Monday, August 4, 2008

The Appalachian Trail Assault Begins...

Ultra running bad-arse, "Speedgoat" Karl Meltzer will begin his Appalachian Trail Assault on August 5, as he tries to set a new supported speed record covering the trail from Maine to Georgia faster than anyone else has done it. Photo by Tommy Chandler, from whereskarl.com.

Frequent readers of The 4-1-Run may recall a post a couple months ago about two long trail record attempts this summer. As it turns out, the Speedgoat, Karl Meltzer himself, stopped through to offer his thoughts on his planned Appalachian Trail Assault. Nice to have an ultra running legend swing through and say hey!

August 5 is the big day for Karl, as he begins the madness. And the coolest part, for those of us not on the AT ourselves, is that we can follow it all, with GPS coordinates, posts, photos, etc. on whereskarl.com. Tune in and stop by. Pretty remarkable stuff.

Karl has switched his focus from winning more 100 mile trail races per year than anyone else (which he has accomplished each of the last two years), to running 47 miles or so each day for 45-ish days to step up to a truly epic challenge.

And, in addition to just following Karl, on a more local level, keep an eye and an ear out to see if the Speedgoat crosses paths with our own Wood Frog while in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Now THAT would be sweet. And Keene, if you find yourself on the trail running up there, you better take some pictures! :)

Good luck to Karl, his crew from Backcountry.com, and Matt Hart and the other runners who will be joining him along the way.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very Cool.
maybe this is our reason to get to Va and run with him for 5 or 10 miles...

Michael Valliant said...

I'm game for something like that, Joel. If it works for your schedule, let's keep eyes out and see if it's swingable. At one point I was hoping to catch him through MD, but VA could be sweet as well!