Hear that?

It's the Fat Lady singing. Iditarod XL, the fortieth running of The Last Great Race on Earth© has ended. The last musher and her team of dogs passed beneath the Burled Arch on Front Street in Nome, Alaska early this morning.

I'm up late last night following the last two mushers on the Iditarod Trail (everyone else who finished was at the banquet taking place in Nome). It got to be 1 AM EDT when they finally left Safety 19 miles from Nome. Based upon their speed to Safety from White Mountain, I figured they would be pulling into Nome between 4:30 and 4:45 AM EDT so I went and took a nap, setting the alarm for 4:00 AM.

Alarm goes off. I get up and go downstairs. Feed some very confused (but willing) pussy cats. Go online to the Iditarod forum and find that the last two have 11 miles to go! WTF?

They've been starting and stopping every mile as they make very slow progress. Why? Good question.
Did one of the dog teams decide that enough was enough? Have numerous females suddenly gone into heat? (Don't laugh. One of Lance Mackey's lead dogs went into heat and he had to pull over and wait for the two leads to finish their business. Another musher had 7 of her dogs go into heat during the last third of the race. Needless to say that really slowed her team down!)
Are the Northern Lights that fascinating and/or photogenic?
Are they drag racing for sled pink slips? ("Race you to that stump down there" "You're on!" "Okay. You won that time. How about we make it two out of three?" "Three out of five?")

We may never know. In any event, they finally pulled in to the Burled Arch in Nome at 2:55:10 and 2:57:03 AM AKDT or 6:55 and 6:57 EDT.

By then I was on my second mug of coffee and had eaten breakfast.

So 14 days 11 hours 57 min 3 sec after the official restart in Willow, Alaska back on Sunday, March 4th, 55 year old rookie musher Jan Steves officially became the Red Lantern of the 2012 Iditarod Trail Race. Fittingly enough this was the 40th Iditarod and Jan's bib number was 40.