Dear Aily, Way to go! That was an awesome race! We were impressed how you kept going even though a lot of your dogs got sick and had to be left at different checkpoints. We were really impressed that you cared for your dogs when they were sick and hurt, and how you stayed at the checkpoints for longer than usual to rest your dogs.

You also improved your position very quickly after being near the end of the starting order. You did a very good job considering you didn't know the trail well and you had never covered the entire race before. It was also surprising how well you did, and the speed that you went with, the difficult terrain and the storms that hit you on the coast. We think that you had a really awesome race and we were impressed that you improved so rapidly and ran the race so well. Way to go Aily! You were awesome!

We have done a lot to track your progress in the Iditarod. We were very enthused about how far you came in such a short time, and we e-mailed you everyday to congratulate you on your progress. When we got your replies, we told the whole school about where you were. We also went to the Iditarod® web sites to track your progress. As well we made a map of the Iditarod Trail and posted it on the hall bulletin board along with other information we collected about the race. We also had a grade one student in to do a presentation on a book she had read about Balto. She had been to visit Balto's statue in New York as well. We thought she did a wonderful job!

It was also really neat that you won the Yukon Quest 2000.

Congratulations on how well you did in the Iditarod Dogsled Race! We all really encourage you to run the Iditarod race next year, as we know that you will do extremely well. KEEP IT UP AILY!!!!!!!

Your grade six fans
Ms. Sveen's Class
Class 6A Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School