The sun had come out more once I got to the top for the Ascent FKT, but it stayed pretty cool for the descent as well and felt nice. The descent is tough and technical with tons of rocks of all sizes and a good amount of steps to hop down. There are also two hills that are fairly difficult on the descent as well! I was pretty warn out from the ascent and did a bit of walking on both of these. Only fell once on the descent, but luckily it was while I was walking uphill on one of the climbs, so it was no problem. Thought I was behind the FKT pace towards the end and pushed hard for the final section from where you pass Road Prong Trail all the way back to the NC/TN state line sign at Newfound Gap! A good day trying for my first FKT!
Like the previous record from Luke, I recorded two separate runs for the Ascent and Descent. Below are the details of the total time for the FKT website admin:
You'll see in the GPX files that there was a 2:23 minute delay in stopping the Ascent and starting the Descent. The times show the following:
12:02:46
12:05:09
So, adding the overall times of the Ascent and Descent and the additional 2:23 minutes of pause between the files, the total is 2:44:40.
Ascent - 1:26:51
Descent - 1:18:18
Pause - 2:23
Total - 2:47:32