It should be noted that this FKT is also a strava segment and I finished that segment in 42:57. I started my watch a few yards & about 10 seconds before I reached the start & it took me about 10 seconds to stop it after I reached long path as my watch locks on me. The watch time is thus 43:21. I’ll take either time.
Conditions were relatively dry & sunny with a light bit of humidity. I ran with only my vest filled with 3 500 ml flasks as I was planning on continuing onto other trails after completing this section of trail, but I didn’t use them during this section. The trail is marked with blue tags & starts off the Red Cross trail. Thus, I ran up the Red Cross trail (saving as a separate run) to get to the trail start.
Beech trail is definitively single track with some technical rocks and roots, but nothing terrible. There’s one big climb about 2/3 of the way in, but the rest is light up & downs. The hardest part for me was finding the trail at the road crossings. It wasn’t well marked there & the trail turns & goes back into the forest instead of crossing the road or kind of follows the road in multiple spots or has unmarked paths that split off from it to go to the road. I lost time here. It ends at Long Path trail. Both Red Cross & Long Path are more technical and overgrown than Beech Trail. I didn’t take any photos while actually running Beech trail as I was looking for a good time but I took photos on long path & Red Cross, which I continued onto after completing this to get a 10 mile loop in. My legal name is Anastasia but I typically use my nickname Anna.