TANANA, Alaska — Matthew Failor is sticking to his pre-race plan for the first few days of the 2025 Iditarod.
Mush five to six hours. Rest around four hours.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
That strategy had his Alaskan Husky Adventures 17th-Dog team race into the third checkpoint of Tanana on Wednesday at 2:14 a.m. (AKST), a location that is 202 miles into the 1,128-mile race to Nome.
His team still had 926 miles to go in what is the longest Iditarod in the event’s history.
Failor was running in 18th place when he arrived on the windy scene. He checked in and ushered his dogs to a resting site, providing food and water and putting down straw where his four-legged friends could sleep.
In pre-race interviews, Failor said there may be a tendency among some teams, especially rookies, to go too hard and too fast at the beginning of the race since it was over smooth river surfaces with the revised route.
Tanana, a village with a population of around 250 people, is at the confluence of the Tanana and Yukon rivers and was once a traditional meeting and trading place used by members of several indigenous groups.
There were as many as five different Athabascan languages spoken in the area in 1868 when French-Canadian François Xavier Mercier established the first fur trading-post in the area.
Failor and 32 other teams racing in this year’s Iditarod — the longest race in the event’s 53-year history — have dealt with warmer weather than usual. It’s been mid to high 30s during the day and only dropping into the teens at night.
It was 26 degrees when the 42-year-old Failor pulled into Tanana.
After leaving the initial checkpoint at Nenana (52 miles into the race) on Monday at 9:43 p.m., Failor and his 16 dogs raced along the river for 85 miles to reach the second checkpoint at Manley Hot Springs on Tuesday at 12:48 p.m.
The St. Peter’s High School graduate didn’t stay long. After checking in, Failor and his team left Manley nine minutes later and traveled another 17 miles before stopping to rest.
When Failor and other teams leave Tanana, they must pack “heavy” in terms of food and straw. The next checkpoint is in Ruby, about 117 miles away, the longest run between checkpoints in the entire race
In Failor’s case, he will likely do it in 40-mile increments, stopping twice along the way to rest his dogs with food, water and straw beds in the snow.
Party atmosphere at Nenana
When the Iditarod Trail Committee made the decision to relocate the start of the race at Fairbanks due to low snow in southeast Alaska, it created an initial checkpoint at Nenana, 52 miles from Fairbanks.
The community is located along the state’s highway system, which allowed family, friends and fans to gather with the teams as they stopped to rest their dogs.
That created a noisy, crowded atmosphere not generally conducive to dogs getting lots of rest, their barks and howls making the scene sound like a large, outdoor kennel.
As he prepared to depart the scene, Failor said his team handled it well.
“Normal, just like any other race (at early checkpoints) … really packed in. Our dogs are used to truck traffic and going to different locations, so they were focused and not messing with anybody.
“This is a lot of stimulation. There’s families and kids running around and other dogs barking and people and cars and drones. So they have to learn how to be good resters and thankfully most of these dogs can sleep through all that noise.
“The further you go down the trail, (there will be) less and less people there,” he said.
Failor also said he was not pressing his dogs hard in the warm temperatures.
“They kind of scale back as they run … they don’t exert themselves to 100 percent. They did just fine.
“We stopped quite a few times to allow them to roll around in the snow and check booties, but they’re all good,” he said during an interview with Iditarod.com Insider posted on the Alaskan Husky Adventures Facebook page.
Dane Baker mushing along with Alaskan Husky Adventures ‘puppy team’
Dane Baker, who works as a handler for Failor’s Alaskan Husky Adventures, is racing with a younger “puppy team” from the kennel.
As of 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, the Michigan native was in 25th place while resting his team 33 miles from Tanana.
Baker rested his team at Manley for more than five hours and also removed one of his 16 dogs, which will be transported back to the team’s home base in Willow, Alaska.
He arrived in Manley at 1:25 p.m. and departed at 6:49 p.m., sparing his young team a long run during the heat of the afternoon.
