All alone high in the Alaska Range on Monday, cyclist Andrew Kulmatiski was blazing along the historic Iditarod Trail at a pace hard to believe.

Veterans of the Iditarod Trail Invitational human-powered ultra-distance race put him on pace to pedal a fat bike into the Interior village of McGrath in a time faster than that of any dog team in the history of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

A one-time road racer from the state of New York and now a professor of wildland resources at Utah State University, the 42-year-old Kulmatiski is a rookie in the Iditarod Trail Invitational race to McGrath but no stranger to Alaska. He spent several years teaching at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

He was being chased up the trail by defending Invitational champion Kevin Breitenbach from Fairbanks, who made it to McGrath last year in 2 days, 4 hours and 43 minutes. That wasn't far off the time it took early leader Aily Zirkle of Two Rivers to reach McGrath in the dog race last year.

She was there in 2 days, 2 hours and 37 minutes, which looks to be the fastest-ever Iditarod time to McGrath. Some Invitational cyclists may get under that bar this year.

"If they leave Rohn less than 30 hours into the race, which is likely, I'm betting the winner and possibly top five will be sub-two days to McGrath, hours faster than any dog team has ever done it,'' said Sean Grady, a veteran of multiple Invitational races.

Rohn is a famous Iditarod checkpoint. A historic, one-room log cabin in the shadow of the Terra Cotta Mountains, it is a classic resting place for Iditarod travelers who've made the long, tough, 80-mile trek up from Finger Lake on the southern edge of the Alaska Range.

Over those 80 miles, the trail twists and weaves up and down, traverses sometimes-slippery side hills above the Happy River canyon, and climbs almost 3,000 feet. It is a section of trail notorious for smashing sleds and injuring mushers and is part of the reason Iditarod officials decided to move the race start north to Fairbanks this year.

There is very little snow on the Iditarod Trail from Knik north to Nikolai, the first village beyond the Alaska Range. But bad trail for the sled-dog racers is proving a boon for cyclists.

Breitenbach led them into Perrins' Rainy Pass Lodge on Puntilla Lake at an average speed from Knik of 8 mph. He elected to pause at the lodge to rest and refuel in the woodstove-heated cabin that serves as the Invitational checkpoint just up from the lake.

Kulmatiski, who still holds a New York state junior time trial cycling record, chose to charge on through followed by 36-year-old John Lackey from Anchorage. Lackey is an Invitational veteran. He finished fifth in the race in 2013, but he is better known in Alaska's largest city as a road and mountain-bike racer.

He finished second in the Soggy Bottom 100, the state's longest mountain bike race, in 2013 -- and finished third there last year as part of a relay team.

Satellite trackers carried by Invitational racers this year put him about seven miles behind Kulmatiski as the latter began the final climb to the top of Rainy Pass around noon Monday. Both Breitenbach and Jay Petervary from Idaho, a pair of former Invitational champs, were by then also on the trail and chasing across the Happy River valley north of Puntilla.

Not far behind them were Minnesotans Charly Tri, another Invitational veteran, and Ben Doom. Before heading north, Doom told his local newspaper -- the Post-Bulletin -- that he was mainly worried about the cold.

Temperatures along the Iditarod Trail have dipped to 50 degrees below zero in the past, but not this year. The temperature at Rainy Pass on Monday was 20 degrees, and the National Weather Service was forecasting even warmer weather north of the Alaska Range.