I left from Broken Top bottle shop a few minutes after 10am, on probably the clearest day we've had in Bend for a while. I wanted to make this attempt about a month earlier, but was thwarted by the fires that broke out around Mt. Bachelor following a lightning storm. I was joined on the first ride by my good friend, Sean Watkins, who volunteered to shoot some video and hang as long as he could. The ride up was smooth and I feel like I paced it well. I think there's room for improvement on this, even with just a slight bit of rain to firm up the trails, which are incredibly soft and dusty this time of year. My plan was to carry all of the liquid I'd need to get to the run, complete the run, and then filter one bottle at the creek crossing where Met-Win meets North Fork on the way down. I think my plan was solid, but things started to go sideways when I forgot to move my picky bars from my bike pack to my run pack. Running up Broken Top I started to feel incredibly hungry, but pushed on, motivated to tag the summit and make it back to my bike, where I had the bars. On the run, I was planning to meet my other friend, Nate Youngs mid-trail so we could do the summit block together. I'd run up Broken Top once before, but we skipped the summit as it was very windy. So this would be our first summit and going together felt safest. Unfortunately, there was a bit of miscommunication on the meeting point, and I spent about 15 minutes going up and down on the trail, trying to decide whether Nate was up trail or down trail from where I was. I ultimately pushed up, and we connected at the saddle. The ridge was smooth going, but I was really starting to feel the fatigue from the ride, the bonk, and the extra back-and-forth to find Nate. The summit was simpler than I thought, and we paused for a photo, a high five, and a little "just look at it" before heading back down. We took the skree, which seems to be kosher for this attempt, and in my mind, probably safer than descending the ridge. I followed the previous FKT holder's off-trail route and made it back to the bike with more walking than I'd like and some pretty dizzy sensations due to lack of fuel. I immediately at a bar, immediately felt very sick, but made the transition to riding and just crossed my fingers I'd start to feel better once the carbs got into my system. I was blessed with a nearly-clean run down Mrazek, only seeing one guy on a gravel bike coming up. Again, I think this route could be done faster with some moisture on the trails, but I was stoked with the Met-Win + Mrazek descent, it might be my favorite in town. Riding the road up from Shevlin park and to the bottle shop was ROUGH at the end of all this, but I knew I was going to be within a couple minutes of going sub-7 hours, so I kept the pressure on and rolled up to the bottle shop with a few minutes to spare.
Epic day, epic route, couldn't have asked for much more.