Saturday, May 23 9:33 pm 19.8 AT miles 21.5 total miles
AT 218.2 Peck’s Corner Shelter → AT 238.0 Davenport Gap Shelter
Weather: SUNSHINE!!! Not a drop of rain today.
Trail Conditions: Muddy, rocky, rooty, mostly downhill
My Condition: Feeling great! I’ve made it through the Smokies and hit all my distance and mileage goals, and I still feel pretty good. I certainly don’t have the immediate time crunch, although the October 15 Katahdin date looms large. I can listen to my body and stop when I want to stop from here on in
The Flying Pig flew up behind me this morning – it is truly a tortoise and the hare story. He told me about an Australian farmer that won a 500 mile road race against some pretty legit competition by just continuing to maintain pace while others stopped and rested. He took some time off in Gatlinburg. Still, for me to be keeping pace with an endurance athlete who is slackpacking – whoa! Met a wonderful couple from middle Tennessee at the Mt. Cammerer tower. Sadly, their names escape me. Justin and Brittany maybe? They gave me a bag of macadamia nuts (mega calorie dense!) and veggie chips and took my picture for me. He has a buddy that thru hiked the trail. He asked me why I am taking it on, what I thought I’d gotten from the experience so far. I told him so far it’s given me a lot of perspective. Knowing what real hunger and thirst are. What it really means to be wet. What chafing is. What discomfort is like, and figuring out which discomforts you can tolerate and which you can’t. His buddy found his wife on the trail. They wished me luck on making it to Maine. Had a wonderful time with them, even if it was just for a little bit. Sharing the last shelter of the Smokies with two gentlemen from Indiana who are resting lingering injuries. This is the last shelter with a “bear cage” – fence that you can close behind you, and the first Smokies shelter with a lit campfire! They seem fascinated by the idea of thru hiking and were full of questions about gear, about motivations, about footwear, about water filtration, about everything, and I was happy to answer them all. Chaz and Ryan originally intended to hike from Fontana Dam to Clingman’s Dome, but with roads still being closed started from this end until Ryan slipped and tweaked his knee. They’ve been here for a little while from the sounds of it, but seem thrilled to be out here nonetheless. Saw my first fireflies of the season tonight.
Flying Pig’s story: The story of Cliff Young (from Wikipedia)
In 1983, the 61-year-old potato farmer won the inaugural Westfield Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon, a distance of 544 miles. Young arrived to compete in overalls and work boots, without his dentures (later saying that they rattled when he ran). He ran at a slow and loping pace and trailed the pack by a large margin at the end of the first day. While the other competitors stopped to sleep for six hours, Young kept running. He ran continuously for five days, taking the lead during the first night and eventually winning by 10 hours. Before running the race, he had told the press that he had previously run for two to three days straight rounding up sheep in gumboots. He said afterwards that during the race he imagined he was running after sheep trying to outrun a storm. The Westfield run took him five days, fifteen hours and four minutes, almost two days faster than the previous record for any run between Sydney and Melbourne, at an average speed of 4 miles per hour. All six competitors who finished the race broke the old record. Upon being awarded the prize of A$10,000 (equivalent to $32,067 in 2018), Young said that he did not know there was a prize and that he felt bad accepting it as each of the other five runners who finished had worked as hard as he did—so he split the money equally between them, keeping none.
Comments