It was a good day, that's for sure.
I was arrogant enough to think maybe there was a possibility we could go for the FKT on this - which is 5:09. The guy that did that cut the trail over the first and last 3.5 miles, which in a National Park I think is a big no-no, but anyway...
Brian is a fast runner, raced Kona last year where he ran a 3:25 and has the chops to be disappointed with that. I do not consider myself super-slow either, for an age grouper.
We did the first 3.5 miles on FKT pace, even though we went .5 miles farther than the record holder b/c we did not cut the trail. At 4 miles there is no more trail. Brian had to stop and head down to a privy at this point, which cost us 6 or 7 minutes. Ascending the loft we had to stop a bit and debate part of the route. Got to the top of Meeker about 23 minutes behind FKT - (2:15 vs 1:52). Then top of Longs 1:30 behind FKT. Then top of Pagoda 2:50 behind FKT - getting to Pagoda we were delayed by 50 minutes trying to figure out how to get down a cliff band - took us that long to believe that the route to do it was actually the real way and to decide we could do it without killing ourselves. After we got to the Keyhole, from where we would begin the last two peaks (the easiest ones by far), a storm was coming in, so we decided to just head down. We got rained on pretty good for at least an hour.
The whole thing took us 9:36 and we didn't even do the last two peaks. I think that if we went again, we could drop 2 hours off with our improved knowledge of the route, but we still have to add on 2 summits and even so, it would still be 2.5 hours behind the FKT. That guy must leap over boulders like a mountain goat.
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Ed O'Malley
www.VeloVetta.com Founder of VeloVetta Cycling Shoes
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