Climbing legs were not there and body/lungs felt pretty shitty. Pretty similar to Brad’s attempt yesterday. Got up to the Melakwa lake a few min slower than I wanted (50:46) and bonked all the way up to the false summit. Seriously stopped for some breathers. From there I collected myself and put in a solid effort to still get to the summit in a fast enough time to give myself a chance on the descent. Hit the flat rock at the back of the summit at 1:33:00, 3 min behind Uli when he ran 2:40 a few weeks ago. Knew I needed a real fast descent but was struggling a bit with footing. Claves had a few twitches too. Got to the lake from the summit in 30:08, 2 min slower than Uli did. From there I knew I had to make up lots of time. The descent from the lake was rocky and slow and with about 10 minutes until the 2:40 mark I finally just stopped looking at my watch and went all out. Truly came down to the last mile. Descended in 66:00, with a split of 33:52 from the Melakwa lake to the TH.
[Admin note: Uli Steidl apparently ran this about 1 min slower on August 2, 2020, but this was not reported to us.]