I returned this year for my fourth Hellbender 100 miler, one of my all-time favorite races. After the devastation of Hurricane Helene, this year’s course would be largely different. While I love the original course, I was looking forward to exploring some new mountains and trails.
This edition featured ~19,000 feet of vert compared to the original 24,000 feet. There would still be plenty of steep, technical terrain, but I figured the course would run about 1.5 hours faster. Previously my best time was low 25 hours, so I built my splits for 23.5 hours.
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