Mackey, Gebhardt, King, Buser in front

By CRAIG MEDRED
Anchorage Daily News

Published: March 9, 2007
Last Modified: March 9, 2007 at 08:01 AM

After days of dog teams leapfrogging north while analysts speculated who's on first, the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race was poised to get a real leader Thursday night.

Who that would be was impossible to say just yet, but the pool of contenders had shrunk to four:

• Reigning Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race champion Lance Mackey from Fairbanks, who led the race into the ghost town of Iditarod to collect $3,000 in halfway gold.

• Paul Gebhardt from Kasilof, the third-place finisher in last year's Iditarod whose team chewed up all but six minutes of a 3 1/2-hour lead held by Mackey when he left Ophir for the gray, deserted buildings of the once-thriving community that give The Last Great Race its name.

• Four-time Iditarod champ Martin Buser from Big Lake, who last year fell out of the Iditarod top-20 for only the third time in 22 years of racing and who has come back this year behind a team that looks like it was trained to go after a new race record.

• Four-time and defending Iditarod champ Jeff King from Denali Park, who earlier in the race claimed that everyone was going too fast but who seems to have kept up the pace pretty well.

Mackey and Gebhardt began a 24-hour break in Iditarod early Thursday morning. All teams are required to do this once somewhere along the trail.

King and Buser did theirs in Ophir, 90 miles behind the leaders on Wednesday. They came off that break shortly before daybreak Thursday and promptly scorched the trail to Iditarod.

Despite bare ground and frozen tussocks that made the ride on a dogsled uncomfortable much of the way, Buser and his team made the run in under 10 hours. Mackey took more than 17.

Gebhardt made it across the rolling hills of the Innoko River country to Iditarod in under 14 hours.

Both Gebhardt and Mackey, of course, were behind teams showing some weariness after four days and more than 500 miles of racing. King and Buser, on the other hand, were behind teams just treated to a good, long rest and all the food they could possibly eat.

Thus it came as a bit of surprise that over the course of 90 miles Buser was able to put almost an hour on King. Clearly, the speed his team showed on the opening day of the race remains.

And just as clearly, the other mushers are aware of that. Race stats showed Buser's team posting a race-leading average speed of more than 14 mph during the first day of competition.

On the trail from Willow to Yentna Station, he was almost 1 mph faster than Mackey, more than 1 mph faster than Gebhardt, and more than 2 mph faster than King, who said he was trying to slow his dogs to help them conserve energy for later in the race. He even towed a sled to allow dogs to take turns riding.

Any energy they saved may become important now, because the numbers indicate that if Buser can maintain a well-rested team, the race is his.

To beat him, someone is going to have to try to push the pace. Human track and cross-country runners talk about this as running "the kick'' out of the competition. The idea is to keep the pace fast enough long enough so the fastest sprinters are sapped of the energy they need for a closing sprint.

Whether any of the mushers at the front of the Iditarod have a team capable of this will depend on how they trained.

A team trained to run fast for 80 to 100 miles at a time and then rest long cannot be transformed mid-race into a grind it out team capable of going 120 miles at a slightly slower pace, or a team capable of making quick 80-mile runs with less rest between them.

The first hint of what kinds of teams these men have trained was likely to come early this morning. By then, Mackey and Gebhardt will have completed their 24s.

Buser had the option of giving his dogs a solid eight-hour rest or giving the team slightly less rest and jumping into the lead. If King elected to stay eight hours, his team would be leaving Iditarod an hour behind, but if he cut the rest time to six hours, he'd be out an hour before the others.

How much rest any of these teams need to perform their best is information mushers try to keep secret. Buser, for instance, hasn't stayed more than 5 1/2 hours in any checkpoint during this race, but his slow times on the trail between some show how much he's camped out.

His team is shown averaging only 3.77 mph on the climb from Finger Lake to Rainy Pass in the Alaska Range, but that's because he grabbed straw and food for the dogs in the checkpoint, dropped down to Red Lake and had a nice little camp out.

He did the same on the way from Rohn across the Farewell Burn to Nikolai. His team averaged a paltry 5.29 mph there, but that's because they got to a fish camp 10 to 15 miles outside of Nikolai and camped again.

On paper, it might not look like Buser's team is getting much rest -- four hours in Skwentna, another six on down the trail in Rohn, five and a half in McGrath -- but after all these years of doing Iditarod the naturalized Swiss knows that one of the keys to winning is getting to the Bering Sea coast with the team that's in the best shape.

Thus, he has been resting the dogs much more than shows on paper. And he's clearly got great speed. How he will try to use it should soon become clear.

He might try to break away from the pack today to open a gap, daring the others to try and catch him.

Or, he could play things conservatively, match the runs of the other leaders and save his team for a push along the coast.

Of course, King, Mackey and Gebhardt will be thinking about these things too, and figuring out how to counter them. Gebhardt showed last year that when necessary his team can put down some long runs and remain strong.

After he got passed by 10 teams while he did his 24 on the Yukon River, he caught all but two -- race winner King and runner-up Doug Swingley. And he was closing on them.

Will he try that again, and, if he does, will it work?

Daily News Outdoor editor Craig Medred can be reached at cmedred@adn.com.

Race leaders are into Iditarod Miles from Anchorage: 533 Miles to Nome: 589 Checkpoints Miles

Ophir to Iditarod 90

Iditarod to Shageluk 65

Shageluk to Anvik 25

Anvik to Grayling 18

Grayling to Eagle Island 60

Eagle Island to Kaltag 70

Kaltag to Unalakleet 90

Unalakleet to Shaktoolik 40 As of 9 p.m. Thursday

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