Jeff King arrived at the finish line in Nome in third place with a great looking team that any musher would be proud of. If my numbers are right even though he finished third, he posted his fastest time ever with the clock stopping at 9 days, 2 hours & 22 minutes.
Listening to Jeff reflect on his race in Nome he said that on the first three days of the race he gave the dogs time to get into a good run/rest/eating cycle. Many mushers tend to overlook the importance of this first day and jump into the race too fast, then pay for it later. They say that the first day can effect the whole rest of the race for a team. He also noticed that the other lead teams were backing off a little to save energy for later.
Jeff said, and it’s true, that he had a very dominate team until Takotna. He reported that his run from Rohn to Nikolai was the best run he ever had in any of his Iditarods. His team was eating great at the 24 hour layover and seemed to be the team to beat. At least that’s what all his competitors said. Later in the race his dogs got a little off their eating habits and Jeff spent more time resting them. He reported that the run from Kaltag to Unalakeet was one of the toughest runs of the race with soft snow that slowed the teams down. He was glad for the extra rest he had given them in Kaltag before heading out over this section as the first 27 miles took him 5 hours to cover.
Jeff said that he only saw Lance’s team once during the whole race and that was just the brief time that Lance pulled into and blew through Kaltag. In fact he said in all the years he’s raced Lance he’s really only run with him once for a brief period in the All Alaska Sweepstakes Race.
Koyuk was the first place he stated that he thought it might be hard to beat Mackey but he didn’t give up till the end. Jeff has raced enough to know that many a dog team has slowed or stopped short of the finish line.
Listening to both Lance and Jeff it was interesting that they both stated that they respected each other and complimented one another on their dog handling skills. Jeff said that Lance is the hardest competitor he’s gone up against.
During this years race Jeff took the time to thank people along the trail that he has seen for the last 20 years.
By now everyone knows that Jeff has stated that this will be his last competitive Iditarod. My guess is that he’s sorry he ever announced that before the race. It was with disbelief and some embarrassment that I watched fans and the press hound him from one end of the trail to another about his calling it quits for awhile. He handled the endless questions with a lot of patience and grace for a person totally exhausted from a lack of sleep. It was only during a quiet moment in Koyuk when he had just made a cold 40 below run during the night that I heard him with humor reflect on the constant question. With cold hands and an aching back he bent over to take the booties off his dogs and said with a grin on his face “and they wonder why I don’t want to do this any more”. It’s truly hard for a person that’s never been on the trail to understand how physically and mentally hard running the Iditarod is. When they say a musher is sleepy they don’t mean in the normal sense of the word. We’re talking sleep deprivation that physically hurts when you wake from a short nap. A lack of sleep that confuses normal thought processes. That borders on torture. That peels ones emotions wide open. Yet the mushers stay focused, take care of their dogs and say more “thank yous” to the folks helping them in check points than you normally hear on the street.
Jeff and I both started getting sled dogs in 1976 and spent a period of time traveling, trapping and hauling freight with them, developing the skills that would serve later when racing.
In 1981 Jeff ran his first Iditarod. He then dedicated years to the running of the Yukon Quest Sled Dog Race.
In 1991 he returned to the Iditarod and has run every Iditarod since. He has never scratched or lost a single dog in all those races. In the ranchlands of the American West there is a saying that a person is “a good hand”. This simple phase speaks volumes of respect, that a person is good with their stock, respectful of others and gets the job done without complaint. That same respect is spoken in dog circles in the saying that a person is a “good dog man”. Jeff has been and is a good dog man. He has given us 21 years of entertainment and competitive Iditarod races. Some seem to have a hard time getting their head around the idea that he wants to quit now. Jeff never said he was done with dogs or the Iditarod for that matter. He just wants to end the competitive part with some dignity and grace. The Iditarod is a pretty big dog race but there’s a big world out there that Jeff wants the time to explore. How many times have we seen a rock band or an athlete go on preforming years after they should have quit. We should thank Jeff for all the great races and all he’s brought to the sport of mushing. We should be happy that he wants to end with the same grace and success that he has shown us over the years. We should thank him like he thanked all those people along the trail.