Hold on! Iditarod details unleashed

Who‘s ready for the inside scoop of mind blowing factoids?! As a professional athlete myself the first “bite” of information I found so incredible is the nutritional and fueling menu for the sled dogs. They are lean and appear to the general eye as skinny especially when unfairly compared to our couch potato pups like my Golden Retriever. But... these dogs eat the equivalent of 55 Big Macs for a person PER day... an average of 13 thousand calories per day! An extreme amount of nutritional intake! Next, did you know that they travel easily, via genetics and pack-powered energy, over 100 miles per day and are taught to stop and rest cause otherwise they’d keep going! The dogs also are trained to look for trail markers, the leaders do, to know where to go (along with listening to their musher’s commands) but will site out trail markers without direction from the sled, so can race even if the musher takes a nap! The 1049 miles of Iditarod terrain... at subzero temps... means they travel the equivalent of Houston, Texas to Minneapolis, MN in 9-14 days in temps like -20 to -60!! And the optimum temps for these pawsitively perfect performers are at zero or below for firmer snow, easier sled gliding and ideal running and to balance the metabolic muscle heat being made that could lead to overheating! I’m not sure I would ever want to ideally seek a negative temperature for my ideal exercise element and laugh that I “froze” in the hotel gym this morning at its 60 degrees! To add further to the impressiveness of these Iditarod super stars, they travel at an average speed of 14mph pulling the sled! For those who FitBit it and concentrate on getting steps in, the sled dogs take over 4 million steps in the race! When not on the ground, these sledding “top dogs” are on top of the world in airplanes to travel from race sites back to Anchorage and reportedly are unphased by altitude fluctuations of even 18000 feet... they can experience extreme altitudes and land 100% ok unlike us humans who may experience low oxygen consequences and need time for adjustment! The more I learn, the more I’m moved but these musher-loved Idita-DOGS! :)