by Marc Griffin
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| Day 1, Mile 0 |
A
friend of mine -- Charles West -- heard about a group of people that were heading up
to attempt to run the entire Shenandoah National Park section of the Appalachian
Trail, which is 110 miles, in 3 days beginning Friday, May 24th.
Knowing that I am up for anything and a little crazy, he forwarded the
email on to me. I have been looking for
something a little bigger to do this year and this sounded perfect. I immediately emailed Matt Smythe, and I was
in. The plan was to stay Thursday night
in Front Royal, get up early and be on the trail at 6 am to cover the first
38ish miles on Friday. After we finally
found the trail head we took our “before” picture and set off around
6:15am. There were 4 of us total, Matt,
Amie, another Matt, and myself. It was
cool but very nice running weather.
The
first day came and went with easy running mixed with quite a bit of
hiking. It was hard to hold back and not
run too fast, especially on the beautiful down hills. As we got closer to Skyland Resort where we
would spend the night, the temperature started to drop and the wind picked up a
lot! We got to Skyland around 4:30pm
took showers and had a great dinner at the restaurant there. The second day came very quickly and we set
out around 6:00am. It was cold and
windy; I put on as many layers as I could but could still feel the wind through
everything.
The
trail was beautiful and I was still feeling pretty good. This day would be approximately 44 miles and
some of the toughest trail of the weekend.
I felt pretty good until we hit Swift Run Gap which is Rt.33 coming out
of Harrisonburg. These mountains were
big and just one after another. Somewhere
in here we saw our first bear, it ran at first but then stopped about 50 feet
off the trail and just watched us. We
sat there for quite a while just watching him.
It was a mutual attraction. We
slowed down quite a bit in this section but continued on and finally made it to
our campsite at Loft Mountain Campgrounds around 7:30pm. Luckily, we had the best crew in the world --
Matt’s mom and dad. They had ordered
food for us before the Loft Mountain kitchen closed at 7:00pm. By the time we washed up a little and set up
our tents, it was time for bed and time to try and stay warm. Who would have thought the temperatures would
get down below freezing this close to June!
The
third and final morning came very quickly and we were again on the trail by
6:30am, finally the wind stopped and the sun and warm temperatures came, it was
a very nice change. We only had 27ish
miles to cover and we took our time and enjoyed it. We came into Rockfish Gap at approximately
2pm and had a small celebration. It was
sad to see it end.
I
really didn’t know any of the runners or crew going in but we had such a great,
epic experience together. It was cold,
it was rocky; we suffered together, cheered each other on, and celebrated
together. What more could you ask for? I
heard a few whispers about doing another adventure like this continuing south
from where we left off next year, I’m In!!!!!!
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| Day 3, Mile 110 |
Run Recap
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