Day 64 - 4 State Challenge
Day 65 - Zero in Waynesboro
Thursday, July 9 8:52 pm 43.8 mi 4 State Challenge (entry written Fri, Jul 10)
AT 1023.2 Laudoun Heights → AT 1067.0 Mason-Dixon Line
Weather: Cool from 3-10 am, hot and sunny until dark, then warm and muggy
Trail Conditions: Relatively smooth sailing until about 5 miles left, at which point it became less a trail and more climbing up and down boulder fields with random blazes painted
My Condition: I felt really good until about mile 38. Then I started stumbling, faceplanted, skinned my knee, kept walking with blood streaming down my shin and every step aching. The last 5 I was running on empty and it was pure grit getting me through
Today I completed the 4 State Challenge with Blue, Toy Story, and Puddles. 43.8 miles in 19 hours, starting at 4 am and ending at 11 pm. We started the day together, walking with headlamps and talking, eager and excited for the challenge. Fresh Ground met us across the first bridge so we could fill up on water and muffins to go. He met us again in Harper’s Ferry to take our picture and see us off – he’s a total proud trail-dad. We walked across the newly opened footbridge and started splitting off as we climbed out of town. We passed Fresh Ground again, yelling out his window “Keep hiking I’m not here! Just waiting for the park to open.” Much of the morning was smooth and flat, both before the climb and after we had summited the ridge. Met at Gathland State Park for coffee, fruit, and hydration with Fresh Ground. Met again at the Washington monument park, where he had left towels and soap for us at a bathhouse about 1.6 mi from the meeting point so we could shower. It felt like a brand new day after cleaning up – more than halfway through the day and still feeling pretty good. He fed us at the park. I jammed out to Jock Jamz radio on Pandora and cruised to the 33 mile point still feeling pretty good. Fresh Ground met us at 1057, where he had ice baths waiting for us along with green tea and pasta salad. 10-5 miles left went well as we all hiked together. Blue and I limped into the finish line together. Feel proud and accomplished but don’t want to do that again!
Post Trail Analysis
In hindsight, I’m really glad I did it. I look back on this day, knowing what I accomplished, and truly do feel superhuman! I was hurting for some time after finishing it, however, and it may not have been the best decision for my hike in the long run. The sensible thing to do would have been to split the day in half and do two 21-22 mile days. As it was, I did a 43.8 mile day, followed by a zero day. The sensible way would have put us at exactly the same spot, with so much less stress on our bodies. We didn’t take on the challenge to be sensible, though. We took this on to challenge ourselves and see what we were really made of. Turns out, we’re made of some pretty tough stuff. Even after our zero day, though, we were still feeling it. Feet and knees ached, legs were sore and didn’t have that same level of get up and go - and not just the next day, but well into the foreseeable future.
We saw some familiar faces along the way. At Gathland State Park, we bumped into Jester again. At lunch at the Washington monument park, we met State Farm. State Farm had been posting a daily journal entry along with photos in one of the Appalachian Trail Facebook groups. As most people do, he was delaying his posts for safety and privacy purposes, so we didn’t really have a sense of where he was on the trail, or when. I recognized him right away when I saw him, bug net and all!
Some highlights of the day that didn’t make it into the entry: Puddles literally walking step for step alongside a deer early in the morning without realizing it, walking through historic Harper’s Ferry (we didn’t stop at the ATC headquarters for our classic halfway point photo, but the staff there weren’t taking photos or documenting the class of 2020s journey anyways!), being among the first people to walk across the new Harper’s Ferry footbridge during sunrise (a train derailment had made things difficult and/or dangerous for earlier thru hikers’ journies), spending some quality time during the flat, easy sections all walking and talking together, showering AND washing my clothes mid-day (it felt like a brand new day afterwards), somehow not catching up to Toy Story and Puddles in the third leg after lunch despite being powered by Jock Jamz (I turn on the jets whenever the Space Jam theme song comes on and there’s not a person out there who can outpace me during those 3 minutes, and sustain a pretty quick pace during all the other hits too), rolling into that final break beginning to feel the mental fatigue and loopiness setting in, walking out after icing our feet through cow pastures feeling rejuvenated, and seeing Puddles try to Macgyver an effective hands-free light source.
When I say I faceplanted, I quite literally mean it. Blue and I had started to fall behind, and during a relatively flat, easy stretch I just stumbled over a seemingly-nothing rock and hit the deck hard. My glasses went flying off my face, my trekking poles and legs and pack somehow became tangled, my water bottles popped out. I was a mess! The only other time in life that I can remember having this kind of an out-of-body experience was at the end of Penn State’s Dance MaraTHON after 46 hours awake and on my feet (including food poisoning about 16 hours into the event!), and even that level of physical and mental fatigue pales in comparison to what I was going through during these last 5 miles. When I needed to dig my deepest, Blue Sasquatch 100% had my back. Blue reminded me to get some calories in, and that I had some incredible cookies from her friends that had met us at Washington monument park. Those cookies did the trick for about half a mile as we got into the real rock scrambling. One exhausted step after another, I followed Blue as she handled the navigation from one white blaze to another in the dark night. I vaguely remember her talking to and trying to motivate me, but I’m pretty sure I reverted into some primal caveman mode – my responses would never be more than one syllable words, and often simply just grunts or groans. I’m as gritty as they come and I dug deep, but I know that it was Blue that really got me through those last couple miles. I was ready to curl up on one of those rocks and go to bed for the night, but she kept me moving. Finally, painstakingly, we made it to the Mason-Dixon Line where Fresh Ground was waiting to take our picture. I’m smiling, wide-eyed and manic, and Blue is half asleep, eyes closed and slumping over the sign. He ushered us quickly along to the van, where Puddles and Toy Story were waiting. He asked us what we wanted on our pizzas as we enjoyed simply sitting and not moving on our way to pick them up. We got a hotel room in Waynesboro #2 (this one in PA), and Fresh Ground decided to treat himself to his own room after what had been a tough and arduous day for him as well. The logistics he handled today blow my mind - meeting us at the end of the bridge early in the morning to make sure we were all watered up and ready to go, meeting us in Harper's Ferry to see us off at sunrise, breakfast at Gathland State Park, getting towels and soap down to the bath house before Washington monument park, lunch at Washington monument park, signs to direct us to a parking area on Wolfsville road and ice footbaths/snacks, and finally a late night pickup, pizza run, and drive to the hotel. We grabbed a victory photo with the Leapfrog Cafe which was parked right outside our door. I slept on the floor that night, dead tired, and got one of the best nights of sleep I’ve ever had in my entire life. Fresh Ground’s not big on goodbyes and slipped away quietly the next morning, his van gone from its spot by our door, but the impact that he had had on us continues to be felt today. When I pulled into Waynesboro #1, I was hiking solo and perfectly content to continue doing so. He brought a group of us together, and that group solidified into a trail family. Members of the family came and went, but that core family made it to Katahdin together. I don’t know how my hike would have turned out without his divine impact, but I know that he helped shape my journey and I will be forever grateful to him and to all those that make the Leapfrog Cafe possible!
Today, we were also humbled. Mercury, supported by trail legend Warren Doyle (Jupiter), was attempting to set the FKT for the Appalachian Trail – the Fastest Known Time. Riding the high of having completed 43.8 mi in one 24 hour period, our jaws dropped as we read that Mercury had completed 69 miles her first day on the trail. Take what we had just done, and add a marathon on top of it, and that’s the day she had just completed! Incredible!
On Friday, we awoke to find that Toy Story had brought us breakfast! The four of us hobbled our way to a laundromat, a brewery, a corner diner, and a dollar store for resupply. Toy Story fell in love with this town and said he could see himself moving to a place like this.
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