Started just before 4:45 in the morning with the first mishap happening as I was leaning my bike up and it toppled over breaking one of my bottle cages so I had to strap a bottle to my saddlebag for the day.
I decided to start the ascent up Baker from Berkeley Green on foot to match the previous FKT and the route description even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a self powered day since the trailhead was moved to minimize street parking at the base of Baker.
While doing a dead drop of food in Saranac Lake and then supplying from it each time through the town would technically be eligible to be an unsupported attempt, that felt too much like self-support due to how many times you pass through the town so I opted to keep all food and gear with myself or with my bike at the trailheads at all times.
My order was Baker, Ampersand, St Regis, Haystack, Mackenzie, Scarface and was mostly chosen to put larger biking hills later in the day when I would have less food and water weight.
Within 5 km of biking after Baker, I heard a spoke break but I managed to limp it to Ampersand so that I could do Ampersand and then fix the spoke once the sun was up and I could see.
Changing the spoke wasted about a half an hour. I only had one spare spoke so I rode as smoothly as possible without getting out of the saddle on the hills for the rest of the day to keep the saddlebag from swaying and putting any additional stress on the spokes.
I figured Mackenzie was going to be rough due to how late in the order I put it and I was correct. By that point, my stomach was struggling so I wasn't eating enough and slowed down quite a lot towards the end of Mackenzie and on Scarface as well.
It was a cool day so I only had to fill water twice with a squeeze filter. I think I chose the perfect weekend for it because the leaves were in full fall colour and the scenery was gorgeous all day!