Franconia Ridge: The Concrete Floor of 2:45

Today I had to run down to Lincoln, NH to get a pair of black diamond strap-on crampons. On the way I stopped to do the Falling Waters/Bridal Path loop. I figured since it was my first time on the loop with no snow I'd do my best but not try to beat my previous PR of 2:46. Furthermore, with all the storms the trails were soaked, the brooks were high and the entire descent was wet and muddy. On the way up Falling Waters I remembered just how hard that trail is to do fast. I started off at a leisurely trot since I wasn't out to break any records, but man, I ended up pushing pretty hard. I had to stop twice on the way up just to not fall over from over-exertion. By the time I headed up to Lincoln's summit I thought I should probably just stop or die.

I hit the ridge a few minutes behind my PR but my final time was 2:49, only 3min slow. I guess I did okay on the descent, even though it was pretty slippery - although I don't know how.

Fun Facts: 28oz water, two espresso hammer gels, tank top, running shorts, vasque runners, car keys.

More Fun: I started running at 12:08pm, meaning my watch time was 8 minutes ahead of my stop-watch. Because they are both displayed when in stopwatch mode, I frequently thought the clock time was my running time and for most of the hike thought I was around 12 - 15 minutes behind my PR. Because I comitted my times to memory, when I got home and wrote them down I noticed that two of them (Lincoln and Greenleaf) were 12/13 minutes behind my PR so I subtracted 8 minutes to get the numbers in the table above. The ONLY number in that table that I'm sure of is the final 2:49 which was actually 2:49:50.

Incredible Fun: I don't know if I can ever break the 2:45 mark. It seems like it should be easy to just push a little harder and squeeze 5 or 6 minutes out of my time, but wow, I'm not sure how.