I wish I could be posting some more surprising news, but Jay did it! Our hometown hero pedaled a blistering pace to finish the 350 mile leg of the Iditarod Trial Invitational / Alaskan Ultrasport. With a winning time of 3 days 14 hours and 20 minutes, Jay averaged around 4 miles an hour and came close to the record set in 2007 by Peter Basinger of 3 days 5 hours. Jay stopped and rested for at least 13 hours during the race according to the spotty news coming in from the Alaskan Ultrasport Leaderboard. It sounds like Jay arrived in McGrath at 4:20 am and will be resting there before continuing on to Nome. Before leaving, Jay told a standing room only crowd at the Fitzgerald’s Snow Bike Night that one of the hardest parts will be leaving McGrath and continuing on to Nome. A great majority of the field will be calling McGrath their finish line while Jay’s finish line is another 750 miles away! I would assume that Jay will get 6 hours or so of sleep, and leave McGrath late morning rested and stoked for the next leg. If this happens, he might not even see another rider arrive in McGrath.

OK, on to Nome. Here’s the deal, this part is fully self supported which means no aid stations with hot lasagna. Jay has a number of food drops (I think 11 for the whole race) that he fedexed to various village post offices and one food drop that was flown in by race organizers and left at a predetermined GPS coordinate. Jay plans on making it to one of these remote village at least once a day. This is when the race gets really interesting! Here’s how you can follow along for potentially the next 2 weeks!

Race Podcast - Jay will be calling in from pay phones to give updates.
Race Leader Board - Just the facts.
Race Trail News - similar info to the podcast, possibly updated more frequently.

Don’t forget to give a big hug to Tracey P and let her know you’re thinking about her too through all this! Go Jay!!!!!!!!!!!!!!