Long before this weekend’s Trail Running Festival had seven races on the schedule, we were already asking why perfectly reasonable people willingly spend Labor Day running up and down a ski mountain.
Back in 2014, Jay Peak Magazine sat down with race organizer Chris Bernier to talk suffer fests, pickle juice, kids who stop mid-race to pick flowers and the particular kind of person who looks at 4,000 vertical feet and signs up anyway.
Twelve years later, some distances have changed. The logic has not.
Now in its third year, word is getting out about the Jay Peak Trail Running Family Festival, and the talk couldn’t sound more ruthless. With roughly 4,000 vertical feet of climbing and six different races packed into two days, this annual runner’s retreat is sure to be a suffer fest.
UP TO 1,000 RACERS—FROM NEWCOMERS TO OLD HACKS— are expected to lace up and party down over Labor Day Weekend, August 30–31. As the organizer responsible for the Trail Running Family Festival, Chris Bernier of Sub 5 Racing discusses how one of New England’s newest, most brutal trail running fests is quickly growing into a sellout event for ultra runners, dirt pounders and curious beginners alike.
INTERVIEW BY STEPHANIE NITSCH
If you finish the 25k, you’ve accomplished an epic feat. If you’ve done a 50k, you’re actually praying for death. People say there are no words to describe it. You’ve just gone up and down a mountain on the 25k, and then you realize you have to do it all over again [for the 50k]. It tests your body, mind, and spirit. Don’t try to be a hero on this one.
This is a hard, hard race. There’s no shame in calling it quits after the first lap [of the 50k]. We’ll gladly give you our 25k medal. A handful of people take us up on that every year and say they were underprepared for it.
When we created the trail, I ran it a few times to get a feel for it. So we know the things that runners are thinking of when they’re on the trail. We know where aid stations are necessary and what kind of food to serve.
Peanut butter sandwiches, gummy bears. M&Ms and gel packs for a burst of sugar. They love pickles and potato chips because of the salt. One guy took a pickle jar at an aid station and drank the juice.
I don’t know about all of it, but definitely a good swig.
Alice’s Table is a pretty epic place. They cater to the runners, and you see them loading up on spaghetti and beer. Yeah, beer is a great carbo load. Jay Peak Trail Ale…the runners eat that up.
We’ll have three 5k’s on Saturday, which have different difficulties based on the ski run classification. The green circle run won’t be a pancake, but the black diamond-race is nothing more than a glorified hike, to be honest. It’s a good way to break into trail running. These races are 9.3 miles all together, and 46% of the 5k racers run all three.
A lot of the parents are hardcore trail runners, and their kids have a blast running it. We make different turn-around zones for each age group. Some kids will stop and pick flowers, others will be really competitive. You know, someone will always say that kids shouldn’t be doing this; that it’s mean making kids exercise and run. But I think making them sit inside playing video games and turning them into butterballs is mean.
Eat right, do your [pre-race] workouts and have a good time. This one is about fun. It’s not the Olympics. It’s a mountain. Enjoy it.
TO HIT THE TRAIL VISIT JAYPEAKRESORT.COM/EVENTS
