I wanted to die from the start on this one. I had planned on doing the grafton notch loop today until about 4am this morning when thunderstorms were looking menacing. Switched over to Miles Knob which I had done once before, and was reminded of by Luke Spooner, who ran a cracking time in early July.
I had remembered this as a pretty pure run so the 1800ish feet of vert in the first 3 miles was a shock to the system. The ridiculously heavy and sweaty t shirt did not help my mood. However, I was really pleased as I turned onto the Red Rock Trail around 40:20.
This ridge is objectively fun, but I had really busted my legs on the climbing and was feeling a little nauseous, likely from the vicious humidity. Ergo, I did not have fun. I felt pretty good about how I ran the downs, but any climbing really sapped the energy from me. I got turned around on the two open ridge spots. For anyone doing this loop next, when the trail becomes more exposed, it turns really fast. The first exposed spot has a quick right turn, the second exposed spot has a quick left turn. Based on a rudimentary look at the course I likely lost 1:30-45 minutes on those. Such is life when you don't scout out a route. Nonetheless, I turned left onto the Great Brook trail at about 1:24:40, slightly up on Luke, but I had definitely given a bit of time back.
The Great Brook descent was a little hairy. My heart rate was really really high I was just sort of bouncing down. I had known that Luke had really crushed this descent but I felt like was topping out with the heat, but still gave up a minute on this section. When I hit the fire road I just wanted this to be over. I knew there was a decoy fire road with about 1.5 miles to go, and I hit this spot at around 1:43:30, feeling great about my chances to finish around 1:53. I beared to the right as I had remembered doing before, but about .25 miles later I looked at my watch which told me I was way off course. I was confused and certainly not thinking super clearly, so I bushwhacked down to the place my watch thought was correct which, naturally, was the decoy fire road. For those going out on this next, if you pull the gpx file off of the fkt site, it tracks the decoy fire road that bears left which about 1.5 to go. This is not the way people have been running it, nor is it how the instructions lay it out. In short, that gpx file isn't right in that spot and I fell in the trap, and based on a rudimentary analysis of the Strava tracks, probably lost about 2 minutes and added about .1 miles
Luckily, I was pretty close to the Great Brook gate anyway where I dropped my pack and ran the last .6 pretty hard, narrowly beating Luke's time.
I was really pleased with the effort today in the heat/humidity, which is what matters most to me. It actually felt like I raced something and had me considering bailing 20 minutes in. However, the navigation issues were frustrating for sure because I feel like the effort should've been at least 3-4 minutes faster. Such is life. Luke’s effort on the downs was exceptionally stout. Someone who can climb the first 3 miles in 40 minutes and still bomb Great Brook could take it under 1:50. There's plenty of time out there for whoever wants to give it a go!