Andrew and I had a super fun day running around the hills near Sedona! Always love any excuse to explore the trails around there. We began at the Sterling Pass TH to get the road run out of the way early when there were very few cars, then continued clockwise to do the biggest climb first. It was a lovely cool morning to start off.
It only really heated up during our second climb, to Brin's Mesa. That was slightly challenging because we hadn't pegged that as a big obstacle, but it is steep and exposed and we were glad when it was done.
The rest of the loop went great, including some helpful cloud cover on our way up and over Sterling Pass. There wasn't much running happening on the final technical descent but that was OK because then we were done.
We were "supported" because John dropped us off at our starting spot and then drove a mile down to the North Wilson TH where I picked up my pack, then he came with us up the first climb. Otherwise we carried everything ourselves and didn't see John again until the finish.
There is a Strava segment for this route, but I can't see very far down the leaderboard to tell whether anyone has done it as a mixed gender team.
Regardless, we really enjoyed the experience and we were happy to be out there getting in some excellent training with awesome views!