I saw this while reading the Backcountry Blog earlier. It seems that ultrarunner Karl Meltzer isn't content to just run an occasional long distance event. The 40 year old endurance athlete has won 49 ultramarathons in his career, the majority of them off road and in the mountains, but now he's setting his sites on a new challenge.
On August 5th of this year, Karl will attempt to set a new speed record on The Appalachian Trail. He hopes to complete the 2,174 mile course in 47 days, averaging more than 46 miles per day. Running that kind of distance on a smooth, paved road would be challenging enough for any endurance athlete, but running it on the AT, which has some extremely challenging and difficult terrain, would be enough to send anyone home in tears.
We'll be able to follow Karl's progress at WheresKarl.com , which will also begin to take shape over the summer. The promise to add realtime GPS tracking, a blog of his training and days on the course, a forum, videos, photos, podcasts, and more.
Obviously the start of this event is still several months off, but it should be fun to follow. Karl will spend the summer preparing for his epic journey which is described as: "Man vs. Nature, Man vs. Self, Man vs. Clock". Stay tuned for more on this one. It's going to be an amazing run. In the mean time, checkout this video of Karl doing his thing.
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