It’s prime fastest known time (FKT) season on the 817-mile Arizona Trail, and Georgia Porter just set a new women’s overall and women’s supported FKT on the route.
The 36-year-old Flagstaff, Arizona, resident covered the trail, which has on the order of 118,000 feet of elevation gain, in 16 days, 22 hours, and 6 minutes, finishing at 4:07 a.m. local time on November 14, 2024. This equates to an average of a little over 48 miles per day.
Helen Galerakis held the previous women’s supported FKT on the route with a time of 17 days, 11 hours, and 3 minutes, which she set in early November of 2019.
Georgia Porter (bottom) with her crew at the finish of her Arizona Trail FKT-setting run. All photos courtesy of Georgia’s crew.
Porter, like Nick Fowler — who set a men’s overall and men’s self-supported FKT on the trail just a few days ago — chose to complete the trail southbound, starting at the Utah/Arizona border in the north of the state and traveling to the U.S./Mexican border in the state’s south. Both took advantage of a narrow weather window in the fall, before the high country of the northern part of Arizona gets snowed in, but after the extreme heat of the southern Sonoran Desert has passed.
While this appears to be Porter’s first official FKT, she’s no stranger to ultrarunning. She won the 2023 High Lonesome 100 Mile and placed fourth at Run Rabbit Run 100 Mile that same year. She’s done well in many shorter trail ultras as well, including winning the Run Rabbit Run 50 Mile in 2022, finishing fifth in the Gorge Waterfalls 100k in 2024, and placing second at the Black Canyon 60k earlier this year. It’s worth noting that Porter also qualified for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials and finished 28th with a time of 2:38:07.
Porter had a strong crew assisting her throughout her Arizona Trail run, who posted daily updates on Instagram for people following the effort, which worked really well until they lost the login information for the Instagram account and had to start a new one, which has since then been great. Porter also had a live tracker for people to follow along.
Starting at Stateline campground at 5 a.m. on October 28, Porter was fast out of the gate, covering 58 miles the first day, crossing the Grand Canyon on the second, and getting reasonably close to her hometown of Flagstaff by the end of the third day. A crowd came out to cheer her the next day near Snowbowl ski resort outside of town, and another group came to camp with her the next night. While Porter was the one doing the running, the updates from the trail show the group effort that went into the FKT, and that the crew was having a good time along the way. Their updates were littered with “Lord of the Ring” references.
Georgia Porter passing through the Mazatzal Wilderness on the Arizona Trail.
The Arizona Trail covers a stunningly diverse set of ecosystems, ranging from the pine forests of the Kaibab Plateau in the north, to the Grand Canyon, and to the edge of the Mogollon Plateau, where the elevation drops and the trail heads into the desert and progressively works its way south into the land of saguaro cactus and rattlesnakes. The trail also traverses several mountain ranges and Sky Islands, which jut up from the desert basins to over 9,000 feet.
With just over 200 miles to go on day 12, her crew reported, “We’re toughing out the lows and riding out the highs! She is so strong!” By the end of the effort, they said, “This trail is throwing everything it can at Georgia, and she’s been fighting back so so strongly.”
In the end, the fight was plenty enough, and she was able to set a new women’s FKT by almost 13 hours.
Georgia Porter running into the sunset, on her way to setting a new Arizona Trail women’s supported and women’s overall FKT.
