art loeb

 art loeb was kind of a pet project of mine for several years. you really only got two good shots at it every year. usually a spring run, after the fall leaves had been rotted down by rain but before the overgrowth then usually nothing till fall, when you'd get a cool sunny day before the leaves started falling down low, but were down enough up above pilot that you could navigate the rhododendron overgrowth. summers up on black balsam got a ton of traffic, so the trails were busy with tourist. fall, winter and spring you dealt with ice and fog were issues up high, so you had to find the sweet spot and time it right.

 jay curwen ran 5:51 or so. i know marshall green ran 5:55 as well. he was mostly a MTB guy who worked over at the NOC and did a ton of hiking. he was pretty strong and his wife was from brevard. cheri titus/rosenblatt did it in under 6 hours in 1998, but she never admitted her specific time to me other than it took her less than 6 hours and I totally believe her. she was a somewhat of a local legend. cheri's husband owned a bike shop right at the entrance of pisgah and they lived up off of cathy's creek road. she knew the sections between gloucester gap up over pilot to the parkway better than anyone I knew and she had more time on it. cheri rarely raced, when she did it was shut in, which she won several times and grandfather mountain marathon, which she also has several wins at. she loved to trail run and could still break 3 hours at GMM when she was in her early 40s.

my first run through was rough. i got lost above black balsam, blew my quads out and practically walked down to boy camp. after that, weather, traffic, too hard too early, to easy too early, etc I never quite put it together. I had a good run in 2001 which I didn't think I could ever improve on. I would run the sections between the davidson and gloucester gap regularly, so I was strong. I probably ran that section 100's of times in the years I lived in brevard.

I had a crazy streak of running between august of 2004 and march of 2005 where every run I felt like I was being shot out of a cannon. strong, felt good. spirit was in a good place. I was running my bests on all my local trails. I pr'd in road 10K's one weekend and won a 20 mile trail race the next. about 10 days before my fall 2004 run, I finished 3rd in 2:38 at the dupont trail marathon which hosted a trail championship that year. I had given up on breaking 5:40 but decided to give it one more shot based on how my runs had been that fall. the trail was in good shape, leaves hadn't fallen yet and I got beta that the outward bound camp near pilot mountain had trimmed back all the rhododendron overgrowth that we usually had to deal with before the parkway. It is still one of the best days of running I have ever had. I knew I had sub 5:40 in the bag once I hit section 3 and when i started doing the math when I made the turnoff down to the scout camp, I thought low 5:30s was possible. I scared myself with how fast i ran down that hill. 5:31:54 was my final time. 11 days later I ran 2:31 at shut in on very tired and sore legs from my art loeb run. I think was 3rd or 4th. that spring I won uwharrie 20 miler and black mountain marathon then broke my foot jumping mountain bikes into the lake at camp carolina and missed 8 months and that was that.

I moved to oregon in fall 2006 and usually visit brevard every other year or so. I still have a house there. I always visit art when I'm back, but usually only to butter gap and down to the hatchery. there are a couple of old cemetary's from the 1800's just off the trail above the hatchery that most folks don't know about. exploring and finding places like that is what made me fall in love with trail running. I like to go check in on those places when I'm home.

I only did matt's ALTAR completely just once, in 2005. my buddy chad had a xmas tree farm i worked harvest on weekends between thanksgiving and christmas, so I rarely had a weekend off for winter solstice. chad and I started and ran to gloucester gap from 2002-2004, we sold out of trees early in 2005, so I got to go the whole way. I never thought that would be my last one for awhile. 

looking at my old running journals, these were my runs.

Fall 1998: 6:24

Spring 1999: 6:03

Fall 1999: 6:06 (ice on black balsam, fog)

Spring 2000: 5:49

Fall 2000: 5:55 (waited too long. leaves were down)

Spring 2001: 5:41

Fall 2002: 5:53 (living in chapel hill for 6 months. fast, but not strong)

Spring 2003: 6:02

Fall 2003: 5:44

Fall 2004: 5:31 (my best)

Winter 2005: 6:35

I don't know if my 5:31 is THE fastest, but it's certainly my fastest. If folks have run it faster, then the list is probably pretty small. there just were not a lot of people that knew the trail as well as a few of us did, especially between pilot mtn and the camp. easy to blow the wad early and be shattered by the parkway. If the signage improved on the balds, it would make it easier. back in the day, you had to know the way or it would be easy to get off track once up high. It's a rough, rugged, unforgiving yet stunningly beautiful trail in the true spirit of the fellow it's named after. I met some of his kin and they had good stories about his wanderings. rumor has it the whole reason he spent so much time hiking was because he had a moonshine still off of black mountain trail. given the natural springs that are abundant there, I wouldn't be surprised. One side of his family said it's true, the other claimed he was a god faring christian man who never touched liquor in his life. he was a local legend who died young but sure left a legacy. 

update 2023: david hedges got it right. 5:20 in an early spring run. 2/5/2023