Before we dive into Ryan's impressive run thus far, I want to quickly touch base on some of my previous predictions from the last post. Keep me honest in my analysis.
Anything I said about Brent Sass can be forgotten, unfortunately. Shortly after our post went live speculating about his potential strategy, he had to scratch due to 3 cracked teeth. It sounds as if the injury has been something he's been dealing with even before the race and unfortunately resulted in his eventual scratch at Eagle Island. It would have been fun to see how well or not well his strategy would have worked and honestly if it weren't for the tooth issues, he may have run a different race altogether.
"Redington, Diehl, and Kaiser all rested at Eagle Island for ~4 hours and will be able to make the 60 mile push up north to Kaltag and likely take another ~4 hour rest before they make the long push to Unalakleet (first checkpoint on the coast). " This right here is the top 3 teams running at the moment and they followed this plan to a tee. Each team took a straight shot to Kaltag from Eagle Island with Ryan posting the best time of 7h 35m followed by Richie (7h 55m) and lastly Pete (7h 59m). All 3 had almost equivalent rest times of about 4.5 hours in Kaltag as well. They all left Kaltag minutes apart and the race to the coast was on.
Overall, things played out kind of how we expected them to up to this point. From here two different strategies unfolded. Ryan decided to make the long ~80 mile run from Kaltag to Unalakleet and did so in 10h 5m, accepted his "First to the Coast" award, and rested for ~4 hours. This left Ryan with a 50 mile run, to Koyuk as he passed through Shaktoolik on the way.
Both Pete and Richie decided to rest their teams for 4 hours - 40 miles into the run from Kaltag to Unalakleet - and then blow through Unalakleet and make their way to Shaktoolik where Ryan was already resting. Ryan heads off to Shaktoolik 50 minutes ahead of Pete and 3 hours ahead of Richie. On the run to Koyuk, Pete has shaved his lead down to only 35 minutes, and after their rests in Koyuk Pete is only 26 minutes behind with only 3 checkpoints left until Nome.
This is the point in the race where if you want to win you might have to do something bold, and Ryan has made that decision. It is almost a 100 mile run from Koyuk to White Mountain; the question is whether or not you make the run or stick to your typical run/rest schedule. Ryan chose the former and Pete chose the latter. The decision by Ryan to push on to White Mountain where he has a mandatory 8 hour rest has given him a sizable lead. This lead will be next to impossible to erase by Pete based strictly on run times.
I want to preface this by saying that no one knows their dog team and how they are running better than the person behind the sled itself. However, this move by Ryan is potentially risky. We have seen before where teams pushed to their limits to get to White Mountain and then shut it down for hours beyond the mandatory rest time of 8 hours at the checkpoint. This happened to Brent Sass in 2016 when he was in 3rd place coming into the White Mountain checkpoint and fell all the way to 20th in the standings after his team refused to leave the checkpoint.
Did Ryan just seal his destiny as the winner of the 51st running of the Iditarod by taking a risk or will Pete's strategy of playing it safe and sticking to his run/rest schedule secure the win? We will find out in about 24 hours. Stay tuned.
#5 Ryan Redington in Willow at the restart of the '23 Iditarod
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