Mint Springs Trail 5k Race Director's Report - 10 years!

When Michelle and I moved to Crozet 21 years ago, we were here just a few days before we visited Mint Springs Valley Park for the first time to take our dog for a hike. Though the trails were less numerous and much less maintained back then, we knew this public land nestled in a little mountain bowl was a very special place.

Ten years of hiking, mountain biking, and trail running later, I knew that I had to share this place with more people, and the Mint Springs Trail 5k was born. Our first year, 2014, entry was free AND all runners got a t-shirt thanks to some generous sponsors. I was trying to put a new spin on races - to put on a first class event, on steep, technical mountain trails, without financial barriers that might prevent a family of four or any person from participating. When I asked the crowd at the pre-race briefing to raise hands if it was your first trail race, about 75% of the crowd raised their hand. That first year was a huge success - we had 92 finishers with a competitive race, a diverse group of participants, a really fun community vibe, and a new outdoor experience for most. Fast forward 10 years and here we are at the 2024 event with 250 finishers and by all accounts our best year yet!

Every year I get very anxious during race week - there is so much to do! And so many volunteers to coordinate! This year we had 45 volunteers!! That’s almost one for every five runners! And so many runners! When your mind constantly spins like mine, you worry about safety, missed turns, not waking up on time, giving confusing directions, etc, etc.

But come Friday evening after work when my friend Josh Thomas and I arrived at Mint Springs to mark the course, we saw this amazing rainbow, which I hoped was a good sign.

Friday night is a late night of last minute organizing, printing spreadsheets, and packing my truck. Enter the northern lights! A rare super solar flare brought an amazing aurora borealis show to Virginia! As I packed my truck in the driveway and filled water coolers at 10:30pm, I was treated to an amazing display of pink and green dancing all round the mountain skies. Race morning, I arrived at Mint Springs Valley Park at 4:30am to drop off my first load of supplies and wouldn’t you know, that aurora was still kicking. I took this picture after unloading my car and figured this was indeed a good omen! Amazing!

My first volunteers arrived at 5:30am to help set up tables and pop ups and flagging and then the volunteers and runners kept rolling in all morning. The park was packed, as the Virginia DWR had just stocked the ponds with trout the day before so we were definitely competing with fishermen for parking!

After a long-winded pre-race briefing, the race was finally off! It was emotional to see so many people that I have come to know over the past 10 years of this race run off into the woods - families, young adults, and old friends who I have had the privilege of getting to know and witness a decade of their lives changing and staying the same. And don’t forget about all of the new faces - there are so many new folks joining us every year! This year when I asked for the show of hands if this was your first trail race, it was a small fraction of the total participants. Speaking of participants, since our first year we have always had a nearly equal number of men and women running the race, with this year again being almost equal. 54% of our runners were over 40 and almost 10% were over 60!

This year was also probably the nicest weather we have ever had with a start temperature right at 50 degrees, low humidity, and relatively dry packed trails, mostly. Also the mountain laurel along the course was in full bloom!

As always, runners started off with a bang as they headed up Fire Trail for the start of the race which is a solid 0.75 mile climb of over 500 ft vertical gain. Many runners quickly find out that gravity is strong and eventually start power hiking, except those folks at the front of the pack who are suffering immensely to gain advantage. From the get go, Danny Mathieson was being chased by Katie Roche. This pair pushed each other through the course, with Katie right on Danny’s heels, but ultimately Danny held on to be our overall winner in 25:23. Katie finished just 27 seconds back finishing in second place OVERALL and crushing the prior women's course record by over 2 ½ minutes! A full minute later we had our second place men's finisher and the runners started pouring in after that. 14-year-old Timothy Smeds, of the Smeds Family Dynasty, finished second, while Crozetian David Stauffer came in third. On the ladies side, summer series master Beth Melton finished in 28:30, just seconds over our prior women's course record for now the 3rd fastest women's time at this race, followed by CATS regular Nelle Fox in third. Another record set was 70-year-old Brian Carlton smashing the prior mens 70+ age group record by 4 minutes with a very impressive 37:51.

Familiar faces started to pour through the finish line chute, and a new generation of folks for whom trail running has been their first running experience. Families and spectators gathered in the grassy grove of trees as runners finished, received their finisher t-shirt, had some snacks and hung out, continuing to grow this amazing community.

Our last finisher finished in 1 hour and 46 minutes. This was clearly her daughter’s idea, but she was so proud of finishing “the toughest 5k in Virginia”. I grabbed a CATS mason jar mug and handed it to her and said “do you know what a DFL award is?”

“No”

“Dead f*cking last award!”

She burst out laughing, but also filled with pride and accepted the mug and said it is now one of her most prized possessions.

That is what this is all about. It was a perfect day.

Shout out to all of the amazing volunteers who gave up their Saturday morning to help make this happen. They were perfect all day, we couldn’t do this without you!

Onward to OHilly!