Start Time: 10/2/2021 6:37:36 AM
End Time: 10/2/2021 10:56:58 AM
Duration: 4:19:22
Weather at start: 48 deg and clear
Weather at end: 65 deg and partly cloudy
Shoes: Hoka Speed Goat 4
FKT Style: Self Supported
Fuel: 300 calories of Maurten, 700 calories of Tailwind, 3L of liquid
My goal with this attempt was to better the overall FKT record of 4:19:52 set this past spring. I knew this was going to be a tall order, because my previous best was 7 minutes slower. But I decided to give it a shot.
The night before I made 2 hydration drops, one at Marlborough Middle School, and one at the Parmenter Rd crossing. I also made a pacing chart that would have me getting the FKT by a few seconds.
This morning the weather was perfect, and the trails were reasonably dry, even though we have had a very wet summer. They seemed to dry out this week, although there were still some wet spots. I decided to start around 6:30 AM, which was just before sunrise, so I wouldn’t need to carry a head lamp. I went out fast, because I knew on my previous attempts that I started a bit slow, and I could make up time on the early technical sections in Sawink Farm and Cedar Hill. By mile 10 I was over 4 min ahead of the FKT, and I was feeling confident.
Unfortunately, from about mile 10 through the end I slowly gave back almost all the time. With about 5 miles to go, I didn’t think I was going to get the FKT. It wasn’t until there was about ¼ mile left that I knew I had it.
One point of note, this attempt had the distance at 29.4 miles. I think the discrepancy from previous attempts was due to 2 items, first I didn’t make any wrong turns, and second, I used MapMyRun for tracking, although I uploaded the data to Strava. I chose this because occasionally Strava crashes on my phone, and MapMyRun seems more solid, and I didn’t want to risk it today. MapMyRun typically logs my runs shorter than Strava for some reason. I also had the route loaded into GaiaGPS on my phone, although I only looked at it a couple times, as I’m fairly confident in the route now.