‘Appaloosa of Appalachia’ runs entire Pinhoti Trail during pandemic sets record

A 28-year-old man voluntarily ran 350 miles in five days, 13 hours and 21 minutes through the mountains of Alabama and Georgia last week.

The law wasn't chasing him. The hounds weren't closing in. He just woke up one day during the coronavirus pandemic, and decided it was go-time.

Talk about stir crazy.

Caleb Yawn, an ultra distance runner from Macon, Ga., was tired of sitting around at home so he ran the entire Pinhoti Trail from Alabama to Georgia. And what did you do during the pandemic?

Yawn works for the Air Force designing high-tech stuff for airplanes, and builds furniture in his spare time when he's not running in the mountains. He doesn't consider himself an exceptional athlete (he most certainly is), but says he does have a strong will and a high capacity for enduring pain.

Just a regular guy at heart, though.

"Some days you're just not feeling it," Yawn said.

We can all relate, right?

On that day, Day 4 of his time on the beautifully rugged Pinhoti Trail, Yawn hobbled for "only" 50 miles on throbbing tendons.

He says he slept for maybe a few minutes during the final 37 hours of his state-spanning test of grit, and did it all just to prove to himself that he could. No Netflix documentary crew. No energy drink or shoe to endorse. Just a guy and a voice in his head telling him to run up and down mountains faster than anyone before him.

There are no games on TV right now, but sports are happening during this great pestilence of our time. The burning rage of competition cannot be extinguished so easily. Yawn ran because that universal human instinct to fight is always there smoldering inside of us all.

Get off the couch, and start climbing your mountain again. Definitely wear a mask, though, if it's not an actual mountain.

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"I had a lot of other plans for this year, but with the pandemic, and me being home, there's lots of little blessings that we can find in it," Yawn said.

Crazy thing is, Yawn wasn't on furlough or out of work last week when he ran the Pinhoti. He took personal time from his job as an engineer to do it because his original plan of running 100-mile races later this year was canceled. The Pinhoti is close to his heart, as it is to so many other people in Alabama, Georgia and the South, and he wanted to chase down a dream given the chance.

He was already in decent shape, and by decent I mean that on a regular Saturday he runs for about eight or nine hours. Without stopping. Horses are envious of that kind of stamina and strength.

Why let all those hours and days and months of training go to waste?

"Had this not happened, honestly I may not have ever ventured out, and pushed myself, and convinced myself to give it a shot," Yawn said.

He ran 74 miles the first day, "and crashed for a couple hours."

Nice warm up.

Day 2 was 60 miles, and so was Day 3. They were different, though, says Yawn.

On Day 2, he rescued a dog. No joke. A dog tagged along for 14 miles on the trail, and he contacted the owner when he finished for the day.

Day 3 was the mental test he knew was coming.

"Walked plenty," Yawn said. "Running is a loose term."

Day 4 was about being alone in the woods and in pain. Everything else "kind of ran together and was a blur."

Yawn's wife, Mallory, and her parents helped with his adventure by meeting him at different points along the way so he could rest for a few hours.

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"I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a fast runner," Yawn wrote on his blog after he finished.

No, Yawn is more like the Appaloosa of Appalachia, and the guy is an absolute legend now. I'm hoping to one day buy him a beer when it's safe to do that again, and I encourage all of his friends to do the same, but there's also this. In addition to the physical pain he put himself through, Yawn also shared a van with his in-laws when he wasn't running.

Tough as trail feet, this one.

"I couldn't have done it without them," he said. His mother- and father-in-law are Jamie and Todd Henderson, veterans of the ultra trail racing scene.

Yawn's time through the Pinhoti set a record for the famed trail, according to the website FastestKnownTime.com. Robert Youngren of Huntsville was the previous record-holder of the Pinhoti Trail at six days, eight hours, 48 minutes.

As everyone knows, the Pinhoti Trail is the true and rightful southernmost section of the Appalachian Mountains trail system. The "PT" starts (or ends) at Flagg Mountain in Coosa County, Alabama, and links up to the Benton MacKaye Trail in Georgia. The "BMT" then takes hikers and the occasional migrating black bear to the Southern Terminus of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain.

Sounds like a new challenge. For some of us, there is always another mountain to climb.

Joseph Goodman is a columnist for the Alabama Media Group. He's on Twitter @JoeGoodmanJr.

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