Doing our first Ultra was a ridiculous proposal.......There is no way possible we can run 50 miles in a week, let alone 2 days. 7 of us Toed the line at the Top of Mount Sunapee on Friday July 1st in an attempt to run to the Top of Mount Monadnock on the "greenway". While this was more of a trail/mountain run and much less of a race, it didn't take away the anxiety of being able to finish, and really not knowing how are body would hold up.

We were lucky enough to get a ride to the top of Sunapee so we would have fresh legs to start this venture: Ryan Camire, John Proper, Mike "Debbie" Moody, Nathan Richer, Joel Pickering, Tom Radford, and myself took off on the trail at 7:40 AM with hopes to finish the day at Pitcher mountain(26 miles later )by 5:00. Ryan, our token 29 year old, was ready to run down the first steep pitches of Sunapee, while us older trogs, decided to walk a bit to get our legs warmed up, we settled somewhere in the middle and by the time the trail was reasonably runable, we started our slog. With Fresh legs we were managing 12 minute miles, with occasional bursts of 8-9 minute miles on Tom's trusty Nike thing. We were cruising through awesome terrain at a decent clip, and stopped for a couple lookout posts on the ridgeline.

The first 10 miles were epic, legs felt great, everyone was in unison. We popped out on HalfMoon Pond road hoping to see our support crew, but they weren't in sight. After some discussion, we were about ready to make a strange plan and we heard a car door shut, we scooted up the hill to find our crew 100 yards away....Our fist mistake luckily averted. Jason and Angela we there with Truck and all our supplies, we chowed, drank, and moved on.

We basically ran the flats and slight downhills and walked the uphills, we saw a crew on top of Lovewell mountain who was on their third day doing the greenway, it was our 4th hour. Luckily for us we had a crew that carried all our gear and we could run with a water bottle and gu packet.

We spit out at Pitcher Mountain on our first day at around 5:00, to our beloved crew of Jason Avery, Angela Perry, and Lori Weed. We ended up running about 27 miles day 1 after a few wrong turns in Washington, but we all felt suprisingly good.

We head back to the campground to a buffet style set up. Our crew had set up our tents, laid out the meals, and chairs, and chilled the beer. Most of our families greeted us and we ate like kings. Special shout out to the burritos, lasagna, sketti pie and harpoon.

Day 2

After a reasonable sleep, and listening to our camping neighbors fighting over who could yell louder, while telling the other guy to shut up, we awoke at 5:30 Am to get on the trail, we packed up and our crew took us to the trail head and we started off at 7:00 AM, Suprisingly none of us were really sore, we felt decent. The morning was beauftiful, we ran most of the trails, had a few "where's waldo's", and manage a decent pace until lunch, where we had a convienent pavillion and picnic table area. We plowed through lunch and were off to the next stop, where we we treated with Milk shake energy drinks by our crew, these were awesome! Joel skipped his, which may have led to his bonking a bit later.

The last stop before we started Hiking Monadnock, we refuled and re-enegized. We all felt pretty good, but Joel ran the whole section and kind of forgot to drink. Slowly, he came back around and got his intake levels back up, as we trudged up the mountain on tired legs. Young Ryan hammered to the top, while the rest of us, plodded along at a decent pace. It was hot, but we managed to hit the top and the end of the greenway at about 4:00PM!

We snapped a few photos, and cheered our crew on as they hiked the mountain from our down trail.....We managed the trip down Marlboro trail (which was quite steep) on tired legs and made it back to the cars and some cold Harpoons to finish off this epic journey.

Day 1- 26 Miles in 9 hours 45 minutes (including rest stops)
Day 2- 24 miles in 9 hours 45 minutes (including rest stops)

We averaged about 4 miles an hour while moving, and running about 70% of the trail. This was a great adventure and I am not half as sore as I thought I would be this morning. Big thanks to the team, and our crew for this journey.

PJ

Thanks for the trail run report PJ. Sounds like you all had a good adventure.

Ryan