I ran this from the Purgatory Trailhead this morning (7/15/2013) in 7:58:34 car-to-car, starting at 6:04am. These Weminuche runs that end on an uphill climbing out of the Animas River canyon are tough when you give yourself an on-the-fly, voluntary time-goal (8hr in this case).
Splits:
Animas River bridge - 0:37
Needle Creek bridge - 1:26
New York Creek bridge - 1:47
Twin Lakes/Columbine Pass sign - 2:36:30
Eolus summit - 3:45:30
N. Eolus summit - 3:55:30
Twin Lakes - 4:12
Sunlight summit - 4:45
Windom summit - 5:11
Twin Lakes/Columbine Pass sign - 5:46
New York Creek bridge - 6:15:30
Needle Creek bridge - 6:28:30
Animas River bridge - 7:14:30
Purgatory TH (pavement) - 7:58:34
So as to make a more aesthetic route (more of a loop), once I got into the basin and was on the trail heading up toward Twin Lakes I left the trail and scrambled up the southeast ridge of Eolus (you could keep it 4th Class but I was taking the most direct lines I was comfortable with, so had plenty of low-5th moves), and then went across the Catwalk to N. Eolus. This rock was surprisingly similar to Pikes Peak Granite. From N. Eolus I descended directly down its east face, past the small lake below Glacier Point, and then continued down the scree chute east that goes directly to Twin Lakes. I had a couple small route-finding issues near the summit of Sunlight (I've never done these peaks before), descended the same way, and then scrambled directly up Windom's NW face before descending its West ridge and eventually connecting back into the Twin Lakes trail leading back down to the Needle Creek trail. All in all, the long running approach and de-proach wasn't nearly as monotonous as I'd feared and the whole outing was a blast. A nice mix of actual running and proper scrambling.