S
Sherpa John
Guest
I got an e-mail last night from the Wakely Damn Ultra Marathon Race Director. He was giving us an update on Tim Seavers Northville Placid Trail speed record attempt. Since Tim is a respected member of this community, I figured I would share the e-mail.
Cheers for Tim's valiant efforts to break the speed record for running the NPT. Seems mother nature would rather he run to Wakely with us? Taken from Tim's entry in the Adirondack Forum:
Despite a pretty optimistic forecast, we got nailed with thunderstorms and 2 inches of rain for most of the afternoon yesterday, and bagged it at the Tarbell Road parking lot at Long Lake.
For me, these types of challenges are difficult enough without 100+ miles of puddle jumping, which would have turned what is very much an enjoyable run into a treacherous, nasty slog. On the upside, I was feeling great despite the crummy conditions, and arrived at Long Lake at 6:58, feeling ready to hammer the rest of the course out.. This was 17 minutes before my target time of 7:15 pm, or 8 hours and 58 minutes from the 10 am start at the Chubb River Bridge, pretty much averaging the 4 mph we hoped for. Maintaining this average would result in about a 30 hour total. The main problem at this point would have been keeping my feet from falling apart, which would have been difficult even with vast amounts of Vaseline we were using to keep my feet blister free and relatively dry. The NPT, being a lowland trail that skirts numerous bodies of water for it's entire length, is wet enough as it is without flash flooding and endless trenches of water.
It was pretty amazing how isolated this storm system was - for almost 4 hours, when I could see the sky over my left shoulder, it was as blue as can be - even though I was being pelted with heavy rain and lighting bolts were striking all around. This contrast made for some extremely beautiful scenes, particularly near Shattuck Clearing, which has become one of my favorite spots on the trail. I hope to be able to spend some time backpacking sections of the trail with some photo gear soon.
The team is more psyched than ever to return , hopefully before month's end, and give this another go. Thanks to all for the encouragement and offers of support!
A few pix from the day
We'll be BACK!
http://www.vermontphoto.com/adk/NPT/attempt1/
Cheers for Tim's valiant efforts to break the speed record for running the NPT. Seems mother nature would rather he run to Wakely with us? Taken from Tim's entry in the Adirondack Forum:
Despite a pretty optimistic forecast, we got nailed with thunderstorms and 2 inches of rain for most of the afternoon yesterday, and bagged it at the Tarbell Road parking lot at Long Lake.
For me, these types of challenges are difficult enough without 100+ miles of puddle jumping, which would have turned what is very much an enjoyable run into a treacherous, nasty slog. On the upside, I was feeling great despite the crummy conditions, and arrived at Long Lake at 6:58, feeling ready to hammer the rest of the course out.. This was 17 minutes before my target time of 7:15 pm, or 8 hours and 58 minutes from the 10 am start at the Chubb River Bridge, pretty much averaging the 4 mph we hoped for. Maintaining this average would result in about a 30 hour total. The main problem at this point would have been keeping my feet from falling apart, which would have been difficult even with vast amounts of Vaseline we were using to keep my feet blister free and relatively dry. The NPT, being a lowland trail that skirts numerous bodies of water for it's entire length, is wet enough as it is without flash flooding and endless trenches of water.
It was pretty amazing how isolated this storm system was - for almost 4 hours, when I could see the sky over my left shoulder, it was as blue as can be - even though I was being pelted with heavy rain and lighting bolts were striking all around. This contrast made for some extremely beautiful scenes, particularly near Shattuck Clearing, which has become one of my favorite spots on the trail. I hope to be able to spend some time backpacking sections of the trail with some photo gear soon.
The team is more psyched than ever to return , hopefully before month's end, and give this another go. Thanks to all for the encouragement and offers of support!
A few pix from the day
We'll be BACK!
http://www.vermontphoto.com/adk/NPT/attempt1/
