Thanks all of you for the enthusiastic comments! Yes, that second wide capture was one of my favorites too, plus the dog closeups. The Z8 gave so many options to select the preferred posture of the dogs.
Last years race that was a little less than 1000 miles had most of the front-runners finish in a little over 9 days, while the last team used more than 12 days. Currently at day 6 the front runner is about half-ways (but many mushers have already spent time on the mandatory 8 and 24 hour rests). Just finishing the race is impressive enough, 9 teams out of 38 total scratched or withdrew last year. So far this year 6 teams had to scratch. Sadly one of those scratches was because of a dog that died (one in the team of the closeup image after the favorite wide shot). All the dogs go though a very careful veterinary check before start and on the checkpoints, but apparently it was missed that the dog was pregnant. More frequent health problems to look out for is due to the sky high energy and food consumption by the dogs that can cause stomach problems and aspiration of stomach content.
This was my first time with Z8 on the dog teams, so I also took it as as bit of a technical learning experience. I used wide area with animal mode for most of them I think, which mostly locked well on the front dogs, given proper operation of the Z8. A little more challenging is it when one get into the middle of the team coming straight on, then there are no specific dog(s) to lock on. But this is a limitation of the operator, not the camera.
Edit: I did a few short handheld video clips, certainly not my strong area, but here is one with the 85mm lens that is not too shaky, uploaded in 4K 60p:
https://youtu.be/mQ-E1pbnRYE?feature=shared
