Velo News (September 29, 2021) by Betsy Welch

On Christmas Eve of 2018, ultra-endurance mountain biker Kait Boyle wasn’t sure if she would ever walk again.

Two years later, she set a fastest known time record (FKT) on the 137-mile Kokopelli Trail, a remote and arduous route between Moab, Utah, and Loma, Colorado.

The new film Fastest For Now chronicles Boyle’s personal journey from recovery to the FKT attempt, and it also touches on the significance — and impermanence — of such records.

“You don’t have to use these records for comparison,” Boyle says in the film. “They can just be for inspiration, for your own personal challenge.”

Attempts to set FKTs — or become a king or queen of the mountain on Strava — surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, when bike racers with pent-up energy didn’t line up on starting lines. For Boyle, whose background is in competitive ultra-distance mountain biking (she was the 2018 24-hour mountain bike world champion and has set records at the Arizona Trail 300 race), the Kokopelli FKT marked her first race effort since the car accident that shattered her pelvis in late 2018.

Fastest For Now also documents the FKT attempt of Boyle’s friend, coach, and teammate Kurt Refsnider. Refsnider had an FKT on the Kokopelli Trail until May 2020, when EF Education-Nippo rider Lachlan Morton broke it. While Refsnider reclaimed the title from Morton during his November 2020 attempt with a time of ten hours and 56 minutes, since then, three more attempts have been made. Pete Stetina‘s time of 10:24 stands as the current men’s record.

Boyle finished the route in 13 hours and seven minutes, besting Rebecca Rusch’s 2013 attempt.

Her time currently stands as the fastest, for now.

 

To watch the video trailer and to read the article online, click here.