Sass and Seavey finish their Yukon 8

 Brent Sass and Dallas Seavey have finished their mandatory 8 hour rests on the Yukon and are back on the trail. It's not exactly a cat and mouse game at this point, and they both seem to be solidly in the first and second positions with not a lot of room or threat of shake up without some of Mother Nature's intervention. Dallas took his mandatory in the Yukon Village checkpoint of Nulato, coming in at just after Midnight. Brent Sass, right on script, ran all the way to Kaltag and declared his 8 there, getting in just after 2:30am AKST. 

Sass has picked up all of the "first to" awards as he travels down the trail and looks to be the first to the Coast as well. Dallas is a good 3 hours behind him, not completely insurmountable... but not likely without Brent making a mistake and pushing the dogs a little too hard to where they slow or stop completely. All indications point so far to Brent managing his race extremely well, he's learned quite a bit since his team's premature stop in White Mountain in 2016.

The chase back began arriving in Nulato as Dallas was taking off. Jessie Holmes was first in and is running impressive speeds, but even the musher acknowledges that he can't keep up his pace forever. He's cutting rest and that never helps a team maintain the speed it would take to overtake and pick off the lead teams. It will be interesting to see how Holmes plays his cards from here on out. Richie Diehl was next followed by Ryan Redington and Aaron Burmeister. A quick glance at the GPS as I get ready to post this shows them all resting in Nulato except Burmeister who has chosen to continue (it looks like anyway).

In the back of the pack there's a little shake up in standings with Kaylin Davis leading the trio of ladies and Yuka Honda bringing up the rear. Lisbet Norris and her team of Siberians rests between them. The teams have run together most of the race helping each other through blizzards and other hazards. 

Greg Heister just reported on Insider that the winds are so strong between Kaltag and the coast that flights are grounded and Insider can't get to Unalakleet. A storm was supposed to blow in on the West Coast last night and it sounds like it's on schedule. The race ain't over.