After seeing Ryne off from the start line yesterday, we packed up and were already on the road by 4pm. The sky was clear, roads were good, and we boogied on home with a view of Denali that Derek said is one of the best he’s seen. When we made it back to Fairbanks around 9pm, we checked on Ryne’s GPS tracker to see that she was resting the dogs at the 67 mile mark.

This morning, 20hrs into the race, Ryne sent us some updates from her Garmin InReach before taking off from her second rest:

“Dogs all looking good. A few minor issues but hoping we can work through them. Trail was very hard and fast.

Trail is softer now which is nice. Perfect weather. Dogs did well in the heat surprisingly.

They did pop my hook at the first camp and my parka fell off my sled. I couldn't stop them and had to unhook tugs to go back get it.”

Knowing the dogs that she has with her, and knowing that they’re still looking good, we’re assuming that the “minor issues” are a sore wrist or two — meaning that Ryne is having to spend some extra time wrapping and tending to the dogs. Like Ryne says, sore wrists are something that dogs can work through as long as they’re being taken good care of and watched closely by their musher. We all know they are!

We can also assume that Sherlock is to blame for popping Ryne’s hook. This is Sherlock’s first 1000 mile race. Here’s to hoping that he keeps that hook-popping energy through the whole thing. Knowing Sherlock, that’s a very real possibility.

Almost 24 hrs into the race, Ryne is at mile 140 in 27th place and climbing up to the next checkpoint at Rainy Pass.

Here’s a visual lay-out of her statistics:

Translating the graph into its basics: When the green line (speed in mph) goes flat, the team is resting. When the team has been moving they’ve been averaging around 8mph (light blue line). As they keep climbing up to Rainy Pass (the highest elevation of the race, indicated by the dark blue elevation line) that average moving speed will decrease a little, but with all the dogs being fresh, it might not be by too much. The purple line is her average speed overall.

Kalyn and I (Tucker) will be keeping the blog and Facebook updated every day with race news as it comes in, so stay tuned!