Aravaipa Strong 100

As soon as the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic was known, races cancellation notices began popping up left and right. Every spring and early summer race of significance was either cancelled or postponed, and with good reason. Many virtual races started appearing, but there were very few large scale races that catered to the ultrarunning world. Enter the Aravaipa Strong. 

Jamil Coury and his team at Aravaipa Running, a for-profit trail and ultra event company based out of Phoenix, Arizona, quickly organized Aravaipa Strong. This was a virtual race that was open globally, comprising seven distances—5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon, 50k, 50 miles, and 100 miles. Runners could sign up for a small registration fee and had from April 17 to April 26 to complete their chosen distances. As a virtual event, runners chose their own route, recorded their own times, and submitted the results for review. Unlike most virtual races, everyone's result was verified, official results were published, and awards were given to those with the fastest times. 

With 10 days to get it done, I decided I'd go for 100 miles or bust. I would've loved to run some epic route on the Finger Lakes Trail and complete the whole race in one day, but there was no way I'd have the time or bandwidth for such a monstrous effort. A week-long effort it was, then. 

To make this race fun and interesting, I set myself a couple of loose ground rules. I would do all of the miles on trails, with no repetition. That meant no multi-loop run or long out-and-backs, and no running in the same park or forest on more than one day. If I became short on time or energy, I'd make exceptions and even include neighborhood walks with the babies if it was the only

FLT Interloken Branch FKT Fail

With virtually every spring and summer race cancelled, Fastest Known Time runs have been all the rage these past few months. Ultrarunning media outlets are reporting en masse on FKTs, with loads of obscure new routes popping up and times falling on some of the more competitive FKTs.

Early this year I had the idea of establishing a baseline FKT on the Finger Lakes Trail's Interloken Branch in the Finger Lakes National Forest. This trail runs 11.2 miles north to south through the forest, connecting with the main FLT at the Interloken's southern terminus. It's mostly flat singletrack and notorious for it's copious volume of mud, especially on the sections where horseback riding is allowed. Anyone who's run a loop or three at the Finger Lakes 50s is familiar with the southern half of the Interloken. 

As of February there was no FKT listed at FastestKnownTime.com, so I figured I'd be the first to put it on the site. After running around in the FLNF on the final day of the Aravaipa Strong 100, I decided to commit to an Interloken Trail FKT attempt sometime later in the spring, once the trail had a chance to dry out. The plan was to run the full out-and-back, 22.4 miles, unsupported. I came home to check the official FKT Web site and found that Dana Wood, of Corning, New York, had beaten me to it only a few weeks earlier. He had run the out-and-back in 3:47:22 on April 5, starting and ending at the southern end.