I just finished listening to North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail* by Scott and Jenny Jurek.
If you don’t know Scott, he is an ultra-marathoner who broke the northbound, supported AT record in 2015. He didn’t keep the record for long. Instead, Scott helped Karl Meltzer, a friend who had supported him in 2015, set a southbound, supported AT record in 2016.
I’d like to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail someday. I’m not sure whether I want to do it northbound or southbound, as both directions have positives and negatives. I thought I would do when I turned 50 in 2023, but I’m going to run the Great Wall of China Marathon instead.
Scott finished the trail in 46 days. The current, supported, northbound, AT record is 41 days. That’s amazing. The trail is about 2,200 miles long, goes through 14 states, and gains and loses more than 89 miles in elevation. It takes an average of 165 days to complete the thru-hike (that is a half-marathon a day.) The amount of planning needed would be huge, but it would be a fantastic project.
North* is a great book, although I admit I liked the end better than the beginning. As with many running books, it is a quasi-memoir and deals with personal problems. If you want to read a more light-hearted, yet just as heart-stopping a book about the Appalachain Trail, check out A Walk In the Woods* by Bill Bryson. (Or watch the movie, but the book is much better.)
What do you think about taking six months to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail? Would you do it?
*Amazon affiliate links