| Mile | 1105.9 |
| Miles Since Last Update | 17.2 |
| Day | 88 |
Crushed out a pretty smooth 17 miles and made it to the Ironmasters Mansion hostel before 1. Passed 1100 miles and then the “official” halfway marker, which is past the actual halfway point.
The hostel is in a pretty cool historical building in the pine Grove furnace state park. It is also pretty empty.
Set down my stuff and chatted with an interesting guy named Raja for a bit. He’s been bouncing around and has some fun stories and is the one who gave Van Gogh his trail name.
Walked to the general store next door where the half gallon ice cream challenge takes place and Van Gogh was already there getting ready. I looked at the current leaderboard they had that included Notyet, Graham (now “the tick”), and several others. I chose chocolate vanilla split as my 1.5 qt and banana pudding as my remaining pint (they don’t make actual half gallon containers of ice cream anymore because of woke). Looking at the 2200+ calories in front of me I had a feeling this would be much more difficult than the 17 miles I had just done, and a crowd had started to form. I grabbed my camp spoon, put on all of my layers to conserve warmth, and fell into it.
13 minutes and 15.11 seconds later it was over.
The current record for the year was just under 21 minutes so this put me as the new 2026 record holder. The all time record is 3:47, so I’m sure once the bubble runs thru someone will clock me but it was a fun experience. I don’t feel too ill but I was shivering real hard as I filled out my leaderboard card.
Tomorrow is 19.2 into boiling springs. Elevation looks pretty manageable so I’m not too stressed.