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A few of us did a thing this past Saturday…a huge mountain trail loop route called the Catawba Run Around or Triple Crown Loop. All but one had done it at least once. It is a huge deal to finish this thing in one day, as most people backpack it for 2-3-4 days. To us, it is just another fun Saturday, just much longer than normal. The Catawba Runaround is a very iconic hiking/backpacking/ultrarunning loop route that includes the 3 Crowns of the Appalachian Trail in the Roanoke VA area-McAfee Knob, Tinker Cliffs and Dragons Tooth. Most of us would add a 4th Crown of North Mountain (not on current, but is old Appalachian Trail). This loop is 34 plus miles and over 9000 feet of elevation gain. It is very slow and technical terrain.
This group run event was mostly centered around one of our friends doing it for the first time. Congrats to Heather as she did it in great and happy fashion. 9 of us started and 9 of us finished, which is pretty phenomenal by itself. Usually someone has some level of an issue and stops at some point. One guy-Jeff aka “The Natural” did several out and back runs during our run and had over 40 miles and 10,000 climb at the finish. To give him credit, he did the out and backs to cater to the back of the pack. We have several people that have big events coming up, like Georgia Death Race, Mount Mitchell Heartbreaker, Bigfoot 200, Blackbeard’s Revenge, Rim to Rim to Rim, Promise Land and others..but really, we were all here for the fun of it. And we did have a ton of fun.
The huge takeaway, after the fact, was that our 71 year old female friend-Dru did it. Sometimes we take her for granted, because she has been doing running events, at a high level for a long time, so nothing surprises us. But when you stop and think about it, it is astonishing that she did this in a bit over 13 hours. I was one of the people that was with her at the finish and trust me, she was moving at a great pace down Tinker Cliffs and Andy Layne Trail in the cold, windy dark. She had her big metal flashlight, that is almost as big as she is, going down the trail! In the middle of the run, at 21 miles and 6200 climb we gently offered Dru an out option, if she wanted. We had a friend that did a partial and could drive her back. She would not consider it and was determined to keep moving.
I do not want to keep making a huge deal out of her accomplishing these huge things at her age, but at the same time, it is so astonishing, how can you not?
On top of her athletic abilities, she is an extremely sweet and fun loving person. Everyone that knows her says “I want to be Dru when I grow up”.
Hats off Dru to another huge accomplishment.
And yes, I asked..she is more than fine with me/us advertising her age. She is happy to be old enough to be retired and play as much as she wants, along with spending time with her grandson and other family/friends.
EdgeofMountain 