I received a text message from a cousin out on the East coast about a race he had entered and finished. It is called the “7 Sisters” trail race and is considered the most difficult trail race in the Northeast. The race is the first weekend in May, but the registration starts in mid-December if you want to run. There is a limit to the entries, so if you do not enter in December, and maybe January, you won’t get in. He was late and was denied entry. Fortunately, his mother knew the head CEO of the sponsor and was able to get him in. The race is 12 miles of an out and back course. After looking at the conditions and my cousins saying it is very difficult terrain, I looked up the race on my computer. My cousin is 52 years old and finished in the top 50% of the 391 runners. He is a good runner, so when you look at his average pace of 17:32 per mile you question the reason. He finished the 12 miles distance in 3:30:36. It was a close breakdown of male and female runners. Of the 391 runners, 261 of them were men.
The race is on a single file dirt path through trees and rocks with an elevation change of my cousin’s estimate of 4,300 feet or the race brochure of 3,500 feet. Either way, that is a lot of running uphill in 80-degree temperatures. The race has been run for 30 years. It starts in Amherst, Massachusetts in a small clearing in a wooded park. Looking at the photos of the terrain, it is not an open path. There are sheer rock sections that are like climbing over a fence to continue. There are sections of wooded areas that look like a trail should look but have enough rocky ledges and boulders to keep a runner honest. The photos he sent only show one runner. There is no pack of runners alongside each other. After looking at the race photos, I concluded it was not really a race but a survival of the fittest trek. And looking at some of the rocky challenges going up the side of the mountain, I couldn’t imagine what it must be like coming down the single path course.
I watched a video of the start of the race. To have 391 runners on the width of a single dirt path on an out and back course — and the fact that many runners want to run it — is amazing. The start was done in a series of waves of a smaller pack of runners of 50 to 60 runners. The first group started, and then every three to four minutes another group started. The runners, knowing the 12-mile race has very difficult terrain, do not sprint at the sound of the start. The small clearing went immediately to the single file path, so only a few of the lead runners were able to get a running start. The log jam of runners at the entrance to the trail had the last 3/4 of the group walking. Looking at the photos and understanding that it is an out and back course, the image of 391 runners passing each other was very difficult to process. My cousin finished in 165th place and 15th in the 50-59 age category. Looking at the fact that it took him 3:30 hours to finish means that over half of the participants finished close to four hours or more.
I don’t like to run uphill as a favorite course, so it is hard to understand how 400 runners sign up early to run this race that has an uphill climb close to ¾ of a mile. Running six miles up and six miles down really takes a toll on the legs and feet. We live in the hill country, and there are races that have challenging hills as part of the course. I was criticized once for claiming the race was flat and fast on the Courthouse Course. The woman said there was that hill on Belvin Street, so it was not flat. Most local runners consider Belvin to be flat. Runners are a tough group of individuals always looking for another challenge. But the 7 Sisters race is one that I think I’ll pass up for the younger and more fit runners.
