FKT: William Weidman - Gritchell (NC) - 2024-06-29

I can confidently report that this is a seriously rugged and hard route!

I set off at 8:07am from the Profile Trail with Bobby Herrington and Eric Wrenn as my stellar crew for this effort.  Within the first two miles, I took a wrong turn and lost some time, managed to tweak a muscle in my back, and realized that one of my poles was not working.  It set the tone for the long, tough adventure.

The biggest challenge was the heat and humidity.  I was soaking wet head to toe the entire time, which led to some unfortunate chafing.  I also found it difficult to manage nutrition and hydration in the conditions, especially with the longer sections between crew points.  Summer is not ideal timing for this route, but it fit well in the calendar for me and was perfect timing for a hard effort before Tor des Geants.

As others have noted, the MST is a challenging trail, and I often found myself longing for the fire road and more runnable single track portions of the Hellbender 100.  Many sections were seriously overgrown, and the stream crossings were endless.  All of the route but the final climb up Mount Mitchell was new to me, and while I wouldn’t say I ever got lost, I did lose a good bit of time navigating some tricky areas.

There were plenty of great parts also.  Hitting Tablerock right at sunset was magical.  I really enjoyed when Eric and Bobby jumped in to pace.  I chatted with a bunch of people on the trail, and their encouragement and support meant a lot.

We came to Woodlawn about 2 hours behind my planned splits with 25 miles to go.  It did not look good.  After a reset there, I pushed incredibly hard to the end, not stopping for anything.  I knew it would be close as I rolled into Neil’s Creek, and Bobby and I hammered the whole climb up Mitchell.  It was a tough way to finish, but we got it done.  I don’t think I’ve ever had to push so hard at the end of a run. 

A huge thank you to Bobby and Eric.  We had very little margin for error, and you guys nailed it!