Three men from Montezuma County set out to break a record time circumnavigating McPhee Reservoir and succeeded on Monday, Aug. 26.
They finished the race in 7 hours, 14 minutes and 53 seconds, which cut an hour off the previous record of 8 hours, 15 minutes and 39 seconds, held by a Durango man since October.
“We took it back from Durango,” said Clinton Straughen, 40, one of the runners.
“Montezuma represent!” added another runner, Felipe Tapia-Nordenflycht, 32, with jest.
It was a difficult journey because the trail is largely undefined, and some of it they swam. They all agreed honing the route beforehand and finding a path of least resistance was key in setting the record.
“This is a very unique FKT (fastest known time) in the sense that it’s a circumnavigation without a defined route. It’s pretty abnormal. Most FKT’s definitely have more of a defined route,” Straughen said.
The route they settled on was mostly trail. But they were off trail for some of it – even though they had a set route, bushwhacking was inevitable, and they had to refer to the GPS to make sure they were still going the right way.
“It took forever it seemed like,” said Straughen. “We were going through really nasty brush. And thorns, cactuses. We all had legs full of cactuses at one point.”
“They had barbs, you had to pull them hard to get them out,” added Jacob Carloni, 32, who also helped set the record. “Agh, you had to pull them hard to get them out.”
At one point, Tapia-Nordenflycht had to take off his shoes to remove cactus from his foot.
“Ah! A cactus in the leg,” he exclaimed.
When they submit their time to be approved by Fastest Known Time, a website that keeps track of these kinds of records, they’ll also submit their route.
That route, however, is subject to change, depending on the water level in the reservoir.
Some arms of the lake go into side canyons. When the water is high, you have to go around them. But when the water level is low, water drains out of the arms and you can cut a lot of mileage off by crossing them, Straughen said.
You can also cut mileage by swimming parts of it, which they did for about 200 yards, give or take.
“If you want to say anything about swimming, we did not do it gracefully,” Carloni said.
They brought dry bags and pushed the gear out in front of them to swim freely as they crossed the arm. Straughen kept his shoes on, the other two went barefoot.
Graceful or not, swimming knocked about 3 miles off the journey.
“We just want to show the talent and the depth of talent and endurance that we have here in Montezuma County. It’s not just a La Plata County-only thing. … If people are going to come over here and try to break our records, then we’re going to step up and make it hard for them,” Carloni said.
At any rate, they said breaking the record was a few years in the making, and McPhee’s high water level barred it from happening last year.
“Jake and I originally tried this like two years ago,” said Straughen. “We did it, but we actually made a wrong turn and we went around Narraguinnep Reservoir as well.”
When they submitted the run to FKT, it was denied because of the accidental detour around Narraguinnep, even though they still beat the record with the added 10 miles.
This weekend, the tri-city team plans to circumnavigate Mount Wilson. It’s 24 or 25 miles and they’ll do it at a leisurely pace, Straughen said.
Next week, Straughen and Tapia-Nordenflycht will do the Mogollon Monster in Phoenix, a 100-mile race.
But, for now – at least for a few days – they’re enjoying their victory. And well earned sweet treats.
“Let’s go get some ice cream and milk,” Straughen said as they were packing up.
“I need a Coca-Cola,” Tapia-Nordenflycht said.
