Hi, Darren

For some reason Blogger is eating comments, but I did receive email containing one you posted.  You're right!  That's really interesting, and I have not one single clue what's going on.  I've asked Matthew at Trackleaders if he knows, and while I can guarantee he's ridiculously busy with this and other races I'm hopeful he'll have some insights.

For everybody else, this is what Darren noticed:

Here is a question. At race mile 144 on the race flow chart there are several mushers that have little plateaus - mostly two points. Now this might be a short stop, but these occur 4 miles past Central where teams getting drop bags stopped a short time that look just like these little plateaus too. So I thought, okay maybe they go a few miles out the checkpoint and repack or snack or something so the dogs don't get the idea they are staying at the checkpoint. After a few more teams did the exact same thing in the exact same spot I wondered about the reality? Could all these teams be doing the same thing in the same spot?

I looked on the map to see were mile 144-5 was and it's on the road to the hotsprings - okay? I then checked a few mushers individual tracks to see where they had stopped, should be two points together right? Well I did not find them, just a string of points 10-minutes apart, seemed normal.

So are these short plateaus a glitch? We might have to be careful not to interpret too much from these if they cannot be proved otherwise?

He's right, and I'm really curious about what's going on there.