Iditarod

As a youngster, Rachael Scdoris turned to her dogs for comfort when cruel classmates taunted her. And it will be her dogs that the 20-year-old musher calls on today as she lines up to compete in her first Iditarod. Each day, before she dips into her snack bag along the 1,150-mile trail, she'll feed her team. Before she massages her own weary feet, she will knead the soreness from 64 paws. When both they and she are digging down for that last bit of energy, the Iditarod rookie will raise her voice in song - gospel and spiritual tunes she has known forever.

Brooke, Josh, and Sheldon remain, splayed out on the sofas and clearly exhausted. Brooke finds a note from Padma telling them to meet her at the Eagle Crest. Is that an Alaskan Leather Bar? I'm excited. They drive up a long mountain and are stopped by a helicopter in the middle of the road. A lady approaches the car and announces she's their pilot and they'll be taking the bird up the rest of the way to meet Padma. Brooke is not cool with this. The helicopter involves three of her biggest fears -- heights, being in an enclosed space, and having no control.

The famed iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race begins tomorrow with a ceremonial opening in Anchorage -- despite bad weather. Good weather for sled dogs is lots of snow, and this year there isn't any. Temperatures around Anchorage have been in the high 30s. So the race has been rerouted, with the real start Monday in Fairbanks instead of Wasillla. And the 65 mushers and their dogs won't even go through iditarod.

Toughest Race on Earth: Iditarod 10 p.m. [Discovery] In the second episode, the mushers are crossing the Alaska Range. Several competitors report seeing visions of Tina Fey. They keep their spirits up by constantly repeating the mantra: "You betcha."

The dog bites on his hands have healed, and Baltimore businessman Dan Dent is back in the Far North for another shot at his elusive Alaskan dream. Dent and his all-new team of 16 huskies are preparing to leave Anchorage today with 80 other mushers in the grueling, 1,100-mile Iditarod sled dog race to Nome. The 58-year-old financial adviser's first Iditarod attempt last year ran into a canine buzz saw. Just nine hours into the race, he was severely bitten trying to break up a fight among his dogs.

Baltimore's Dan Dent was still mushing his way down the Iditarod Trail yesterday despite crashing into a tree early Tuesday and losing 14 of his 16 dogs in the rugged Alaska Range. Dent, 58, was last reported at the Rohn Roadhouse. That's 272 miles from the starting line near Anchorage, and 879 miles from the finish in Nome. The Baltimore investment counselor was running 68th in the field of 79, about 200 miles behind the leader, Doug Swingley. Trail reports said Dent's sled struck a tree on a treacherous bit of hillside trail five miles from Rainy Pass.

THIRD-GRADERS at Worthington Elementary School met a sled dog and learned about the famed Iditarod race as part of a program called "Sled Dogs on the Run." Wednesday's event began several months of Iditarod-connected instruction. Schoolchildren will chart the course of the 1,000-plus-mile race and follow its progress on the Iditarod's Internet site. Worthington is one of about 600 schools nationwide participating in the program, said Susan Ay, the school's speech pathologist. Schools must submit a plan and have it approved before they can participate.

D'Antoine Webb, a North Baltimore youth who had never been away from the East Coast, recently went to Alaska, where he snowboarded, did cross-country skiing and saw the famous Iditarod dog-sledding race up close.After winning an essay contest sponsored by the Baltimore Police Department PAL program, Webb traveled to Alaska to accompany Dan Dent of Roland Park, who was driving a sled in the world-famous race."The Iditarod was spectacular," said Webb, 14.Webb was accompanied by police Officer Roderick S. Henry, who helps operate the Central Rosemont PAL Center, which Webb frequents.

Bloodied but unbowed by the dog bites that yanked him from last year's race, 58-year-old Baltimore investment counselor Dan Dent is training for a return to the Iditarod, Alaska's most grueling sled dog race."

D'ANTOINE Webb, 14, is already a winner in this year's famed Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. His essay about the 1,150-mile Alaskan competition won a Baltimore Police Athletic League contest -- and earned D'Antoine a ride on the sled of investment adviser Dan Dent, who made his debut Sunday in the 10-day test. But Mr. Dent, the 57-year-old Baltimorean in only his fourth dog sled race, was an even bigger winner. Though forced from the race by dog bite injuries this week, Mr. Dent's attempt has inspired lots of local kids to pursue their dreams.

When veterinarian Carl E. Rogge takes his March vacation, he goes north. Far, far north, to where the temperatures might climb to 10 degrees, glaciers loom over the landscape and the dogs look nothing like the suburban canines he leaves behind. He likes to golf, fly-fish and sail, but this is his other hobby: He is part of an army of volunteers at the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, the grueling 1,200-mile race through the Arctic wilderness, checking the physical condition of the 45-pound racers.

As a youngster, Rachael Scdoris turned to her dogs for comfort when cruel classmates taunted her. And it will be her dogs that the 20-year-old musher calls on today as she lines up to compete in her first Iditarod. Each day, before she dips into her snack bag along the 1,150-mile trail, she'll feed her team. Before she massages her own weary feet, she will knead the soreness from 64 paws. When both they and she are digging down for that last bit of energy, the Iditarod rookie will raise her voice in song - gospel and spiritual tunes she has known forever.

The knifing winds. The numbing cold. The snapping dogs. The foreboding darkness. For Daniel F. Dent, these are the recollections of the Iditarod dog sled race - or perhaps another day on Wall Street. Dent, who twice participated in the storied Iditarod, is also a Baltimore money manager with one of the best-performing funds in the country. Like an ad campaign for a national bank that asks what can investors learn from events outside the world of finance, Dent said that principles he has absorbed from the grueling 1,100-mile race from Fairbanks to Nome, Alaska, have made him a better money manager.

The famed iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race begins tomorrow with a ceremonial opening in Anchorage -- despite bad weather. Good weather for sled dogs is lots of snow, and this year there isn't any. Temperatures around Anchorage have been in the high 30s. So the race has been rerouted, with the real start Monday in Fairbanks instead of Wasillla. And the 65 mushers and their dogs won't even go through iditarod.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Somewhere up in the heavens, they evidently thought it would be a joke: Let's switch the winters on people and see what happens. We'll sock the mid-Atlantic, where a dusting of snow can cause mass hysteria, with 2 feet-plus in a single weekend. And we'll leave Anchorage with the second-warmest winter since record-keeping began in 1915. Hence, the bizarre turn of events in this normally white and frigid region, which springs to life each winter with cross-country skiing, snowmobile races, sled dog competitions and ice climbing.

It's been a cold, cold world at Ilchester Elementary School the past month or so. At least it has been for the first-graders in Robin Sharp's class. The fourth-graders in Julie Bartel's class might say that for them, it's been somewhat of a dog's life. But that will change tomorrow when the two teachers leave the shelter of the school building for colder climates and "ruff"-er challenges. Bartel and Sharp have been preparing their classes for the teachers' departure to Anchorage, Alaska, where they will participate in the snow-covered state's best-known sporting event: the Iditarod sled dog race.

Baltimore's Dan Dent and three other rookie mushers drove their teams out of the bleak Alaskan outpost of Shaktoolik together yesterday, headed for Koyuk, 50 miles away across treacherous Bering Sea ice. The little convoy of four sleds and 45 dogs was still 229 miles and five checkpoints from the Iditarod Trail race's finish line in Nome. Bunching up before trying to cross the sea ice is a tactic often urged on Iditarod mushers, especially the inexperienced. For 35 miles of the run to Koyuk, the mushers must turn off the beach and cross open sea ice marked only by stakes and spruce boughs stuck into the snow.

For a hot time in a cold town, there's no place like Nome, Alaska. During Iditarod week in March, the gold camp community on the Bering Sea packs in more activities per capita than most cities. It's a safe bet that Nome is the best place in the United States for folks from 21 to 85 to be for fun.Several action scenes go on simultaneously: the glitz and sweat that end the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race (this year's race started Feb. 29 and will end sometime this weekend); around-the-clock partying in the bars by workers from Prudhoe Bay to Dutch Harbor and all frontier settlements in between; and the excitement, rivalry and clan-gathering at the Iditarod Basketball Tournament, which runs today through Saturday.

THIRD-GRADERS at Worthington Elementary School met a sled dog and learned about the famed Iditarod race as part of a program called "Sled Dogs on the Run." Wednesday's event began several months of Iditarod-connected instruction. Schoolchildren will chart the course of the 1,000-plus-mile race and follow its progress on the Iditarod's Internet site. Worthington is one of about 600 schools nationwide participating in the program, said Susan Ay, the school's speech pathologist. Schools must submit a plan and have it approved before they can participate.

"Oh, my God!" It was happening again. Almost exactly a year after severe dog bites to his hands doomed his first attempt to complete Alaska's 1,150-mile Iditarod Trail sled dog race, Dan Dent was in deep trouble. In the darkness, at nearly the same spot on the Big Susitna River where the dog fight had broken out, the 58-year-old Baltimore investment adviser realized that his team of 16 huskies had lost the trail. He halted the team, set his sled's hooks like emergency brakes in the snow, and walked forward, intending to lead the dogs back to the main trail.