I began my journey at 9:19 am March 9th, 2019 at the intersection of 5th Ave and Bigelow Blvd after parking my bike at Pitt’s Cathedral of Learning. The inaugural fatass in 2018 began a few miles south under the Birmingham bridge, but without a car I didn’t want to deal with a longer bus or bike ride so I started further up on the loop.
I should’ve written this earlier to remember more details, but oh well. The day was a mix of sun and clouds with temperatures between 50-70, perfect for a hard effort. For nutrition I had a mix of nuts, Honey Stinger energy chews, some expired free Hammer drink mix, and ~2 liters of water. There are several convenience stores along the route, but I didn’t stop for anything, making this an unsupported effort.
A specific choice I made that I should mention is that whenever the stairs were just a sidewalk adjacent to a paved road (mostly in the Southside Slopes) I would usually run on the road to minimize the very taxing movements required by running up and down stairsteps 2 at a time. I’m not sure where my fastest mile was, but it sure felt great to loosen up on the flat out-and-back section to the bridge where the inaugural running of the route began.
All in all this was a great day and my second tour of this route (I bought some Turner’s tea during my first effort in December 2018 and don’t feel like logging it as an FKT given this latest effort was faster and unsupported). I can probably run this route faster because later that day after some recovery McDonald’s and beer I biked ~11 miles roundtrip back down to the Southside to mosh around at a rap concert.
Links:
1: Suunto Movescount route verification
2: Strava route verification
3: Original record (that I could find) of route I followed for attempt
4: Tony Deluca's blog post from March 2018 detailing the inaugural running of the route
5: My personal Instagram post about running the route