Write up from strava:
(Videos also on strava)
1:34:54 round trip
Super stoked to be able to pull this one off after having my eye on it for a while. Katahdin, and all of Baxter State Park for that matter, is such a beautifully rugged and wild place and sums up a lot of what makes Maine special to me. Very grateful to have the health and fitness to move this fast up here.
Felt pretty good out the gate but made sure to pace conservatively since I knew the upper section of Abol gets super steep. Was making good time but got slowed up a lot by how technical that section was. Had a tiny bit of route finding issues and banged my shin bad once. Crested that section onto the push across Tablelands at 45:39 so I knew the ascent CR was in reach but barely ended up getting it, as I was way slower on the final section than I hoped. Ranger cabin to summit sign in 58:44. Was pretty destroyed from the ascent and knew I had a couple minutes buffer time on the descent to still get the roundtrip CR, so I started off kinda slow down the tablelands. Someone with a lot less to live for could smash a good bit off this descent for sure. I ended up losing about 40 seconds to the previous record holder(s) here but was able to make almost all of that up on the descent of Abol trail (across both the super technical steep part and less technical fast finish, not sure which part was where I made up the time). Ended up with a pretty bad blood blister on my right toe, shinned my knee once, and scraped my arm on a tree branch on the way down but other than that no major injuries or falls. Made it back to the ranger cabin in 1:34:54 elapsed time.
Challenging Dan Curts to come smash this time and Jordan Fields to come back and give this another crack!
Fueling/Gear was as follows: Maurten Bicarb 20g 2ish hours before the start, 100mg caffeine via spearmint rungum, 2x~250ml flasks with ~30g carbs each that I finished fully by the summit, ran in janji half tights (where I stored my flasks in the side pockets), a singlet, terignota socks, VJ lightspeed shoes (without insoles), and Oakley Meta glasses borrowed from Sam Laverdiere 🙏.
Conditions were pretty much 100% ideal today, wbgt of like 55-60, perfect visibility, not too much traffic on the way down, almost perfectly dry trail, and not much leaf litter covering stuff. Only could’ve asked for slightly more wind and cooler temp to start.