Today and yesterday Aliy Zirkle has fallen behind to 9th place in the Iditarod, the great Alaskan dog race. She is currently going to the Takotna check point with a time of 4 days 19 hours 6 min.. Aliy is behind Ramey Smyth and Joar Leifseth Ulsom, she has not used her 24 and 8 hour breaks and has 15 of her dogs left in the race after one of her 16 original dogs dropped. The McGrath to Takotna covers about 8 miles of open swamp, muskeg and scattered trees. The rest of the 17 miles you go through a tree line, a river, and the trail is slow going because of fast snow machines cause ruts and moguls.