Day Three of My Unsupported Ozark Trail FKT Attempt!

Miles Walked: 52.82 (159.28 total)
Elapsed Time: 23h 46m 40s
Sleep The Night Before: 1.5 hours
Current Average: 53.09 miles per day
Existing Record: 51.4 miles per day avg (4 days, 11 hrs, 28.5 min total)

I got rained on overnight. It wasn’t raining that hard, but it was raining and I woke up with a wet sleeping bag. I never let my sleeping bag get wet on a normal trip, but two factors make me OK with it this time:

1. It’s warm out and will stay warm. If my sleeping bag gets soaked and stops keeping me warm, It won’t be dangerous.
2. I started the day hoping I wouldn’t use my sleeping bag again… if all goes according to plan I’ll finish this very late tomorrow, so it’d just one night with 0 sleep.

I was happy to start the day early: My alarm went off at 4:00 AM and I was walking at 4:37 AM. I would have liked to be even more efficient getting going than this, but nothing’s proving to be easy out here. As I took my first steps of the day I became very, very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to continue. My feet hurt SO BAD. I started out barely moving, but I realized that with every step, my feet got a little bit more numb. I was lucky to have an easy, flat trail for the first several miles of the day, and I actually managed to speed up to almost a normal pace! I made it to 20 miles before noon, which might be my earliest time hitting that milestone ever. This was a really exciting morale boost: if I stick to it and ignore the pain, I think I can do this!

A lack of ticks made the day even better! I was only attacked by 4 ticks all day! That brings my grand total to 63 — that’s a lot, but the trend is in the right direction! Maybe there will be no ticks left by the end of the trip!

When I hit 20 miles I took a 15-minute cat-nap (in the rain). Renee satellite-texted me that those really helped her on her unsupported FKT, so I gave it a try! It was good and bad. It felt amazing mentally, but after the long break my feet really, really hurt as they got started again, so I think I’ll keep my naps shorter going forward.

The Ozark Trail has plenty of snakes, but I haven’t seen any. But, today I saw a large snake skeleton. This was a cool reminder that they’re out here, even if I’m not spotting any living ones. I also saw two turtles. The turtles are really cool — they’re like my friends out here.

In the afternoon I got to walk through a freshly-maintained section of trail! The Ozark Trail Association was having a “MEGA” work weekend, and they just had a bunch of people out working on it. The section was a joy to walk on! As it got close to 6pm tonight I realized I had 48 hours left to get the record and 90 miles to go. Even though I’m slowing down every day, that’s less than 2 miles per hour. I think I can do it!

Late at night I got exhausted and took a 55-minute “nap” in a clearing. I was wrong this morning — I did use my sleeping bag, but the moisture from last night wasn’t much of an issue. I was so tired I fell asleep no problem! I got up from the nap and continued walking until 4:23am. At this point, I’ve decided it counts as a new day, and I clicked over my watch to start up a new activity.