Today, Bismarck native Heather Siirtola embarks on her third Iditarod dog sled race.

The 37th annual Alaskan race from Anchorage to Nome covers 1,150 miles and kicks off today with the ceremonial 12-mile run. Sunday the trek begins for real.

Siirtola and her team, Hardcore Huskies, will start 63rd in the field of 68 teams that will run the southern route this year.

Dann Stuart, Siirtola's stepfather, said the goal this race is to finish in 10 to 11 days.

In her first race, Siirtola finished in 16 days, and last year finished in 14 days.

Alaska this year is much like North Dakota - it has a lot of snow.

Stuart said during last year's race, temperatures were in the 30s and 40s, and caused problems for dogs on a lot of teams.

"Deep snows across the south slope of the Alaska Range, and on into the interior, have buried the trail in many places," Stuart said.

Late last week, Siirtola had a couple of her dogs at the vet for their blood tests.

Each dog is required to undergo an electrocardiogram and extensive blood testing prior to the race, Stuart said.

"This is the first of a number of veterinary safety nets that the Iditarod has in place in order to provide the very best possible continuum of care for the dogs," he said.

Over the past couple of weeks, Siirtola and the other mushers made their final preparations.

Thousands of pounds of food drop bags were batched, weighed and sorted. Then the Iditarod Air Force began airlifting food, straw and a host of other necessities to checkpoints along the Iditarod Trail.

As of Friday, Siirtola said she had yet to narrow the field of which dogs she would put in the lineup.

"There are about two spots of the 16 still up for grabs," she said.

She planned to go on a couple of runs this week and observe who "steps up."

"Just like the NCAA basketball tournament," she said.

"There are a couple of dogs on the bubble," Siirtola said.

Stuart said he will be blogging on the Hardcore Huskies Web site and will post daily updates.

He said this year for the first time, all mushers will carry a GPS unit that will provide real-time tracking of the progress.

Siirtola's Web site can be found at www.hardcorehuskies.com.

(Reach reporter Brian Gehring 250-8254 or brian.gehring@bismarcktribune.com.)