ID: A Quick Thank You From Aliy

Aliy has had a good sleep, some good food and good coffee and is now feeling fantastic!

We'll get more stories and pictures soon but in the meantime Aliy just wanted to thank you all for your support; for all your well wishes and love. For everyone that was in Nome or at home watching, everyone who has commented on the blog, Facebook and Instagram and sent emails and messages, or even just liked a post or picture - she really appreciates you all.

For those that didn't get to hear her finish line speech:

"Thank you for welcoming me. You guys are too good to me. That's all, I don't know what else to say".


Screen shot from Insider video

When asked how did she feel about this run? "Good, it went really well. It felt really good, I thought I had a chance for a little while honestly and then by the time I got to Shaktoolik it was pretty obvious Dallas had the team to beat. I kinda tried to, let's see, I threw a Hail Mary in Shaktoolik and apparently it was caught by the other team and intercepted coz it didn't work out quite as well as I wanted it to. It was a good shot."

"My dog team is phenomenal. They were a little bit slow this afternoon - is it afternoon? - because of the heat but by the time we got to the outskirts of Nome all these people cheered them up and they ran like the heck, so it was great. It was a great run. Starting at 40 below and now it's, what, 40 above?

She was asked about the "Hail Mary": "I thought that maybe if I could push my team to catch Dallas going across the pack ice going into Koyuk then maybe I could keep up with him but it turned out that was… I didn't catch him and I ended up having the rest my dogs a little longer anyway."

"I saw you have a moment with your lead dog, did your lead dog help you get through a lot of this?" - "My little red lead dog, his name is Scout, he's seven years old. He's not the most social guy, in the dog yard he's the fun police, he doesn't like a lot of other dogs having fun around him. And he's that way on the trail, he's all business. So, he was getting a little irritated at the rest of the team 'coz I kept telling them to go down the centre of the road. They weren't doing it so he was getting a little irritated. He's a fantastic guy… Scoutee"

More soon.