Tori and I decided we would go for the Vermont Lowest to Highest FKT today; We'd been planning on it for a bit and scouted Laura Cowles the other day to see how the trail was doing (it improved dramatically in the last few days). We drove to Underhill in the morning and left my truck, Carpooled to Burlington, dropping a Bear Can along the way with our resupply food and water. We did separate attempts and didn't run together, but used the same logistics for our attempts. After dropping the bear can in a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, which I made jokes to Tori about saying that I would bail there and just drink coffee and wait for her, we headed off to the great city of Burlington.
We scouted a little cut through from the shore that I planned to take and Tori wanted nothing to do with. Went for a warm up run, scavenged the local businesses looking for a public restroom, got our stuff together and said goodbye at the car. I waited around to watch Tori start from her chosen spot of "touching the water at Lake Champlain". I then moseyed over to my chosen spot, which started with the most heinous, steep bushwhack through a homeless encampment path, the steepest part of the day, and I was off.
I spotted Tori somewhere around mile 4.5 on a Bike path in Essex, We were going different paces, so it was a short lived moment, I didn't see her again until the Summit of Mansfield.
I had wanted to take advantage of the road running and my current marathon training fitness and bang out really consistent miles to the bottom of the real climbing. I got to the Bear Can sometime during mile 12, swapped out my bottles, grabbed some fresh untapped gels, and got going only stopping for under a minute. I got to the bottom of Mountain Road ~mile 20, over 30 minutes up on the previous FKT and a bit ahead of my projected timing. I plodded up to the winter parking area, where my truck was parked, swapped out of my VaporFlys and into some crisp trail runners, grabbed my poles and threw on a different running belt with a windbreaker and a buff. I then boosted up to the TH and then up Laura Cowles, which is in ridiculous good shape for April. Not a speck of mud. Just some water, rocks, lovely trail, and a bit of weird snow/ ice on the final .25 miles (?). Definitely not all time fast conditions for a trail that climbs 1700' in under a mile, but it was plenty fast enough. I got to the summit of Mansfield at 3 hours 22 minutes and 10 seconds.
I doddled for a few minutes, laid down in the sun with my windbreaker and buff on and waited to see Tori top out some where just a few seconds above 4 hours; also beating the previous overall time by a strong margin and establishing a stout new Women's time. We had a bit of a pity party on the summit as we complained about our sunburns (only on the right sides of our bodies) and our smashed legs. We sat for a few minutes and then proceeded to hobble down Sunset ridge trail (which is also in stellar shape for this time of year), and slowly descended Big Manny.
Sadly, my April break is now over and I must go pretend to be a normal person in a public school again. Until the next adventure!
-Dusk