Last year Jessie (my wife) and I casually hiked up and ran down Byers. Afterwards I noticed CR on strava might be doable for me on a really good day. Out of curiosity I went to the FKT website to see if Byers was listed - and it had been just earlier that year. No men’s time had been put up yet, however, and I wanted to maybe try to set one.
Being an elementary school teacher in the valley (Grand County), Byers is really special to us. We can see it from town and on our evening trail runs on Granby Ranch’s trail system.
Fast forward to last night, I was trying to decide what I wanted to run today. I looked again to see if the men’s time has been set yet on the website. It still hadn’t.
I went back on strava to look at the CR and it was just over 1:36. Honestly I was very doubtful I could beat that. I don’t feel like I’m at peak fitness and I haven’t really “trained” this year, especially for a fast time on anything… but I thought I’d see how I could.
Goal 1 was to set a personal best as close to 1:36 as possible that I could have as a baseline for later.
Goal 2 was beat the CR.
Goal 3 was go sub 1:30.
To break it I knew I needed to beat the ascent by about 3 minutes because I wouldn’t be able to match the downhill times, but by the summit I had banked about 9 minutes. I think I lost about 1 minute on the downhill but that’s okay with me especially after a Superman dive I had right before I reached the road again…
I know it’s just a matter of time until an elite comes and breaks 1:20… or dare I say 1:15. Regardless, I can’t believe I have an FKT (again, as far as I can tell), let alone an FKT on such a beloved peak in our valley, that I get to stare at everyday!
Disclaimer: My watch from the trailhead sign said 1:28:18 but it looks like the segment starts and ends about a hundred yards up the road which resulted in 1:27:16 on strava so I’m not sure which counts.