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The night before Karl Meltzer decided to gut out the last 85 miles without a break on a grueling 2,190-mile trail run journey through 14 states, he turned to his crew chief Eric Belz and said: "I can smell the barn."
"The first week, you could just see it in Karl's eyes," Belz said. "He had this twinkle of determination that 'this is my time to shine, I'm breaking the record this time, nothing is going to stop me.'"
Just before 4 a.m. the 48-year-old Sandy resident and world class ultrarunner began his "child's play" of an 85-mile homestretch in a record-setting thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail — 45 days, 22 hours and 38 minutes of speed hiking through the heat, humidity, mountains and woods from Maine to Georgia — to best the previous record by more than 10 hours.
After attempts in 2008 and 2014, Meltzer completed a dream on Sept. 18, born from hiking the "A.T." as a kid in New Hampshire and honed by a fateful run to Cecret Lake in the summer of 1990.
Meltzer moved to Utah in 1989 to be a self-described "ski bum," but the trail running bug bit him the following summer when he went for a run to the lake while he was working at Snowbird.
"I didn't know the trails. I was exploring a new place all the time, so the buzz was there for sure," Meltzer said. "I just kept doing it and evolved into running shorter races, then longer races and it evolved into a real career."
Meltzer, nicknamed "Speedgoat," is the winningest 100-mile runner on Earth with 38 victories, topping the Wasatch 100 six times. He finished running the A.T. in 2008 in 54 days without breaking the record and dropped out of an attempt after falling behind record pace in 2014, the task of besting the record becoming an obsession.
Last September, Meltzer returned to Maine for some southbound practice on the trail, running 263 miles in six days to prepare for an attempt to best Scott Jurek's northbound record from 2015.
"We talked about it a little bit more, did more recon, did more time on the trail, spent a lot more effort putting together the right team," Meltzer said. "Lo and behold, it happens this year and I was successful."
After driving out from Utah, Belz and Meltzer found a campground near Mount Katahdin in Maine and the runner took off in the morning on Aug. 3.
"Karl said if the weather is good, I'm going first thing in the morning," Belz said. "Me knowing Karl, I knew he was leaving that next morning because the weather was perfect."
Meltzer said the conditions were ideal for the first 19 days, helping him to maintain a 44-mile-per-day pace. Every day, Belz woke him up, laid out the daily journey itinerary, and fed him breakfast, and Meltzer was out of the van and on his way by 5 a.m.
"Everything was really lining up and falling into place for me," Meltzer said. "The start was fantastic and I really wasn't working extra hard to get to those miles that I needed to get to."
Belz and the rest of his crew met him every eight to 10 miles — sometimes stretching to 15 or 20 — driving around 100 miles per day while Metallica and Megadeth CDs from Walmart kept Belz company in the "hurry up and wait" role as Meltzer's crew chief.
"It was a lot mentally. I'll admit, I was a little nervous going into this project because I did feel like I had a lot riding on my shoulders with getting this guy to the record," Belz, who has crewed for Meltzer on many 100-mile races, said. "I didn't want to screw anything up."
Despite his strong starting pace, as Day 20 dawned, Meltzer tweaked his shin in the New Jersey stretch, the injury aggravating in Pennsylvania into tendinitis and a shin splint — a segment he said was by far the roughest of the journey.
"We would just treat it with anti-inflammatorys and a little bit less miles," Meltzer said. "I had a bit of a lead on the record pace about 19 days into it, so I had a few miles to give back. I certainly didn't want to do that, but I had to."
Belz researched treatments and found that the best way to treat the injury was rest — a notion he knew Meltzer wouldn't remotely entertain. So, they pressed on.
"It was amazing watching Karl run through an injury like that. That's gotta be painful," Belz said. "The way he was explaining it to me, that's got to suck to get up in the morning and do it again."
Meltzer pushed through and averaged several days of 50-miles-plus, saying he was confident a week out from his projected finish that the record was his.
"As long as my body held together, I didn't crash funky or something like that, that I was there," he said.
Jurek joined him for the final 31 miles to help him keep pace, Belz joining in to hike the final mile before Meltzer emerged from the Georgia woods at 3:38 a.m. on Sept. 18, smacking a trail plaque that marks the southern most point of the A.T. in Springer Mountain, Ga. with both hands in celebration.
Belz, who stayed off-and-on in Meltzer's basement from 2005 to 2009 and worked at Snowbird with him, joked his first thought as Meltzer crossed the finish line was relief he wouldn't have to drive the van anymore.
"He's been going after this record for a long time, so it was his time to get it and he got it," Belz said. "I was so happy for him and in another sense, I was ready to go home."
Meltzer said he's accepted the record will be bested someday when everything breaks just right for the next athlete to try to conquer the "A.T." — and that he'll even offer advice and help pace anyone who wants to try.
He won't try to regain it if the record is bested, however, content that one journey for the record books from the mountains of Maine to the forests of Georgia is enough.
"Now I've put a little bit of a stamp on my career. I've done a lot of stuff in my ultra career, doesn't mean it's over. It's not over," Meltzer said. "But at the same time, I have nothing else on the docket right now. I can enjoy the moment and finally say I got this record."
Twitter: @BrennanJSmith —
Record (trail) run
Karl Meltzer's record-setting Appalachian Trail thru-hike by the numbers
• 2,190 miles
• 4,330,207 steps
• 464,500 feet of elevation change
• 345,100 calories
• 678 hours of running
• 20 pairs of shoes