Woke up to birds chirping and realised that unlike the past 3 days of heavy rains, thunderstorms and snow, today was a pleasant day! Got through my morning routines, warmed-up well - had a 'Whole Truth - Coffee Cocoa' bar and a banana and jogged down to the start point.
Gear Used -
Nike Trail Shorts
Nike Half Sleeve Trail Tee
Asics Thin Rain jacket
Black Diamond Z Poles
Naked Running Band
Asics Fuji Lite 2
Injinji Toe Socks
Nutrition/Hydration -
2 500ml Decathlon Soft Flasks filled with water
4 Gu Gels - 2 choco outrage and 2 coco sea salt
Started exactly at 6:30 AM and realised that it was cloudy at the top. The first 2K was super smooth. The first real bottleneck was crossing the waterfall at Shiva Cafe. The water levels increased due to the rain and it took me a minute to get across the waterfall and start my climb. The first 2km of the climb was the worst I felt throughout. There was no rhythm whatsoever; one of the Z poles kept unlocking, it started drizzling again and I just was having second thoughts of whether this was worth it. 4.35K in was when I got up the ridge line and saw the might Dhauladhars (Kshitij - In case you are reading this, I bowed to the Dhauladhars twice ;). The next 2K was the best climbing I have ever done in my life. I was coming across overnight campers descending. I was feeding on the energy from the conversations with them. The poles held up - I was on top of my nutrition and hydration. Having said that the last 2K was also slow going due to the trail condition. There were loose rocks/gravel due to the rain, there were streams all over from the melting snow from the top and it just made for slow climbing. But I was loving every bit of it! I realised 2:20-2:25 is a bit far fetched but 2:40-45 still seemed within reach. I used the flattish 700 metres on the top of the ridge to just fold in my poles and fit them in my band, get in more water and consume the third gel instead of running it since I just wanted to calm myself down and go full send on the downhill. PS: I also weirdly lost my way twice on the climb since there were just loose rocks all over only to trace my way back twice resulting in an additional ~300 meters.
I reached the top between 01:52:50 and 01:53:02 and having hiked this downhill last week, I was confident of running down to McLeodganj in 50-52 mins, essentially a 2:40-45 finish. To my horror, the first km of the downhill was barely runnable. It was either loose and wet rocks or fresh/wet/slippery leaves. The rain/snow over the past 3 days clearly took a toll on the trail. Normal, I would have lost it leading to a sob story/pity party. But today was different, I was surprisingly calm. I was just grateful that the weather cleared up enough and let me do this. Most importantly, I was like I anyway have to descend to home so might as well just keep at it. Eventually gained enough rhythm to start running downhill. 3 stops compounding to a loss of 5 to 7 minutes (4 minutes for 2 mule trains and 3 minutes for a horror attack by two German shepherds while the lady running up with them was busy panting and being breathless - Thankfully ran into a trail runner 5 minutes later with whom I had a wholehearted conversation for 40" in total while running down which calmed me down) later I reached Gallu and started running down the jeep road. 12K in 02:40:12 and with only 3K of super runnable downhill left, I was cocky enough to already smile/laugh thinking I have a 2:52 in on a day with bad weather and bad trail conditions. But oh man, what a leveller, running as a sport is <3. 500 metres later on the stony downhill to Dharamkot, without any sort of warning my left quad cramped leading to a tumble on all fours. Took a minute to get my bearing right and see if I knocked up a knee (which I thankfully didn't) and then got up to run again only for my left quad to seize again. I was just laughing at myself thinking I will be that runner who had 19 minutes to run 2.5K and didn't make it coz his Quad cramped. But thankfully, my brain was fully functional, I took out a pole - used that as my de-facto left leg while hoping down on the right leg sideways while consuming all the water that I had left. 14K in 2:55:00, I finally reached the road downhill just praying that my quad holds up and it somehow miraculously did and let me run the downhill as fast as possible while the quad was twitching/saying hello.
03:00:43 later we reached the place where we started from and I was left speechless. All I could do was pause my watch and bow down on the ground while peeps around looked at me as if I was some maniac clearly clueless of my morning adventure.
Final Thoughts - Major gratitude to Kshitij for documenting this FKT. I would be the first one to accept that this still is a super soft FKT. I feel like I myself should get in a 2:25-2:30 on a better trail day and weather day but for now I gave it my all and I am content with it.