Speed Goat Karl Meltzer was no joke either.Originally Posted by Violent Green
"Chainsaw" GA-ME 2011
The people who are dismissing Scott's attempt should look at his track record of nailing unlikely successes;
WS(x7), Startathalon, Badwater, to name just a few. He tends to win things the first time he does them, despite challenging conditions.
Most of us are not genetically gifted, or particularly motivated. This fellow is highly gifted and highly motivated.
He may or may not finish, but he is not to be underestimated.
I've run a few events that Scott competed in (him in front, me in rear). I enjoyed just watching him move through the woods, so happy and natural.
Im certainly not discounting him.
But, when was the last time he won a race?
What role did his pace runner play in those wins?
Hes 42, not the same as 10 yrs ago.
His best ultra days seem to be behind him.
But he may certainly still be "good enough" for this.(id bet on that!)
Challenge will be to stay healthy imo. Maybe his diet will work some magic there.
If successful, think of what he might have done 10 yrs ago.
I have a friend that knows him well.
Last edited by MuddyWaters; 05-29-2015 at 21:20.
so how much AT hiking, crewing record attempters and ultra running experience do you have?
I look at it this way. If you predict failure for every record attempt, you will be right about 95% of the time ;-)
More than a cantankerous coot would otherwise believe, but that's not the point.
The point I'd attempted to make was that if it's fair game to doubt him, as you do (clearly this pessimism is a default setting of yours, as many of us here recognize), it's equally as fair to believe that, of all people, he might very well achieve what he sets out to do. I'm sure you haven't followed the trail running scene or the ultras over the years, or you might appreciate this.
I'm sure Odyssa dealt with the same doubts, but somehow she managed in the end. Someone else surely can. And will. Jurek's got the same good odds as anyone as strong.
The biggest issue in my mind is recovery ability. It degrades with age past about late 30s. You dont heal as fast or recover as well day to day as when younger, and the cumulative toll will be expected to become worse over 2 months on an older person. 10% lower recovery per day, compounded for 40+ days. Its a different facet not faced on a single race. Id guess early to mid 30s is really the point where peak conditioning, experience, and recovery ability conspire for the best chance a given individual has at these things.
But Horton was about 40 or 41. He was displaced by a long legged 27 yr old woman.
Meltzer, was clearly too old in my mind. Over 45 is like stepping off a cliff.
Last edited by MuddyWaters; 05-30-2015 at 07:20.
no need for name calling. my point is someone with zero AT experience that attempts an AT record usually fails
On the differences between the sexes, this is a good example of ONE of the reasons women are slow, but still she'd out squat many of usWhen JPD took her shot at the record I kind of thought it was a little crazy, after all men always win at races. However, I've learned since then that in these exceptionally long endurance races that tactics are so very important, much more so than the shorter races, so it's not necessarily who can run the fastest -- yeah, I know one of my boneheaded moments...
However, another thing I've learned since her record-breaking run is that while women are hopelessly slow in the speed arena, i.e. high school boys can out-run professional women in the one-mile race; women it seems are possibly better suited for endurance events and the longer the event the more it favors the females.
There's a lot of info out there on this topic, here is just one short article, but if you look around there is some very interesting information on this topic. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-...838552/?no-ist
Look at the quad size, both are professional sprinters, but still very different leg musculature. http://www.bicycling.com/training/bi...et-quads-these
I got to agree with LW on this one. NH and Maine will come as a big surprise and doing these last will sap what ever energy he has left. The chances of getting injured on these trails at the end of the run are likely significantly greater then if done at the beginning of the run.
Follow slogoen on Instagram.
Here is a link to a log of JPD's daily mileage during her 2011 record hike of 46 days, 11 hours, 20 minutes, for those who would like to compare:
http://www.whiteblaze.net/forum/show...t=#post1190134
She spent 6 days hiking from Stratton to Glencliff, the most rugged part of the AT, averaging 35.3 miles/day in that section. In the other 40.5 days she spent hiking the AT she averaged 48.6 miles/day. These are useful numbers to keep in mind while following Scott Jurek's daily mileage. Scott covered more ground in his first three days than JPD did in her last three, but her last day was only a partial hiking day and ended at 3:26 PM, so it's not a good direct comparison.
By the way, the official AT mileage is about 8 miles longer for Jurek in 2015 (2189.2) than it was for JPD in 2011 (2181.0).
Last edited by map man; 05-30-2015 at 12:13.
Life Member: ATC, ALDHA, Superior Hiking Trail Association
Me too. No Facebook for me.
He is also posting on Instagram
Guys, just bookmark his Twitter and check it there.
https://twitter.com/ScottJurek
No update so far today! Oh no!
Wow! He is really moving.
Scott Jurek.jpg
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. - Abraham Lincoln
Assuming Jurek makes it to New Hampshire in one piece, he might be able to make up a day in the Whites, where JPD had some trouble. Per the mileage posted here, she had some 30 mile days in the Whites. Which are understandable, and it's amazing what she made up after it, but some of them were really quite short. (I really should put "short" in quotes every time here, because nothing about them actually is.) Those rocks eat you up, though: there's a lot to be gained by knowing every one along the trail. And there's a cautionary tale about not assuming that you can just stop anywhere and camp if you wind up needing a night out off the road; there are strict camping regulations and even worse weather. So there's some luck and some planning involved there. We'll see how it lines up for Jurek, but for JPD it wasn't perfect.
Day 7 (June 21): Grafton Notch to Gorham NH -- 31 miles (298 total). A damn hard 31 miles; FKT is 7:45 (a record set in 2014, breaking a previous record from 1958!).
Day 8 (June 22): Gorham to Mt. Washington -- 34 miles (332 total) Not a ton of distance, but nearly 6000 feet of net climb. Trail over Carter-Wildcat has some steep sections, and the interminable climb up the Osgood, but there are also some relatively good sections as well.
Day 9 (June 23): Mt. Washington to Gale River Trail Junction -- 30 miles (362 total) This is the most confusing one at first glance. Net downhill by 2500 feet. And it includes two very easy, by Whites standards, sections. From the Summit of Washington to Lakes of the Clouds is 1.5 miles downhill; the last mile is an easy run with good footing, then the 5 miles to Mizpah from there is very easy; hut croos regularly turn in 1:15 or less on this segment during hut traverses. The section to Webster is also relatively easy, Webster Cliffs is hard, but from Crawford Notch to Zealand is a gradual uphill and then a sidewalk; the easiest bit of the Whites. 5 miles of first bog bridges slightly downhill and then flat, flat to near the hut. The climb up Zealand is rather benign, and there are some good running sections across the top to South Twin, and then the nasty descent to Galehead. (I assume she stayed at the hut there.) Jurek should be able to put 10 or 15 miles on her on this day, even going the other way. Figure for a SOBO: 30 minutes Washington-Lakes, 1:30 Lakes-Mizpah, 60 minutes Mizpah-Jackson, 1:30 down Webster Cliffs, 2:00 to Zealand (45 to Ethan Pond, 1:15 to the hut; likely faster), 3:00 to Galehead (2 to Guyot, 30 to STwin, 30 to the hut). That's 9 hours, conservatively, and Jurek is doing 15 or 16 a day.
As to what happened … first of all, the weather was nasty. 45 and cloudy and rainy all day, maybe a bit warmer further down. But I was up at Lakes that evening and around 11:30 a radio call came in from the valley (that's a long story) and it took us a while to ascertain that it was from a hiker who had not checked in from the summit. Wound up on a dodgy cell phone connection with the huts manager trying to piece things together. We didn't get any names (and there were two former hut croo who had thru-hiked—one in '05—and if we'd gotten her actual or trail name would have known who she was) and the general response was "we don't know where she is and are not going to search in the fog for a needle in a haystack." Or rockpile.
Apparently what happened was that she was supposed to call in from the summit to Brew but found out that there's actually no cell reception on the summit (reception that high is very scattered; the summit is a dead zone). When she didn't check in, he went to the Pinkham Notch caretaker (I guess he was staying there) and had him call Lakes, which started the chain of calls. She sought some refuge behind one of the buildings and slept(?) for the night, so the next day she certainly wasn't fresh. I think she then may have hiked several miles down the Davis Path in the fog, and had to turn back most of the way to the summit to rejoin the trail, which might explain for the short day. We didn't see her at Lakes, but we weren't particularly looking since we didn't know she was hiking at the time.
Of course this was her third time through the Whites, and she still got waylaid by several bouts of bad luck and poor planning. It will be interesting to see how Jurek fares with luck in the Whites; especially the longer roadless sections where he might wind up spending a couple nights out. (Could you go Franconia to Pinkham in one long day? Sure, but then you're probably at a shelter somewhere in the Mahoosucs the next night, for instance.) Will be interesting to see if anyone on the hut croos picks up on this and offers support, too. And it will be interesting to see if he, too, takes a wrong turn; I was up there today and the AT is, in places, barely marked. It's easy if you know the trails well, but harder if you don't.
Day 10 (June 24): Gale River Trail Junction to Glencliff -- 38 miles (400 total) A respectable day since it includes the Galehead-Greenleaf section and the Lonesome-Kinsman Notch section as well as the climb over Mahoosuc. Overall downhill, but nothing too easy along the way.
What are them long skinny things in his hands? Cant be poles could it??
Supported hike, not familiar with trail, attempting record.....a smart person would get some guided assistance thru the trickier areas. Who could do that and keep up?
Last edited by MuddyWaters; 05-31-2015 at 11:39.
So I made a spreadsheet, as I am inclined to do. I enter Scott's progress (location, time, and milepost for each day). For mileage I use this web site (http://www.atdist.com/ based on the 2015 data book). The spreadsheet then calculates miles for the day, average miles per day cumulative, and MPH for the day. Then formulas compare his pace to the record, calculating how many miles he would need to have hiked on a record pace, miles ahead of that pace, estimated day of arrival, and days ahead of the record pace.
These are projected two ways.
One with a simple linear pace (each day hikes the same distance = total trail miles divided by days for the record). These formulas are easy. After 4 days he is 18.9 miles ahead of record pace, on schedule to break the record by 4.2 days.
The other projections compare his pace to JPD's performance posted by Map Man above. This is trickier. A second spreadsheet has JPD daily miles, reversed for a NOBO hike. It calculates her average MPD for the section from Springer to each overnight milepost. This pace is used as the benchmark for calculating Scott's progress. By this method, the section from Newfound Gap to Springer was covered by JPD at 55.3 MPD. After 4 days, Scott is 14.0 miles behind this pace. dropping 14 miles every 4 days would put him at Katahdin about 3.5 days behind the record pace. I expect him to catch up as JPD put in some big mile days at the very end.
Here is the spreadsheet.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vh92xpsn73...urek.xlsx?dl=0
If you don't care about records, tracking Scott, comparing to JPD, etc., then don't read this post (oops too late - should have put that disclaimer at the beginning).
too bad his crew are not backpackers. having to stop at road crossings is gonna hurt him
NH and Maine are going to hurt him. Of course I feel pain just looking at what he does in one day.
In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. - Abraham Lincoln
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