On 03/03/2013 at 08:41 PM,
by
Ranger1
I only follow two sports. Well, actually, one sport and a major event. The sport is football, and the event is the Iditarod sled dog race. I've had a love affair with the Iditarod since I first found out about it as a little kid of six or seven. To me, it is the ultimate in athletic competitions. The mushers spend almost as much time running as the dogs do, and both are superb athletes. It combines endurance, speed, strategy, and planning. The mushers have to know what their competitors and their teams are capable of, they have to plan what to bring, what to have dropped off at checkpoints in terms of supplies, where to rest, how much to feed their dogs and how often. They have to be as in tune with their dog teams as a good quarterback with his offense, maybe even more so. After all, a football game only lasts an hour, the Iditarod is about 1000 miles and takes the best of the best teams at least eight days to complete, back of the pack can take up to 14 days. There are rivalries and favorites, and favorite rivalries. There's the mushers who run the race with winning in mind, and those who are there to just see if they can do it. There are mushers who have run the race while dealing with diseases such as cancer and diabetes. I will spend the next two weeks obsessing about the race, I've paid my yearly subscription fee and I will use it to my best advantage. I'll be checking the GPS tracker to see where my favorites are and trying to guess their strategies - where they'll take their mandatory 8 and 24 hour breaks, whether they stay in checkpoints or bed down in the wilderness, how many dogs they'll have left at the finish, and who will win this year.
