One hundred and ninety-eight episodes later, Alyssa Godesky returns to discuss her most recent mind-bending feat: setting the overall supported FKT on the New Hampshire 4,000 Footers.
That sneaky northern New England state boasts 48 peaks above 4,000 feet, and speed trips for tagging them all in one push go back to at least the 1970s. With the Adirondack 46 and the Long Trail supported FKTs under her belt, Godesky realized the NH 48 was the last big northern east coast challenge left for her to tackle.
Three days, eight hours, and 56 minutes of driving and running around the Whites later, Godesky met her goal. And she smashed the women’s and men’s records in the process.
Godesky attributes her success to playing to her strengths. And for these big, logistically and geographically complicated projects, your strengths have to extend well beyond foot speed.
“I really like maps,” Godesky explains. “I look at a lot of the maps. So when I'm starting to dive into a project like this, I get all the maps that I can and start laying them out and just start to make a lot of options. I have at any time a million different routes for the same peaks going on Gaia [GPS]...I'm kind of just always throwing spaghetti at the wall for lack of like a better way to say it, and just kind of brainstorming different routes, and then I will go out and try different ones when I'm scouting certain things.”
Tune into the episode to get a behind-the-scenes look into the strategizing Godesky and her team put into this attempt. Learn about the differences between Adirondack and White Mountain trail culture, including which set of mountains requires an earlier start to get a parking spot. Hear about the worst thing to go wrong during those four days on the trail. And find out Godesky’s dream event that really inspired her to go after this FKT.
Follow along with Godesky’s exploits on Instagram, and check out her FKT report on fastestknowntime.com.
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