Running Up! Why Vermont is Turning Out World Class Runners.

West of Jay Peak, the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail runs from Richford, near the Canadian border, some 26 miles to St. Albans. It passes the towns of Montgomery and Berkshire and cuts through the pastoral landscape of Franklin County’s hillside dairy farms.

If you run sections of this trail regularly, you may have seen a small blonde woman running a pace that’s faster than most people pedal a bike. Elle Purrier St. Pierre grew up on her parent’s fifth-generation dairy farm in Montgomery. She skied at Jay Peak and played basketball at her local high school in Richford. It was while training for basketball that she began to make running a ritual.

Now 29,married to her high school sweetheart, Jamie St. Pierre, and living on his family’s dairy farm in Berkshire, Elle St. Pierre still runs the Missisquoi Valley Rail Trail. She leaves her son Ivan, now a year-and-a-half  old, at home and sets out to do the splits that have made her one of the greatest runners the U.S. has ever seen.

St. Pierre holds the American record for the mile and the two-mile. She won the 3,000-meter World Championship in Glasgow in early March 2024 and in June she qualified for two Olympic events, winning the 5,000 meter trials and then breaking her own record for the 1,500 trials, running the course in just 3:55:99.  After the event her coach Mark Coogan told Citius Magazine, “We’re 100-percent leaning toward her just doing the 1,500. There’s no reason she can’t run a 3:52 or a 3:53.”

A Running Community

While St. Pierre may have the spotlight on her, in the past few years, Vermont has become something of a hotbed for elite-level runners in disciplines that range from track to marathoning to trail running.

On most Saturdays, the Tour de Northwoods weekly run takes place in the Upper Valley. Anyone can join the group run, which often starts in places such as downtown Woodstock or King Arthur Flour’s Norwich headquarters. The locations and routes are announced on Strava and the run is usually followed by coffee and waffles at a local spot.

What makes the Tour de Northwoods different from any other club run is that you may find yourself lacing up your running shoes next to founder Ben True, a former Dartmouth Nordic ski racer who helped his team win the NCAAs. After college, True focused on running. He was fourth in the 2021 Olympic Trials in the 10,000 meters and the second American at the 2021 New York Marathon.

True’s wife, Sarah Groff, a former Olympic triathlete, might also be there, along with True’s Northwoods co-founder Dan Curts, the 2023 U.S. Mountain Running champion or coach Eric LiPuma, who finished 7th in the 80-kilometer Alpine race in the 2023 World Mountain Running Championship.

True founded Northwoods Athletics to draw other top runners to this corner of New England so he would have people who could pace him.

“Everyone seems to think they have to be in the hotspots, which are Boulder or Flagstaff. But I think this area has fantastic training and the running is amazing,” he said in an interview with Vermont Sports. “It’s far enough away from distractions, but yet close enough that it’s not a hassle to go to Boston to get on a plane,” he says. “We’re trying to build a community of professional runners here, and then use them to help inspire everybody else.”

“Community is what got us into running” is the lead quote on the Northwoods Athletics website. It’s a motto True takes seriously. While Northwoods Athletics now counts seven pro runners, anyone can join the Northwoods team and earn points throughout the season that are good for cash prizes. The catch? The “best” or highest points earner is not always the fastest. You can earn points for volunteering at a race or winning a race in your age group.

The Tour started as a way to safely socialize during Covid. One of the early members of the Tour de Northwoods weekly runs was Woodstock pro cyclist Ansel Dickey.  “It started because Ansel wanted to get more into running,” Ben True explains. “It was hilarious because the first few weeks he would turn himself inside out to try to stay with us. But every week he got fitter and fitter. Seeing that, we decided we should open this up so anyone could join in.” 

Dickey has now extended his popular gravel race, the Overland Grand Prix, to include an Overland Trail Race, a 15-mile trail race at Mount Ascutney which he holds each May with $5,000 in cash prizes.

[ For a list of Vermont’s mountain running races, see: Vermont’s Best Mountain Runs]

A Mountain Legacy

Long before Ben True was recruiting talent to Northwoods or Elle St. Pierre was running for New Balance and making headlines, Vermonters were regularly standing on the podium of international mountain running races.

Kasie Wallace Enman was an All-American runner and cross-country ski racer at Middlebury College, where she met her husband, Eli Enman, whose family runs Sleepy Hollow Nordic Center, in Hinesburg. Since graduating from Middlebury, Enman has won the U.S. Snowshoe Racing Championships, the U.S. Mountain Running Championships and three Vermont City Marathons. 

In 2011, she became the first U.S. woman to win the World Mountain Running Championships (and by a full two minutes) and was 11th in the Olympic marathon trials.  In 2014, as a mother of two, Enman was second in the Skyrunning World Series Ultra category. That year the male winner was ultra running legend Killian Jornet. In 2023 at the age of 43, Enman finished fourth in the USATF Mountain Running Championships.

Part of Enman’s success? She runs her own trails. Come summer, the cross country ski network at Sleepy Hollow becomes a mountain bike and trail running network. Enman is there, running the trails and co-hosting the annual Sleepy Hollow Mountain Race, the first event of the season in the USATF-NE Mountain Running Series, the longest standing mountain running circuit in the US.

She’s a perennial on the podiums of the Catamount Ultra 25K and Trapp Mountain Marathon, where she was the top female finisher for both in 2023. Last year, she finished the Trapp Mountain Marathon in second overall, behind Northwood’s Eric LiPuma.

With races such as those (both held on the cross-country trails at the Trapp Family Lodge Outdoor Center) and the Race to the Top of Vermont (a run up the Mt. Mansfield Toll Road, first held in 1984), it’s easy to see how Vermont has developed a mountain running culture.

One of the oldest mountain races, the Goshen Gallop has also spawned a top runner. Tony Clark, who created the trail network around his Blueberry Hill Inn, started the Goshen Gallop in 1978 as a way to entice some of the Nordic ski racers who regularly came to Blueberry Hill events, to come back in the summer to run the mountain trails. He billed  the Gallop as “The Toughest 10K.” 

Tony passed away in 2022, but his daughter Britta and her mother Shari still hold the race. In 2022, Britta was second at the US National 50K Trail Running Championships and has competed in the CCC – a 100-kilometer trail run through the Alps between Courmayeur and Chamonix.

The Best Place to Train

With Vermont’s tallest mountain, Mt. Mansfield, standing at just 4,393 feet above sea level, Vermont might not seem like a place that would attract runners who like to compete internationally on high alpine terrain. Yet after winning the 25K Catamount Ultra, a race on the Trapp Family Lodge cross country ski trails with 2,500 feet of elevation gain, Eric LiPuma decided to relocate to Vermont from Boulder, Colo. In Colorado, he regularly podiumed in some of the West’s most grueling mountain runs such as the Pikes Peak Ultra 50 and the Bighorn 100.

Half of LiPuma’s decision to move east in 2019 was to be closer to family who lived in New Jersey, Vermont’s trails were the other half. “Vermont definitely has the hardest terrain in the United States, if not hardest in the world, for trail running,” he said in a recent interview. “There are so many rocks, so many roots, everything is always wet, and the trails are steep. There are no switchbacks on the Long Trail and that it just makes for very difficult running.

“And sometimes you can’t really run in some spots. I’ve definitely been frustrated with that, but it does get you in really, really good shape. It makes every race that you go into that much easier because you know you’re you’ve been training on some really crazy stuff.”

Part of LiPuma’s training has involved running up Camel’s Hump four times in one run — using each of the access trails —  and he currently holds the FKT (fastest known time) for the route, dubbed the 4 Humped Camel. It involves 25 miles of running rough, rocky trail with 11,000 feet of elevation gain. In May 2023, he ran it in 5 hours, 46 minutes and 20 seconds.

That training has put him in good stead. In both 2022 and 2023 LiPuma helped the U.S. Mountain Running Team earn silver in the World Mountain Running Trail Championships, finishing seventh at both of the high-altitude 80K races held in Chaing Mai, Thailand in 2022 and in Innsbruck, Austria in 2023.

Trending Up

For many, running up the Green Mountains is not necessarily about winning a race, but part of a routine that combines fitness with camaraderie. In 2017 Stratton Mountain Resort hosted its first Everesting 29029 event – a challenge to run or hike up Stratton Mountain’s 1,750 feet of elevation (taking the gondola down) 17 times to reach the equivalent of ascending Mt. Everest. The race, held each October, sells out quickly.

Jay Peak’s annual Labor Day trail running festival is focused around family with races ranging from 5Ks to 53Ks. In the past few years, both Bolton Valley and Bromley have added ultra trail events. Bromley’s second annual F.I.T Sun Mountain Challenge has races that range from 5K to 50K and Bolton Valley’s third annual 25K (or 10K) Three Peaks Mountain Race is in October.

For skiers, running up the mountains they ski down or skin up in the winter is just another way of staying in shape. For Jessie Diggins, who lives and trains at Stratton in the summer, having the ski mountain in her backyard is a bonus. This past summer she ran 32 miles on the Appalachian Trail and ran up and down Stratton Mountain for four and a half hours while training to compete in her annual “Big Stupid Adventure” personal challenge.

And like Ben True, she’s now encouraging others to join her as she runs up Stratton Mountain.  “We’ve opened up training sessions…so anyone and everyone is welcome to come train with us! Every other Saturday, bounding/hiking intervals up Stratton Mountain. General theme is 7-8 minutes up, 2-3 minutes rest/walk back downhill to regroup. It’s not fancy, but it’s how we get stronger and faster together,” she posted on Instagram.

And on August 10, you can race her and the rest of the SMS T2 Nordic racing team (which includes many of the U.S. Team members) in a fundraiser: the Stratton Mountain Challenge.

First to the top wins. u

 

Opening photo: Dan Curts running up Mt. Mansfield. Photo by Ansel Dickey