The unique model of this story was printed on iRunFar.
On September 21, 2024, Tara Dower set a brand new total supported quickest identified time (FKT) on the Appalachian Path with a time of 40 days, 18 hours, and 5 minutes, to be confirmed.
The Appalachian Path stretches 2,197 miles from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. It travels by way of New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Oftentimes thought-about the unique long-trail thru-hike, it’s an unrelenting path by way of the japanese U.S. The path has 465,000 toes of elevation achieve.
Dower’s mark surpasses Karel Sabbe’s earlier total and males’s supported FKT of 41 days, 7 hours, and 39 minutes, which he set in 2018, by round 13.5 hours. Beforehand, in 2023, Sabbe set the FKT on the Pacific Crest Path (PCT).
Whereas Sabbe selected to finish the Appalachian route touring northbound, Dower went southbound, leaving the summit of Mount Katahdin at 5:47 a.m. on August 12, 2024. She arrived at Springer Mountain, the path’s southern terminus, at 11:52 p.m. on September 21. A crowd containing her crew, pacers, and different supporters met her on the end.
Eyes on the Prize: Claiming the Appalachian Path FKT
Dower made her intentions of going after Sabbe’s file clear earlier than the beginning of this FKT try. She accomplished the rugged Maine part of the path in a mere 6 days.
She was accompanied by crew and pacers, together with Megan Wilmarth, in any other case identified by her path title of Rascal, whose official title was Crew Chief/Supervisor of Chaos. Her mother was additionally there, as was Altra teammate JP Giblin, photographer Pete Schreiner, and others.
After over 2,000 miles and 39 days on the path, Dower notably accomplished the hassle with a nonstop push of about 100 miles.
After ending at Springer Mountain and changing into the quickest individual to finish the path, Dower referred to as her FKT effort the crew’s FKT, indicating that it took the entire group to make her supported efficiency occur.
Dower’s effort additionally surpasses the boys’s southbound supported FKT, set final 12 months by Kristian Morgan at 45 days, 4 hours, and 27 minutes, in addition to the ladies’s southbound supported FKT, set by Jennifer Pharr Davis in 2011 in 46 days, 11 hours, and 20 minutes.
Dower ran and hiked a mean of virtually 54 miles per day over the rugged, rocky, and rooty East Coast path. She used the motto, “Each second counts,” to maintain her shifting ahead and southward.
A Resume in Lengthy-Distance Trails
Dower, whose path title is Sweet Mama, is not any stranger to long-distance trails. She first tried a thru-hike of the Appalachian Path in 2017, however stopped after solely 8 days as a result of a panic assault. The assault pressured her to confront her anxiousness, and she or he returned to the path in 2019. She accomplished the northbound thru-hike in 5 months and 10 days. In a YouTube video, she referred to as the expertise probably the most cherished reminiscence in her life.
The next 12 months, she labored as a backpacking information for Pharr Davis, the prior girls’s supported FKT holder on the Appalachian Path. Gleaning inspiration from Pharr Davis’s unbelievable path profession, Dower set out in 2020 on the Mountains to Sea Path, a 1,175-mile route from Nice Smoky Mountains Nationwide Park, Tennessee, to Nags Head, North Carolina. She set the ladies’s supported FKT in 29 days, 8 hours, and 48 minutes.
From there, she went on to set a brand new girls’s supported FKT on the 486-mile Colorado Path in 8 days, 21 hours, and 59 minutes in 2023, which was subsequently bested by Nina Bridges simply 3 weeks later. Dower additionally set an total and ladies’s supported FKT on the 288-mile Benton MacKaye Path going from Springer Mountain, Georgia, to Huge Creek in Nice Smoky Mountains Nationwide Park in Tennessee in 2022.
She can also be no stranger to ultra-racing. Dower received the 2023 Run Rabbit Run 100 Mile after inserting second in 2022. She additionally completed fourth on the 2024 Hardrock 100.
Taking over the Appalachian Path FKT for Women and Girls
In a YouTube video saying her intention to chase the general FKT earlier this 12 months, she stated, “I’m all in regards to the challenges. I all the time wish to problem myself.” She additionally stated that after having a 10-year relationship with the path that began together with her part climbing in 2014, “It felt like I used to be being referred to as to the path once more.”
Dower set out with the objective to make use of the run to boost $20,000 for Women on the Run. She hoped to “Encourage girls and women to go for that robust objective irrespective of if it’s with operating or in life.” As of this reporting, Dower’s fundraiser has surpassed that objective.
