My FKT Manifesto

I’ve spent the last year learning about, chatting about, and finally doing, Fastest Known Times. At this point, the concept has gone from a relatively underground sort of pursuit to nearly mainstream in the ultrarunning world. This has been helped along significantly by the novel coronavirus’s impact on the 2020 race landscape. With no races, many more people are looking for other ways to test themselves, and attempts at FKTs have multiplied quickly.

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Tunnel Hill x2: Last day of Winter, First day of Spring, and Meditation on Pain

Our mission was simple: an out-and-back on the Tunnel Hill State Trail, which runs from Harrisburg, Illinois to the Cache River State Natural Area Wetlands center. The trail is a 47.5 miles long rail-to-trail, converted from the old Cairo and Vincennes Railroads. When we lived near the trail a decade ago, we’d run the stretches around Vienna, Illinois frequently, and a couple years ago we both ran the eponymous 100 mile race held on the trail. We figured it was time to say we’d seen the whole trail (the race only uses about 25 miles of it), and we needed to test a few of our fastpacking systems. When the last day of winter/first day of spring weekend also coincided with favorable (ish) weather, we headed south.

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Womble Womble

We set off on the Womble trail just before noon on a Saturday, an odd time for us to begin a long route. We’d driven the 12 hours from Chicago to the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, leaving town in the teeth of a nasty snow and ice storm. To make the trip possible, we’d overnighted in our van near the halfway point and gotten back on the road around 0330 that morning. 

That’s the smile of two people that don’t know the trail is 8mi longer than planned.
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Nantahala Adventure Run trip report

At the outset of our journey, I was only worried about one thing: making it through a complex section of the loop before it got dark. In particular, I’d heard that finding the trail again after the final road section was tough even in the daylight. 

The loop was the Nantahala Adventure Run near Bryson City, NC: 56ish miles comprised mostly of the Bartram Trail but beginning and ending on the AT. Total vertical gain for the loop ended up being a stout 14k feet. Our plan was to cover as much of it as we could take the first day, bivy for a few hours, and then finish it up the following day. We parked our campervan at Nantahala Outdoor Center, a fantastic outfitter that caters to both the river community and hikers on the AT. 

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Porcupine Mountain Traverse

This was our third time around what we’ve started calling the Porkies Traverse. Last fall Allison and I put the loop together to hit the three Summits on the Air (https://www.sota.org.uk/) references in the park: Summit Peak, Peak 1496, and Cuyahoga Peak. We were amazed to find some of the most remote mountains we’ve had a chance to visit in the center of the country, and almost a playground of hill climbs and (very) technical trail running. When we started getting interested in FKTs, this was one of the first I routes I checked for an existing time (there wasn’t one), and when we decided to submit a route, it was the first on our list. If you want to see what midwest trail running has to offer, this route should be on the list.

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