*this is not part of the report but an explanation. My garmin watch battery died 0.35 miles from the finish. I attempted to turn the watch back on and restart but it didn't work. So the last 6 minutes of the run are unrecorded by the Garmin. I continued to finish the run and took a picture at the finish with the Profile Trail Head sign in the background with the time and date showing on my phone. The entire track is on the Strava file minus the last 0.35 mile. I started exactly at 8:00am and and finished at 9:40 am on my phone. Because there was no seconds showing, I rounded my overall time to 25:41, still well below the previous FKT of 26:33.
Report:
Stone Father is route that has been on my "to do" list for over two years. Having spent years running on the MST in the area I have been on most of the route and was very familiar with the trail. I decided it was time. On Saturday morning, 10/29 at exactly 8:00 am I started the adventure. The day was cloudy and overcast. Temps in the 40-50's. Perfect day for running. I was taking the adventure on more or less solo on the trail for the entire run. My good friend Jason was my crew, following along all day and night meeting me at trail crossing. I did have one friend join for about 8 miles of pacing from miles 78-85 ish. Other than that it was just me on the trail.
The day went by rather uneventful. I got through the first half in the light of day and was feeling decent, but not great. As the day turned to night things got pretty interesting. I was beginning to feel the long day of miles on the legs, and the weather changed. There was dense fog throughout the entire night. This made for less than ideal running conditions. I was having a really hard time seeing the trail. My headlight was worthless with all the fog, making it near impossible to see much more than a few feet in front of me. The trail was also covered very thickly with leaves. I spent a good amount of time during the night running making sure I stayed on the trail, which seemed invisible at times. Luckily I had the route downloaded on my Garmin Fenix 7 watch as well as my Gai app on my phone. It saved several times helping me find the trail when I wasn't quite sure where it was. The night running rough and I suffered a bit throughout the night.
The last 7 miles of this run are the hardest, having a 3.5 mile 3000 ft climb to get up to Calloway peak and then a 3 mile descent to the finish. I knew I had lost a big part of my time cushion I had built up on the first half during the night due to the weather and struggling a little bit more physically than expected. As I hit the base of the peak, I knew I had to get up as fast as I could, because I knew the run down would hurt. Descents were rough with quads that had blown up. I made it up surprisingly well. As I prepared myself for the painful descent, I knew if I could descend well the FKT was within site. So I started down Profile Trail as fast as I could go. About 1/2 mile into the descent I ran into a 400 lb black bear about 20 yards off the trail. That helped me pick up the pace a little bit. I was pleasantly surprised when my legs didn't really hurt running downhill. I hit the bottom and ran thealst flat ish mile to the trailhead knowing i had the FKT well in hand. All in all a great day on the trail. The course and the day was honestly much harder than I expected it to be. This was such a new experience running this distance outside of a race setting, a first for me. This is an amazing route that i hope more people will get out and attempt!