Lindsay Webster lowers her own Presidential Traverse FKT
Lindsay (front, arms raised) with some of GRP Run from the fall 2026 team camp.
GRP Trail coach Lindsay Webster is no stranger to New Hampshire's Presidential Traverse — she set the women's unsupported fastest known time on the 18-mile, 8,500-foot route back in 2021. This September, she went back and beat her own record, crossing the nine-summit line (Madison, Adams, Jefferson, Clay, Washington, Monroe, Little Monroe, Eisenhower, and Pierce, descending via Crawford Path) in 4:25:38 on September 12 — 8 minutes and 1 second faster than her 2021 mark of 4:33:39.
Conditions cooperated: blue skies, dry footing, and courteous trail traffic on a busy fall weekend. Webster credits several days of recon on the technical first half of the route — she was up to 12 minutes ahead of her old pace at one point — though a rough patch of nausea near Lake of the Clouds cost her time back before she recovered for a hard final descent off Pierce.
Beyond the stopwatch, this one's a family effort. Webster — who coaches GRP Trail out of Quebec, where she and her family are also farming — talked about splitting attempts and training sessions around two young kids, with a village of friends handling shuttles, carpools, and babysitting to make the day possible.
The bounty: The record also came with a prize. The Presidential Traverse is one of five White Mountains routes carrying a bounty in White Mountain Ski Co.'s White Mountain Bounty program, an annual $10,000 fund that pays out to trail runners who break FKTs on the region's classic lines — the Presidential Traverse bounty stood at $2,000, the maximum any single route can carry. Webster's record qualified, and she says she's putting the winnings toward "a humanitarian project for other athletes" — details to come.
She talked about the effort, the bounty, and how her approach to training has evolved since becoming a mother, on a recent episode of the Run the Whites podcast:
Webster posted about the effort herself, with the full breakdown of the day and the shout-outs to everyone who helped make it happen:
Full route details and results history are up at FastestKnownTime.com; more on the record and the bounty program is at Running Magazine.