Day 1 Limited North American

I had real good draws in both classes today for my start positions. The six dog team took off like a rocket. We're in 3rd place after day 1 so we're really happy with that. I ran Kodo & Lark in lead today. In team were Finch & Dewalt and Dar & Loon were in wheel. Tomorrow it may be quite a bit colder or so the forecast says. It seemed hotter than what they showed for temperatures today. It was a beautiful sunny day, not a cloud in the sky. We'll plan to have the same leaders for tomorrow, then Dar & Dewalt will take over for the longer run on the final day.
The 8 dog apparently went much better than it seemed to be going while I was out on the trail. They dogs were moving along really nice but one of my yearlings was being quite a stinker. She was biting at her brother most of the trail. I was a bit nervous taking her but we're trying to be sure all the yearling get good race exposure this year. I saw the team ahead of us before the 10 mile turn, but we couldn't quite catch them for awhile. One of the leaders was holding back a bit, which is quite unusual for her. The team had a really bad experience last weekend in the Tanacross race. The team they had to pass had a dog in it that bit out at them as they tried to go by. We did end up getting by the team ahead of us. We had a great musher to pass, she did a real good job letting us by, which was great for the dogs to have a good passing experience. Coming up the hill on the way home is brutal though. It seems like the dogs slow down so much. I couldn't decide whether it was better to pedal or duck down to stay out of the wind, so I did some of both. We crossed the line and my super handler (Nathan) said we did great. Come to find out we're in the lead. We wanted to finish in the top 5 for this race, so looks like we're in a good position to do that. There is still 2 days of racing to go so we'll have to wait and see how our yearlings hold up. We'll probably have to stretch out the line and run a 10 dog string to separate the silly yearling that was biting at her running mate. Here's the top 5 times for the 6 & 8 dog.
6 dog
Trisha Seibold 17:16
Jennifer Probert 17:22
Jen Sterling 17:39
Amy Gjetson 18:06
Greg Selletin 18:10

8 dog
Jen Sterling 31:24
Christian Taveau 31:55
Trisha Seibold 32:08
Egil Ellis 33:08
Amanda Byrd 33:14