EAGLE, Alaska Yukon Quest mushers Lance Mackey and Hugh Neff plowed their way into Circle City, Alaska early this morning, arriving around 2:00 Alaska time.

'I'm smiling from ear to ear right now,' Mackey said from Circle. 'My team is at the top of their game right now, just the way I imagined. Nobody wants to go too hard, but it's happened.'

Mackey said musher Sam Perrino of Yellowknife set the quick pace on the first day.

'Nobody was ready for that,' said Mackey. 'And it's starting to show on some teams.'

Perrino, who was once hours ahead of the rest of the pack, has since quit the race, but the frontrunners are still travelling at breakneck speeds.

'I want to be one of those front guys, so I'm not going to let them get very far ahead. I'll do what everyone else is doing, if that's what it takes to stay in the front,' said Mackey, who wants to someday win both the Quest and the Iditarod, like his brother, Rick.

Mackey said he has the fastest team in the race, and Neff agrees.

'It's just a matter of keeping them together,' said Mackey, a 34-year-old rookie.

Neff, 37, said that while Mackey's team has speed, his has experience. Half of Neff's dogs have run the Quest at least four or five times.

'They know what Eagle Summit is all about,' said Neff about the steep, 1,105-metre (3,685-foot) climb mushers must make after leaving the next checkpoint, Central. That tough stretch has been known to break teams in the past, he said.

The Tennessee native, who now divides his time between Skagway and Whitehorse, said he didn't mean to make a push for the front of the pack; it just sort of happened.

'I've learned in the past that the last time I tried to race starting in Circle, I froze my left foot. So I'm not going to push it,' said Neff, adding he won't make any drastic moves for two days.

'If I don't, I won't beat Lance. His team is much more powerful than mine.'

Both are planning to finish without dropping any more dogs.

'We've got such a groove now,' said Neff. 'They run, eat and sleep, just like us.'

Yukoner William Kleedehn and Alaskan David Dalton came in next, two hours later. Dalton, 47, went right to sleep without eating.

Kleedehn, 45, said he's starting to gradually build up his team's speed. He'll make a break when he thinks his team can handle it.

The night before coming third into Circle, Kleedehn told reporters he didn't think he had what it took to win, after dog injuries and illness plagued him.

'If that didn't happen, I'm sure this race would have shaped up differently,' Kleedehn said, thinking he might have been in the lead all the way.

Kleedehn's bad luck at the beginning has since changed.

'My remaining leaders just have to work overtime,' he said about keeping up. He has one female in heat.

Kleedehn's friend, Gerry Willomitzer, who was second into Slaven's Cabin, about 100 kilometres back up the trail, had major problems with his sled before Circle City.

'The runner broke right off,' said Kleedehn, who didn't stop to help him.

Earlier, Willomitzer and Kleedehn were travelling together. Willomitzer helped Kleedehn with sick dogs, lending him medications before Dawson.

After the halfway point, Willomitzer left Kleedehn in his dust when he continued to have problems. Now, the tables have turned.

On their way into Circle, Kleedehn, Neff and Mackey got lost.

'We couldn't find the trail markers along the river, so we stopped every hour and snacked the dogs,' said Mackey, adding their meandering cost them a couple of hours.

'The trail was very windblown,' said Kleedehn. 'I was zigzagging around all this jumble ice.'

One of the other frontrunners, rookie Jon Little, got into Circle around 6:28 a.m. and left 12 minutes later to retake the lead.

Mackey and Neff headed out after their rest, an hour behind Little. The pair left one minute after another.

When the first teams arrived into Circle, several race officials and media were stranded back in Eagle, as poor weather conditions made it impossible for planes to land in Circle, a town of 84 people.

Eagle can only be reached by plane, snowmachine or dog sled in the winter.

Media were able to get one reporter into Circle last night so information could be fed back to those left behind. That reporter had to fly into Fairbanks and drive the four hours back to Circle City last night.

This year, mushers are moving along the trail at record speeds.

'When Hans (Gatt) won it two years ago, he came in (to Dawson) at the same time I did,' said Dawson City's Peter Ledwidge, who is way behind the rest of the pack. 'Man, it's a really fast race.'

Ledwidge came into Dawson at 1:12 a.m. last Friday.

Whitehorse musher Sebastian Schnuelle, who is near the front of the pack, said the quick race is likely why Perrino and Bruce Langmaid of Ontario dropped out.

'They were just frustrated that they were so far behind the leaders, but any other year, they would have been considered to be moving at a fairly good pace,' said Schnuelle.

Frank Turner believes things are zipping along because of this year's high calibre of mushers.

'There are a lot of really, really, really good teams. People are training seriously and are committed to what they are doing,' he said. Before, Turner added, there used to be a wider range in the quality of the mushers.

'I think I'm moving along pretty good. And those guys ahead are moving a lot faster.'

Many mushers say it's the well-groomed trails on the Yukon side that have moved the race along so quickly.

Both Catherine Pinard and Willomitzer say race officials on the Canadian side have done a really good job of marking the trail. Prior to the Quest, 100-plus Canadian Rangers worked on the trail for three weeks.

The Rangers, the eyes and ears of the Canadian military in the North, had to use their personal equipment to mark the Yukon trail and have been doing so since 1992. They've travelled four hours ahead of the first musher to make sure the trail was good to go.

'So we never saw a dog team,' said Capt. Conrad Schubert. There was one exception when Perrino pulled into Carmacks four hours ahead of the other mushers. None of the race officials expected to see a team in so quickly.

Upon Perrino's arrival, several Rangers jumped on snowmachines to clear the next stretch of trail.

When Kelley Griffin and Pinard scratched in the remote Scroggie Creek dog drop, halfway between Dawson and Pelly Crossing, Rangers had to use snowmobiles to pull their dog sleds out of the wilderness. The two women and the dogs were flown to Dawson.

Sometimes the Rangers have come across two-metre ice walls along the trail, meaning they have to create a new route through the bush.

In Dawson, a Ranger debriefed the mushers about the trail to come before the Alaskan side.

'There is no pack ice, no glaciers and no overflow,' said the Ranger about the trail that follows the Yukon River.

On the Alaskan side, the American Summit, known for treacherous snowdrifts, had trails marked better than ever before, said race marshal Mike McCowan.

Frontrunner Mackey said while coming up the summit, there were markings warning about troublesome spots.

'But I never came to any bad parts,' he said about that summit. 'I haven't seen any bad spots this entire race. It's been a hell of a trail.'

That, of course, altered after Eagle.

While travelling to Fairbanks, mushers have the opportunity to stay in several cabins along the way, something that frontrunner Little said he's looking forward to.

'I am sick of camping on the trail. I've done too much of it,' he said.

Little was sure to get directions to the cabins from the race marshal before leaving Dawson, as he spent nine hours looking for the one in Scroggie. Neff and Mackey scoffed at this behind Little's back.

'The next cabin I sleep in will be my own,' Mackey said in Eagle.

But after coming into Circle, Mackey and Neff were talking about all the pancakes they were eating at the various cabins they'd stopped in.

Toward the end of the race, most mushers like to become quite secretive about their whereabouts. Some will camp off the trail, just outside of checkpoints, so others won't see them.

Hiding out enables mushers to pass their competition when least expected, like Little did in Circle.

The weather is expected to be warm coming into Fairbanks.

'I wish we could avoid it, because the trails might soften up and it will get ugly,' said Willomitzer.

The race may be won as early as Wednesday.