The Grand Teton fastest known time (FKT) record has stood for 12 years. This month, Michelino Sunseri broke that record and claimed the FKT, running the nearly 15-mile route, climbing and descending 7,000 vertical feet, and returning to his car in just 2 hours, 50 minutes, and 50 seconds.
“It was definitely a doozy,” he told GearJunkie following the attempt.
In an Instagram post, Sunseri said that on the morning of September 2, as he drove along what he called his “morning commute” to Grand Teton National Park, he knew it was The Day. He could feel that if he gave it his all on that perfect weather morning, he’d beat Andy Anderson’s 2012 record and set a new FKT for this popular climbing route.
And he was right. When he came sprinting across the finish line, back into the parking lot of Alpine Meadows Trailhead, he was 3 minutes and 12 seconds ahead of Anderson’s time. And he’d shaved a full 4 hours, 53 minutes, and 41 seconds off his original summit time from August 30, 2021.
“The first time I went up, I literally thought to myself, this is impossible, there is no way I will ever get this, this is crazy. Like, how the hell did Andy run this fast?” recalled Sunseri.
Now, 44 summits and 4 years of training later, he knows how Andy did it: pure, dogged determination. He learned firsthand. Sunseri even raised the bar a little higher. It wasn’t his first FKT, but he said this was the most significant of his career so far.
GearJunkie caught up with Sunseri after his Grand Teton FKT. He was relaxing in his hometown of King Beach, Calif., taking some much-needed time off. “Just a little bit,” he qualified, though, before he dives straight back into running endurance races and chasing FKTs.
Grand Teton FKT: Q&A With Michelino Sunseri
GearJunkie: The Grand Teton FKT record hadn’t been broken in a long time. How did you set your sights on this FKT?
Michelino Sunseri: I think it was October 2020 when I did the Teton Crest Trail [FKT]. [On] part of that route, you run straight by the Grand Middle and South.
Seeing those for the first time, getting chills, and being absolutely enamored by them, I told myself, I’m gonna go for that one. We literally moved 2 weeks later to the Tetons after that run.
So you decided to do this FKT while you were pursuing a different FKT?
MS: Pretty much. That [Teton Crest Trail] run was pretty life-changing in a way. I can tell you the exact moment … hair stood up on the back of my neck and the adrenaline just started pumping even harder.
And that moment, I was, like, I’m moving here. I’m gonna be here. This is where I wanna be.
What went into planning for this FKT attempt?
MS: So, for this FKT, you need three things to really go your way. You have to have the route finding completely dialed. There can be zero question of where you’re going and where you are on the mountain.
Then fitness, so that you can hit this route during that very short window of being able to make it happen.
And then weather; you can’t control the weather, and you kind of have to make the decision to go for this thing based on the weather and based on whether or not there’s ice, snow, thunderstorms, whatever.
This route is notoriously tricky to navigate. How long did it take before you had it memorized?
MS: I’ve summited 45 times now — once in the winter, 44 times in the summer. A lot of that time was spent checking out different parts of the route and checking out pretty much every single different little path, every single variation, every single rock and climb and move, and just trying to familiarize myself with every single piece of the puzzle.
That way, I can kinda put together the pieces in the way that suits me and is most efficient for me getting up and down. I don’t think I’ve ever taken the same route twice. It was always slightly different.
Reading your post about the attempt, it sounds like you knew that morning that you were going to get the FKT. What was that like?
MS: It was kinda just a really, really beautiful feeling. It was weird because I wanted to stop and take a picture, but I didn’t think taking a crappy picture on my phone was going to do that moment justice. I knew nothing was going to surpass that.
Usually [at] races and whatnot, I’ll get pretty nervous. The Cirque Series Race that I did a week before, I was incredibly nervous, and I had some butterflies. But this one, I felt pretty at peace with it all. I had a plan. I knew exactly what I wanted to do, where I wanted to do it, and just had everything so organized and dialed in my head.
It was like I had already created the blueprint, and then it was just time to execute the plan.
Was there ever a moment on the route that you had doubts? Or was it just a perfect day and perfect run from start to finish?
MS: There was one moment: When I hit the Meadows, I was on pace — 38 minutes, pretty much right on Andy’s pace. And then I hit the lower saddle about 35 minutes later and was actually ahead of Andy … almost a minute and 30 seconds ahead of his pace. And at that point, I kind of let off the pedal a little bit, made sure I drank my water, took in my calories, regrouped, breathed — kind of just relaxed a little bit through that section.
I don’t know if it was route choice. I don’t know if it was fitness or if I just wasn’t moving fast enough. But between the lower saddle and the upper saddle, I looked at my watch, and I was like, Oh, shit! I’m losing time to Andy right now.
He hit the top in an hour and 48 minutes. And I hit the upper saddle in an hour and 44 minutes.
At that point, I was like, I’m falling behind. I knew it was going to take me at least 7 minutes to go from the belly roll to the summit.
That next section, from there to the top, I kind of knew that I was falling behind and really, really needed to kick it into high gear. So I hit the top 4 minutes [behind] Andy’s FKT pace …. And I did have some pretty negative thoughts at that moment. I was pretty freaking bummed. I told myself, OK. You’re not done yet. You could still run the top three fastest times ever. You can still put yourself in contention with Killian.
How did you make up that time?
MS: I had never actually raced the summit down to the lower saddle, but it’s such a fun, heinous part that I’ve always wanted to. And I’ve always been really, really excited to do it. And I had this idea in my head that I could do it in under 15 minutes — Andy did it in 20 minutes — and then the fastest time on Strava is 17 minutes.
So I did quick math in my head. I was like, if I can actually do what I thought I could, then I could still get this FKT with some change. After that, I was moving at what I thought was a pretty good pace — pretty stupid and reckless, actually. There were some sections of it that I’ve never thrown myself down the rock so hard, landing on my heels, giving zero [bleeps] about my own well-being.
When I hit the belly roll, my buddy Sam was there helping with crowd control … I screamed out to Sam, “Dude, I think I [bleeping] got this! Like, I think I could [bleeping] do it!” There was this whole exchange of emotion and energy. And it lit the fire again.
What did it feel like when you finally came across the finish line and you knew you’d done it?
MS: I thought beforehand that I was gonna be way more emotional at the finish. It’s something I’ve put so much time into, and then there were some other life circumstances surrounding it this past summer that also made me think it was gonna be quite a bit more emotional.
But once I rounded the corner, I ran that last 400-ish meters that are all flat. I don’t know, I think I had burnt up all that emotional energy throughout the attempt.
Once I got to the finish, I was just kind of relieved. I was super happy — very, very happy. But I just felt like this massive weight was lifted off my shoulders from all this pressure and all this angst that I put on myself to do this thing. It was just very, very relaxing.
I just felt super at ease and peaceful.
FKT Gear: Michelino Sunseri’s Grand Teton Kit
From the photos, it’s easy to tell that Sunseri went full-on lightweight minimalist in his gear approach to this FKT. He told us as much when we asked him about it.
“It’s crazy when you start thinking about how much the weight adds up,” he said. “If the goal’s light and fast. You better be light … or you won’t be fast.”
He rattled off his list of gear from bottom to top without too much thought. Here’s what he had on him.
