FKT: Jason McVey - Bartram Trail (NC, GA) - 2025-03-22

Filled with so much gratitude today! After many months of training and borderline obsessing, I finally had a chance to take my shot at the overall Bartram Trail FKT! As early spring goes, weather is a gamble, but it would up being pretty perfect (although it was a bit breezy on the mountain tops 😁). The road/greenway portion in the middle went ok, but in the dark, some of the turns were a little confusing. I also started falling behind pace through the night while I battled nausea. Vommiting and dry heaving every time you try to eat gets tiresome…I was just glad Chad (who was pacing me at the time) wasn’t the type that gets sick when they hear someone else gagging 🤮. Once the sun came back up, my stomach got back on board (mostly), but I realized my watch was not charging and was about to die. Flustered, and way behind where I wanted to be, I briefly thought about calling it at Rabun bald. My crew didn’t even consider that an option, and we pressed on. Chad would charge my watch while I ran and I would record the data through the Strava app on my phone. 
Once me and Carrie hit the top of Rabun bald, it was a 50k to the end. I knew we didn’t have much time to play around, so we got moving the best we could! At the next crew stop, there was Chad with my watch charged and ready to go! Score! From there, it was just pushing until the end. Brain was very fuzzy last few miles with legitimate concern that I would stop to go to the bathroom or something, then turn and go in the wrong direction. I also started hallucinating a highway in the middle of the woods complete with cars, and multiple manmade objects (sheds,houses,trail signs,kiosks) that wound up being dead trees 🤪. In the end, I wound up taking an hour off of the old supported FKT set by Matt Kirk back in 2012. So thankful for my wife and friends that helped make this possible!