Just finished an older book by Gary Paulsen, Winterdance, about his experience training for and running his first Iditarod. At the time he had a lot of experience as an outdoorsman in winter conditions, some experience working with sled dogs (but not racing them), and very little experience with Alaska. (The book was written in the early 1990s but takes place in the early 1980s, when the Iditarod was only about ten years old and much more casually managed than it is today).
There are some very adventurous passages, but also some very funny ones, especially during the training sequences. My favorite was when he lost control of the dog team on the way out of Anchorage to start the race and ended up going through someone's backyard with a full dog team, dog sled and musher.