Wow, this felt so hard pretty much the entire time. At first I was feeling optimistic about hitting Hillary Gerardi splits, and then after the Notch I just kept losing time, basically a minute per mile. This had me thinking that things weren’t going that well, maybe I didn't have the fitness I thought I did, or just was having a tough day, etc., but now that I’ve had more time to reflect, I feel pretty proud of this effort. Between the recent rainfall refilling all the mud/bogs/puddle/wet roots/etc., frosty bog bridges early on (ate it once), and thick leaf cover that definitely wasn’t there last weekend, and being overdressed and overpacked, I actually feel like I could have gone a minute per mile faster at the same effort given better conditions. For next time, I think the beginning of October is my cutoff for a hard effort.
All in all, though, a beautiful day out in a very wild and special range.
Felt okay going up Speck and hit the top in 56 min or so, but by that point it was painfully obvious that I was overdressed - I suppose I let my injury and subsequent slow walk out in my last attempt influence my choices a bit too much.
The descent down to Speck pond and down the Arm were okay, but pretty precarious with all the water and leaves. A far cry from last weekend when Zach McCarthy and I were bounding down those rocks with way more confidence.
Climbing up to Goose Eye is when things started to feel harder physically, and I am not totally sure why. But I knew my nutrition was okay (even though this batch of homemade gel was decidedly not very good). Fortunately it was also gorgeous with a neat undercast and just enough breeze.
From Goose Eye to the final climbs is now all kind of a blur. For such an amazing route, it is kind of a long stretch that can feel monotonous. Perhaps this was largely due to the leaf cover, mud, and wet roots, I really couldn't spend much time looking away from my feet.
I stopped for water at almost every good opportunity, which I know cost me some time, and I am kicking myself for overdressing and overpacking. Before the last climb up Mt. Hayes, I actually sat down and filtered water, despite being only a handful of miles from the end. The loss of the overall FKT put a definite damper on my motivation for a good stretch, but at this point I started doing more math which told me that the 7:40 and 7:45 marks were potentially on the table still, and I gave what little gas I had left for the climb up Hayes.
The final descent was pretty much the first time all day that I really let myself open up and run fast after a little more math told me it would be very close to 7:45… then put in a big-time effort over the last few miles to reel that one in. Approaching the bridge I knew it was very close, and my exhausted, delirious brain completely forgot to make the split for the lower-level bridge to the trailhead, so I blasted across the upper bridge until I was over the highway realizing I overshot the finish...whoops!
When I finally stopped my watch, I knew it was close, but I had to pull up the FKT website to remind myself what Ben and Ryan had run. I figured my odds were pretty good because 7:45:16 was in the low part of the minute, but to see it come up at 7:45:17 was too funny. After such a long and wild adventure, to be looking at a 1 second difference still blows my mind.
In reality, I think the real difference is 30 seconds. Looking back, I hit the end at 7:44:47 before overshooting over the bridge. But still.
Thanks to Hillary Gerardi Zach McCarthy Neil Clauson for the inspiration and as always Monika Pfistner for the support!
Editor: back traced to 7:44:32