Had a plan to start early knowing the day was going to be sunny and well into the 70's, didn't happen and left the clock tower at 7:31am. It was my first time on most of these trails and having not studied the route much(or at all) I didn't have a time goal and instead tried to keep the effort steady. Didn't check my time until I was 5 hours in.
The route is great with a ton of variety and really intuitive to follow, only a couple of small backtracks after missed turns. I started with a liter of water and first filled at the blackwoods campground fountain (assume this is ok for unsupported?) The first half of the route went smoothly with the bulk of the vert and technical terrain packed in the back half. Filled water at two different streams before running completely dry at the start of the climb towards Cadillac, regretted not having a filter crossing bubble rock pond. Took things pretty slow on the climb not wanting to blow up without water and walked it up to the fountain on top of Cadillac. Summit of Cadillac was the first time sense the top of beehive that the trails were busy, slowly worked back into a real pace passing everyone getting out of their cars. The descent from Cadillac was harder than I expected, my quads being pretty destroyed from the early fast road sections, was mostly just trying to stay on my feet as I closed in the last miles.
Jeremy, Tony, and Dylan put together an awesome route and finishing in downtown was a great change from the typical trail head parking lot. Definitely worth the trip to MDI.