From LBPOSTSports.com: Long Beach native Nancy Duresky sends us updates as she races across the Alaskan Tundra on a dog sled.  This is Part III, click here for Part I, here for Part II, and here for Part IV.

Many of the visitors have left Nome.  They came to see the first one or two mushers cross the finish line, and then the visitors left.  I’m sure they left because they ran out of vacation.  However, it is a real shame they didn’t stay to see all the mushers arrive and to go the main Banquet and The Red Lantern Banquet.  The Red Lantern is a tradition started when a family member would be ‘out on the trail,’ returning after dark.  The family would hang a red lantern outside the front door of the cabin so its light would guide the team and musher home. 

When the burled arch is moved to Front Street to mark the finish line, a red lantern is hung from the right hand side of the arch and lit.  It burns day and night until the last musher arrives in Nome.  That night, a banquet is held in his or her honor as if to say, “Even though you are last to arrive, even though the trail got worse and worse as time when on so that you ran over the worst trail of all of us, even though there were a million and one reasons to scratch from the race, even thought you are dog-tired, you did not give up, on your dogs or yourself. And you got your team safely into Nome. Congratulations. Let’s celebrate.”  Everyone who finishes the race really has accomplished something that few other people can even conceive.  Did you know there are more people who have summitted Mount Everest than finished the Iditarod? 

So, today, Hugh Neff came in.  He was the 15th musher to arrive in Nome. He has suffered bad frostbite on his face during the race.  But his team looked great.  With every team, I am amazed at how skinny the dogs look.  The Alaskan Huskies (not an American Kennel Association breed, BTW) look like they are nothing but skin and bones. In fact, I think they have very little fat on them.  Their average weight is 60 or so pounds. One lecture I heard said that the dogs eat 10,000 calories a day when they are racing.  They love fatty meat like fish heads and beaver, yet do not have a bit of fat on their bodies. They do, however, have lean, powerful muscle. Usually, the first thing a musher does after hugging his or her family member, is snack his/her dogs (give them a chunk of meat).  Siberian Huskies are heavier then the Alaskan Husky, are a registered breed of the AKA, and are meant to pull great weight, not to race 1,000+ miles.  For an Iditarod Husky, mushers can tell you the blood lines of the best dogs.

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