When humans engage in highly strenuous exercise day after day, they start to metabolize the body’s reserves, depleting glycogen and fat stores. When cells run out of energy, a result is fatigue, and exercise grinds to a halt until those sources are replenished.

Sled dogs somehow change their metabolism in a race.

Dogs are different, in particular the sled dogs that run the annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. This is a grueling 1,100-mile race, and studies show that the dogs somehow change their metabolism during the race.

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ANCHORAGE, Alaska –  By Jill Burke, KTUU News 

If you think Iditarod and Yukon Quest champ Lance Mackey is fast on the trail just wait until you see what’s he’s about to take to the streets.

“I have always wanted a nice car or a hot rod,” he said. “This falls into that category.”

Mackey says the unique and extraordinary sports car he’s picked out fits perfectly with his unique and extraordinary mushing career.    

Just as he did last year, Mackey won a big Dodge truck from Anchorage Chrysler Dodge for his Iditarod victory.    

This time, he decided to trade it in for something sportier: a limited-edition Dodge Charger called the Super Bee.    

He says owning a car like this is a dream come true.

“I am going to be proud to drive this car around,” Mackey said. “People will recognize me in it just like they would if I was in a Dodge truck — but maybe as a blur as I go by.”

Mackey says he has never had a speeding ticket but won’t comment on whether any may be in his future.

The Iditarod champion says it will never leave a paved road and will be stored in a heated garage.

Using a multiple intelligence and multisensory approach to teaching, Cathy has been integrating the theme of the race into her school’s curriculum, reaching students in preschool through 12^th grade through a variety of curriculum and summer school projects. Throughout the next year, Cathy will be creating curriculum that is aligned to both content and cultural standards and placing it on http://www.iditarod.com/. During the 2009 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, Cathy, an educator for twenty nine years, will be flying the trail with the Iditarod Air Force and sharing her observations and lesson ideas via the Internet on the website.

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If a human being could win the Iditarod’s Golden Harness award for best lead dog, the honor this year would have been bestowed to Lance Mackey, hands down.

Mackey’s dog team was always at the front of the largest and most talented field in the history of the Iditarod, and he pulled out a nifty win, but the effort took every trick in his book to cajole, reassure and reprimand his usually smooth-running unit of rock solid veterans.

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1 Lance Mackey $69,000

2 Jeff King $65,100

3 Ramey Smyth $61,400

4 Ken Anderson $57,800

5 Martin Buser $54,400

6 Hans Gatt $51,100

7 Mitch Seavey $48,000

8 Paul Gebhardt $45,000

9 Kjetil Backen $42,000

10 Sebastian Schnuelle $39,200

11 Zack Steer $36,600

12 Cim Smyth $34,000

13 Rick Swenson $31,500

14 Jessie Royer $29,100

15 Dee Dee Jonrowe $26,900

16 Gerry Willomitzer $24,700

17 Ed Iten $22,600

18 Ray Redington, Jr. $20,600

19 Aaron Burmeister $18,600

20 Jim Lanier $16,800

21 Aliy Zirkle $15,000

22 Silvia Willis $13,300

23 John Baker $11,600

24 Sigrid Ekran $10,000

25 Hugh Neff $8,500

26 Warren Palfrey $7,100

27 William Kleedehn $5,700

28 Matt Hayashida $4,300

29 Ed Stielstra $3,000

30 Melissa Owens $1,800

31 Gerald Souza $1,049

32 Rick Casillo $1,049

33 Jason Mackey $1,049

34 Scott Smith $1,049

35 Robert Bundtzen $1,049

36 Sven Haltmann $1,049

37 Rohn Buser $1,049

38 Lous Nelson, Sr. $1,049

39 Cindy Gallea $1,049

40 Jon Korta $1,049

41 Clint Warnke $1,049

42 Robert Nelson $1,049

43 Rudi Niggemeier $1,049

44 Rick Larson $1,049

45 Kelley Griffin $1,049

46 Bruce Linton $1,049

47 Lachlan Clarke $1,049

48 Fabrizio Lovati $1,049

49 Benoit Gerard $1,049

50 Jennifer Freking $1,049

51 Blake Freking $1,049

52 William Hanes $1,049

53 Zoya DeNure $1,049

54 Benedikt Beisch $1,049

55 Matt Calore $1,049

56 Karen Ramstead $1,049

57 Joe Gans $1,049

58 Rick Holt $1,049

59 Jeff Deeter $1,049

60 Sam Deltour $1,049

61 Joe Runyan $1,049

62 Dries Jacobs $1,049

63 Rich Corcoran $1,049

64 Laura Dangereau $1,049

65 Jack Berkowitz $1,049

66 Anne Capistrant $1,049

67 Kirk Barnum $1,049

68 Eric Rogers $1,049

69 Richard Savoyski $1,049

70 Sue Allen $1,049

71 Wayne Curtis $1,049

72 Sue Morgan $1,049

73 Trent Herbst $1,049

74 Heather Sirtola $1,049

75 Gene Smith $1,049

76 Martin Koenig $1,049

77 Liz Parrish $1,049

78 Deborah Bicknell $1,049

Total: $925,052.00

KASILOF — The 2008 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race is officially over with the arrival of Red Lantern winner Deborah Bicknell.

The second time proved to be the charm for Bicknell, who returned to the Iditarod in 2008 after enduring a day-long adventure last year lost in a blizzard and drenched by a slip in the Kuskokwim River in the heart of the Alaska Range. This year, Bicknell helped a couple of other mushers — Liz Parrish and Molly Yazwinski — and wound up getting the honor of being last across the finish line when Yazwinski scratched and Parrish’s stronger team surged ahead.

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The 2008 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race officially ended at 8:36 this Evening (Alaska Time) when Auke Bay Alaska musher Deborah Bicknell (Bib #21) ended her journey under the Burled Arch in Nome Alaska with a breathtaking sunset at her back. The 62 year old musher made the trek from Willow to Nome in 15 days, 5 hours, 36 minutes and 12 seconds.

Bicknell was greeted by a large crowd of well wishers at the finish line including Loren Prosser Wells Fargo Bering Sea Community Bank President who awarded her with the highly coveted Wells Fargo Red Lantern. Bicknell then ended the 2008 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race by blowing out the Widow’s Lamp, signifying that all mushers and their teams were safely off the Iditarod Trail.

Tomorrow, (March 18th) the Red Lantern Awards Banquet will be held in Nome at the Mini Convention Center beginning at 6:00pm (Alaska Time). The public is invited to attend.

Raffle Prize Winners

2008 Iditarod

(Drawn March 16, 2008 Nome, AK)

Prize

NOME — DeeDee Jonrowe summed up the mood at this year’s finisher’s banquet before a packed crowd inside this city’s convention center.

“I love my competition. They’re awesome. They’re a lot of fun to be around,” she said. “March is family reunion time.”

If the pre-race banquet in Anchorage is an in introduction of the year’s cast of characters, the finishers’ banquet on March 16 is a party, a chance to blow off steam; and that cast of characters is more grizzled, scarred and definitely relaxed than they were when this thing began on March 1.

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“This may have been the last Iditarod with Joe,” he said. It had been a physically tough race, but Runyan, 59, said he felt a lot better after a full night’s sleep in Nome. The real reason he won’t be back is simple: He doesn’t have a dog team.

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He did it this year by camping his way to Nome, avoiding all but five checkpoints all the way to the Bering Sea Coast. “My ideal race, I wouldn’t stay at any checkpoints,” he said. “The reason I run the Iditarod is I love traveling with the dogs. The people you meet and the villages you see are fascinating, but if I wanted to see people or villages, I would do it by airplane. I love running dogs, and camping with dogs. If I’m away from checkpoints, there’s no distractions, I’m focused on them and, more importantly, they’re focused on me.”

It worked out well for Stielstra this year, with temperatures rarely dipping below 10 degrees Fahrenheit and mostly staying around 30. His biggest risk was getting wet, not cold. “Camping” is a word mushers use that can easily be misunderstood. It’s generally a prolonged pit stop. They just pull off the trail so other teams can get by, put down straw and fire up their cookers with alcohol fuel to melt snow into water. They take the booties off their dogs, and give them dog food, water and meat. Then they allow the team to sleep for a couple of hours. The mushers typically lay right on top of their sled bags and snooze; they’re exhausted and can sleep on any surface. Then it’s time to bootie the dogs and go again. The campout can take as little as three hours, but is usually four to six hours long.

“I bet they sleep twice as much when they’re away from checkpoints,” Stielstra said. “I think I have a pretty well-trained dog team, and even so, watching them sleep at checkpoints, a good number will wake up when a team comes in and parks next to you, if they hear a cooler or a cooker, or when a team leaves.”

He added that his long camping trip ended on the coast, where he went checkpoint to checkpoint. By that point, it was a good idea to allow veterinarians plenty of time to look over the dogs.

Stielstra is excited by his finish in the top 30 and looking to improve. “I’m not just running it to run it. I’m running it to learn it, to win it. Winning it is many years away.” He is amazed at the schedules run by Lance Mackey and Jeff King. “To keep that big of a dog team running on that schedule was phenomenal.”

Please click here to see the Show Schedule.

NOME — Twelve days seems to be a magical dividing line — this year, at least — between mushers who were in the race to compete and those who were here to experience an adventure.

Almost to a person, the mushers finishing the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 53rd place and down are describing their time on the trail as a “life-changing experience,” as Zoya Denure put it, or a right of passage for younger mushers, such as 19-year-old Jeff Deeter.

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Kim Franklin, the British musher who scratched early in Rohn after two of her leaders got loose on the trail, also flew in to Nome to see the finish. Franklin, whose previous experience has been limited to dry-land races on wheeled carts, has worked with 1984 champion Dean Osmar for the last two years to learn about distance sled dog racing in Alaska.

Franklin learned a lot getting through the Alaska Range, where her race ended in a snafu. Her two lead dogs got loose when a dog behind them chewed their tuglines as Franklin fixed a minor tangle near an open creek on the way to Rohn. Being inexperienced, she didn’t wait long enough for the friendly but momentarily spooked dogs to come back to her. (The best plan would have been to pull over and park, for as long as it took, calming the situation.) After a few minutes, she continued down to Rohn to report the missing dogs.

With her gone, the two dogs, attached collar to collar by a single short neckline, trotted together back they way they had come, somehow slinking in to the Rainy Pass checkpoint unnoticed. The pair of leaders were loaded into an airplane headed back to Anchorage because checkers there assumed they were dropped dogs.

Franklin’s missing dogs were “found” among dropped dogs in Anchorage, but by that point, about a day behind the next-to-last musher because of the delays, she had to withdraw from the race. Rules say mushers have to account for all the dogs they had leaving one checkpoint when they reach the next checkpoint, and Franklin had left Rainy Pass with 15 dogs, arriving at Rohn with 13.

He and wife, Jennifer, ran the race together from the start, and the pair passed fellow Siberian dog driver Karen Ramstead in the last few runs along the Bering Sea coast. “We had some great run times, actually from Shaktoolik on,” he said.

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Runyan was out of Elim before 1 p.m. and due into the penultimate checkpoint of White Mountain by roughly 7 p.m. He only has one 77-mile leg to the finish, which is taking about 10 hours to complete. It’s a frustratingly late time for Scdoris to scratch.

She has started the race three times, finishing in 2006.

Most mushers are grinning ear to ear when they pull up to the burled arch, regardless of their position in the race. But Sven Haltmann was downright pumped when his sharp, energetic team trotted neatly up the finish chute in 36th place Thursday night.

Mushers want their dogs to be crisp right up to the end, and Haltmann was obviously happy with his self-discipline to stick to a conservative schedule instead of busting loose with short rest or super long runs in order to move up in the standings. “The further we went, the better we got,” he said. As a rookie, his mission was to introduce his young team to the race and gain experience. Haltmann, an apprentice of Martin Buser with dogs from the bloodlines of Buser and Jeff King, obviously is a musher to watch in the future.

“We’re just warming up,” he told spectators with a grin. “We’ll be back next year, and the next year, and the next year, and the next year…” As his team was led out of the chute, Haltmann showed some leaping ability, jumping up to slap the beam of the burled arch with the palm of his hand.

The younger Buser, 18, was running on a pace that just about matched his father’s through the first 400 miles of the race. He had to drop a few dogs, however, and by the coast he was working with a team of seven; he shortened his runs and lengthened his rests “and got all seven of them here,” he said.

As the beaming family posed for photos at the finish line, Nikolai joked, “I have to admit, I’m jealous.”

“He’s one crazy guy,” he said of Lance. “He seems to pull magic tricks out of his hat.”

If Lance was dealing with all kinds of issues at the front of the pack, so was Jason Mackey. He said his second Iditarod was an up and down ride. It started from the beginning, when a key leader was left home. Mackey realized this team would need TLC right from the start and he scrapped any intentions of a top 20 finish. He used his printed run-rest schedule to light his first campfire on the trail.

He would feel the dogs speed up, then slow down, and if they flagged, he’d rest them.

Mackey said he does indeed have aspirations to be the fourth Mackey to win the Iditarod someday, following his father, Dick, and brothers Rick and Lance. “I won’t give up until I do win this thing,” he said. First, though, Jason Mackey wants to run the Yukon Quest next year, returning to the Iditarod in 2010.