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news...-ti-rcna142373 Per the article, they apply the penalty if they think he got a competitive advantage by not gutting it properly. I'm not sure why killing a big animal could possibly be a competitive advantage in any way. It seems like something you would want to avoid.

Even with that penalty, Seavey won this year.

As far as the penalty, the rules govern what you must do if you have to kill a big game animal, such as a moose or a bison. Killing a big game animal is obviously an option of last resort but the results require that if you do, the animal must be properly gutted/cleaned.

For those who do not know, gutting means cutting the animal open and removing its intestines and organs. This does two things, both of which help preserve meat. The first thing it does is to cool an animal quite quickly. The fur on these animals is extremely thick and dense to retain heat. By opening a carcass, air can get through the fur and cool an animal.

Similarly, most of the bacteria that speeds decay is in the intestines. By removing the intestines, it will cool the intestines slowing their rate of decay but it will also remove a source of contamination from the carcass.

The race involves various checkpoints that are roughly 50 - 90 miles apart. These dogs run at around 6-7 mph so there might be a delay of a few hours for a musher to get to the next check point and tell people what happened. Local residents will go out and find the animal and bring it back to town, cutting it up and distributing the meat so it wont go to waste. (about 80+% of the local diet will be game anyway) In such circumstances, it would be tempting to not sufficiently gut an animal to save time. This rule is designed to prevent people from doing that so that the meat can be salvaged. I expect that Seavey told them what happened, continued with the race, locals went to the carcass and realized it had not been sufficiently gutted and informed race officials.

Ive always wanted to whip a dog

Maybe fresh meat or blood in their nostrils? I bet it works like a husky PED. Barry Bonds used to slaughter meeses before games. So there is some science to it.

You wouldn't make a good musher, then. I've been to several Iditarod starts and have known a few mushers. Never seen a musher whip a dog and if it were ever established that a musher did whip a dog, that musher would be kicked out of the race.

That is good to hear. I thought that was a thing or maybe was back in the day.

The article says this, which confuses me:

The Iditarod can impose time penalties if a majority of the three-person panel agrees a rule was broken and that a competitive advantage was gained. Penalties can range up to a maximum of eight hours per infraction.


The 'and' is a key term here. What competitive advantage did he gain by not gutting the moose thoroughly? I guess it's a competitive advantage that he saved time by not doing it, but he obviously lost time by tangling with the moose in the first place and doing a gutting, even if it was insufficient.

Eh, maybe the competitive advantage is because he shortened the gutting time, but it still strikes me as odd. I'm sure he would have gone faster if he'd never tangled with the moose in the first place. So maybe instead of getting a competitive advantage, the penalty was for reducing a competitive disadvantage?

Yep. Id like to know this as well. Are they that picky about how you gut a damn moose? This was clearly a bad call. The lead dog should have thrown his red flag and sent this to the booth.

They took this story off the paywall it was behind. So cp has clearly drove traffic to this terrible call. I bet there is a rule change after the draft and im glad the guy won.

Jokes aside, what an awesome string of dogs that dude has. I love professional animals that have a job.

short answer: yes, he shortened the gutting time which gave him a competitive advantage.

Longer answer: I have very little doubt he did everything he could to not tangle with the moose but moose are moose. They do what they want. And if that moose is in a bad mood and standing in a thicket of trees and the dogs come too close because they're paying attention to the trail and just enjoying running, that moose could well charge right out into those dogs. And a 1200 pound moose flailing its hooves could seriously injure or even kill one of those dogs. In such a case, the musher absolutely would need to kill that moose quickly. And at that point, the rules state that you have to gut the moose properly so its meat can be distributed.

This article talks about the rule and how it has been needed more in recent years. I thought it was interesting that the other teams can't just continue on past the impacted team.

Also, he was not the first to tangle with this moose but by then the moose was pissed.

https://craigmedred.news/2024/03/04/iditarod-collision/

We did a report on the Iditarod in 6th grade. They all gave us a musher/sled to follow and we mapped out the course and kept tabs on the race.

It was really interesting for me as a kid. Then i kind of forgot it existed

I wonder if there's a similar rule in the NFL in the event that a large animal wanders onto the field. The refs have to stop the game until the animal is killed and gutted, and then the meat is distributed to the fans.