Niki and I decided to tackle the out-and-back roller coaster after hearing how much vert it had! This was taken at a conversational pace and establishing the female out-and-back FKT for this route. Our friend Craig also came along as a "pacer" who was tricked into doing 7,000+ feet of climbing! Sorry Craig. We took the north-south-north version, primarily so that we could stop at the nearby brewery afterward and be closer to home at the end, but after seeing the trail we think the south-north-south would be a faster variation. That's because the "official" rollercoaster is only a subset of the FKT route and is at the northern side. There was an awesome long runnable descent to the southern terminus of the FKT route, and having that be at the end of the day would be really nice.
Conditions were humid and unseasonably warm. We were sweating more than predicted but aside from one hill right before a water stop where both of us bonked a little bit, we "ran" pretty strong the whole time and had a lot of fun. The clouds parted for us to see the vista near our end point. The southern portion of the trail was pretty quiet except for a few thru hikers, but the northern portion had lots of families going out for hikes, especially around midday.
While it's not the rockiest trail I've ever seen, it's certainly pretty rocky, and there are a good number of descents that aren't super runnable or are in a gray area. It had rained earlier in the week and there were portions with a lot of slippery wet rocks and boards.
We parked Niki's car at a lot that's about 7 miles in, so we were able to hit it to replenish our water and food at miles 7ish and then again at 20ish, which worked out nicely.
If I were going for an all out speed run of this course I would definitely go on a dry day in the spring when it's still chilly in the mornings and there aren't leaves everywhere.
Overall it was a blast and I look forward to seeing how much our time can be improved on!