It’s prime quickest recognized time (FKT) season on the 817-mile Arizona Path, and Georgia Porter simply set a brand new ladies’s total and girls’s supported FKT on the route.
The 36-year-old Flagstaff, Arizona, resident coated the path, which has on the order of 118,000 ft of elevation achieve, in 16 days, 22 hours, and 6 minutes, ending at 4:07 a.m. native time on November 14, 2024. This equates to a median of a little bit over 48 miles per day.
Helen Galerakis held the earlier ladies’s supported FKT on the route with a time of 17 days, 11 hours, and three minutes, which she set in early November of 2019.
Georgia Porter (backside) along with her crew on the end of her Arizona Path FKT-setting run. All photographs courtesy of Georgia’s crew.
Porter, like Nick Fowler — who set a males’s total and males’s self-supported FKT on the path just some days in the past — selected to finish the path southbound, beginning on the Utah/Arizona border within the north of the state and touring to the U.S./Mexican border within the state’s south. Each took benefit of a slender climate window within the fall, earlier than the excessive nation of the northern a part of Arizona will get snowed in, however after the acute warmth of the southern Sonoran Desert has handed.
Whereas this seems to be Porter’s first official FKT, she’s no stranger to ultrarunning. She received the 2023 Excessive Lonesome 100 Mile and positioned fourth at Run Rabbit Run 100 Mile that very same 12 months. She’s executed effectively in lots of shorter path ultras as effectively, together with profitable the Run Rabbit Run 50 Mile in 2022, ending fifth within the Gorge Waterfalls 100k in 2024, and inserting second on the Black Canyon 60k earlier this 12 months. It’s value noting that Porter additionally certified for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and completed twenty eighth with a time of two:38:07.
Porter had a powerful crew helping her all through her Arizona Path run, who posted day by day updates on Instagram for folks following the trouble, which labored rather well till they misplaced the login info for the Instagram account and needed to begin a brand new one, which has since then been nice. Porter additionally had a reside tracker for folks to comply with alongside.
Beginning at Stateline campground at 5 a.m. on October 28, Porter was quick out of the gate, overlaying 58 miles the primary day, crossing the Grand Canyon on the second, and getting moderately near her hometown of Flagstaff by the top of the third day. A crowd got here out to cheer her the following day close to Snowbowl ski resort exterior of city, and one other group got here to camp along with her the following night time. Whereas Porter was the one doing the operating, the updates from the path present the group effort that went into the FKT, and that the crew was having a great time alongside the best way. Their updates have been plagued by “Lord of the Ring” references.
Georgia Porter passing via the Mazatzal Wilderness on the Arizona Path.
The Arizona Path covers a stunningly numerous set of ecosystems, starting from the pine forests of the Kaibab Plateau within the north, to the Grand Canyon, and to the sting of the Mogollon Plateau, the place the elevation drops and the path heads into the desert and progressively works its means south into the land of saguaro cactus and rattlesnakes. The path additionally traverses a number of mountain ranges and Sky Islands, which jut up from the desert basins to over 9,000 ft.
With simply over 200 miles to go on day 12, her crew reported, “We’re toughing out the lows and using out the highs! She is so sturdy!” By the top of the trouble, they mentioned, “This path is throwing the whole lot it may at Georgia, and she or he’s been preventing again so so strongly.”
In the long run, the struggle was loads sufficient, and she or he was in a position to set a brand new ladies’s FKT by nearly 13 hours.
Georgia Porter operating into the sundown, on her approach to setting a brand new Arizona Path ladies’s supported and girls’s total FKT.
