This was NOT a race, but it was an epic adventure that deserves a race report.
On Father's Day I was sitting around chatting with my father-in-law and he was telling me about his brother doing a hike across the Grand Canyon and I looked up at him and said, "I'm going to run it." I quickly texted Blake, "Rim to rim of the Grand Canyon on Oct. 2nd." He immediately replied, "I'm in," and the adventure was planned.
Thursday we took off after lunch and arrived at the Grand Canyon around 5:00. We went in and found the Bright Angel Trailhead, took in some amazing views, and had dinner there at the Bright Angel Lodge. We then went to our hotel right outside the park, got all our gear together, and settled in for a good night's rest.
We awoke at 5:00, gathered our stuff and off we went. We were at the trailhead by 6:00 as the morning sky was starting to light up and around 6:15 took off on our run. The trail is steep and rocky with a lot of steps and switch backs so you can't run as fast as you would like. The views are amazing and we stopped regularly to take pictures. Just 3 miles into the run we stopped to shed our light pull overs, but the first rest stop was at Phantom ranch which is at the bottom of the canyon and 10 miles into the run. We refilled our water bottles and had something to eat before continuing on around 8:15. 95% of the rest of the run was uphill, but the next 7 miles or so were not too steep so were all runable. It was getting warmer though and we were happy to arrive at Cottonwood camp to refill our empty bottles and rest a bit.
I could tell Blake was strating to hurt at this point and the trail was starting to get steeper so I tried to slow my pace. The next stop was at a Ranger's Station and it was only a few miles but it felt much further. Once again we refilled our bottles and had a bit of a rest. At this point we only had 4 to 5 miles to go, but it was all a very steep uphill so most of the rest of the adventure was power hiked with just a few small stretches of running. Blake was cramping, all his leg muscles, but he was tough and kept moving forward through the pain. At one point on this stretch there was a slight downhill and I asked him if he was up to running. He said he was so I started running, crossed a bridge and started climbing a bit when a lady I was passing asked if I had come from the South Rim that morning. I told her, yes WE have been running since around sun rise. She said, who else? I looked behind me and Blake was not there. I waited a few minutes and finally I saw him walking across the bridge below. I guess right when he started to run he cramped hard and had to walk. Needless to say, from that point on we only walked, but it was so steep that walking was even hard. Eventually we hit the last water stop on the trip about 2 miles from the top. After drinking up and refilling our bottles, we convinced ourselves to start back up. Those last 2 miles were painful.
We were so happy to make it to the top around 12:45, until we realized we still had to make it to the North Rim Lodge which was about 2 miles from were we where. A small sence of dispare set in, but we had a shuttle to catch, so we marched on finally reaching the Lodge and stopping my watch which ironicly read 26.2 miles exactly. We cleaned up in the rest room, got some coke and pizza, and enjoyed the amazing veiw before we caught our shuttle around 1:45. I thought the north rim was more breath taking than the south rim.
The shuttle ride back takes 4 1/2 hours. We road with some nice people who were going to stay the night on the south rim and then hike back the next day. The were going to start their hike at 2 am! After getting back we met up with Blake's brothers, had some dinner and headed home.
It was an amazing adventure and was much more difficult than I had imagined. Now I want to try and run Rim to Rim to Rim though.
Fuel: 3 homemade goos, 2 Lara bars, snack pack of pistachios, water
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