March 10: Halfway Point At Iditarod
The checkpoint closest to the middle of the race on odd-numbered years is the trail's namesake, the historic gold rush ghost town of Iditarod (meaning "far distant place").
Iditarod: Sørlie wins the Dorothy G. Page Halfway Award and US$ $4,000 in gold nuggets when he arrives at Iditarod on March 10 at 1:41 am.pdf While the Halfway Award is sometimes considered a jinx, Sørlie also won it before his victory in 2003. He was followed by Brooks an hour later, then Buser. Paul Gebhardt becomes the first musher to depart the midpoint at 5:59 pm. The top 10 stretched over 14 hours, and the top 30 over 24 hours.
Standings through the Interior can be deceptive because all mushers are required to take one mandatory 24-hour layover during the race, usually at Takotna, McGrath, or Iditarod. The differential in starting times is adjusted during this period, and most of the racers were on a level playing field after Iditarod.
Read more about this topic: 2005 Iditarod
Famous quotes containing the words march, halfway and/or point:
“Our Germany’s dead. However hard this may be for some of us older people, it’s a blessing for our children. Our children grew up against new backgrounds, new horizons. And they are free. Free to grow up as children. Free to run and to laugh without being forced into uniforms. Without being forced to march up and down streets, singing battle songs.”
—Emeric Pressburger (1902–1988)
“I feel so useless. Here I am nearly halfway through life, and what have I done?... I have nothing to show for all my years.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)
“Ideals possess the strange quality that if they were completely realized they would turn into nonsense. One could easily follow a commandment such as “Thou shalt not kill” to the point of dying of starvation; and I might establish the formula that for the proper functioning of the mesh of our ideals, as in the case of a strainer, the holes are just as important as the mesh.”
—Robert Musil (1880–1942)