June 2025 Newsletter

TNT how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. 

It’s more than track.

Sure, we come for the workout and sweat together week after week.

Sure, it’s accountability.

But, it’s also giving and receiving encouragement. 

It’s seeing Bill Brown running up and down Tuck Drive.

It’s hearing about another adventure from Tim Smith.

It’s asking your pace group buddy about their race.

It’s seeing undergrads, retirees, moms, dads and their kids enjoying the same sun after work.

Sharing a slice of pizza and getting to know someone beyond the run.

Seeing someone new show up alone and leave with a friend.

Swapping weekend warrior stories and sloughing off the work week.

Listening to life updates and encouraging adventures. 

Having a place to be and being present. 

It’s consistently sharing miles with people sharing care. 

Without fail, that little acronym surprises me week after week with unexpected meaning. I hope you find meaning too, in whatever way you need.

UVRC Campout!

June 13-15th. Final details coming to your inbox soon!

5K on the Track!

Save the date! Our annual track 5k will be at TNT on July 8th on the Dartmouth Track. Come to race, come to cheer, and/or come for the free pizza at Runner’s Night Out!

SUMMER PICNIC!

More fun awaits! Also save the date for our annual Summer Picnic at the Union Village Dam picnic area on Friday 8/1. More details to come this summer. 

Trail Running Film Fest

Did you miss the Trail Running Film Festival in Ludlow? You can purchase tickets for online access for the month of June! Find your summer adventure inspiration HERE.  

Racing Opportunity: Middlebury Maple Run 10/19

A few key event details:

·         USATF-certified half marathon, 5K and 10K courses

·         Well-organized, great swag, inspiring music on course, complimentary post-race breakfast

·         Scenic routes with views of the Green Mountains and Adirondacks

·         Free 18-week training plan

Run club discount: If you can guarantee registration for 5 or more runners, we will provide you with a 10% discount code for your registrants to use.  Email us (UVRC) if you have a group of 5 runners and we can get you the discount code!

Registration and Additional Race Info:

·         To register or learn more, please check out the race website: https://www.middleburymaplerun.com/.  

Volunteer Opportunity: VT100 Endurance Run (That’s right, 100 MILES!)

Looking for some mega hours to go towards the Volunteer Challenge? The VT100 in West Windsor VT is looking for help this summer Thursday 7/17 through Sunday 7/20. Feel free to sign up directly here (there are other opportunities listed as well) or reach out to the Volunteer Coordinator at vt100volunteers@gmail.com. 

Their biggest needs are: 

1. Saturday morning 7/19 for parking 2:30am (woohoo coffee party!)
2. Friday 7/18 parking anytime between 10am-5pm
3. Thursday 7/17 set-up and organization between 9am – 7pm 
4. Sunday 7/20 clean up between 10am-2pm

Reach out to Cara Baskin carav.baskin@gmail.com for the following time slots:

5. Saturday 7/19 aid station set-up (if you like driving a pickup and trailer!) 6a-3p
6. Saturday 7/19 aid station break down 12p-2a (woohoo more coffee in a pickup with a trailer!)
7. Saturday 7/19 restocking aid stations with supplies 6p-midnight

Thanks for supporting our local ultra, VT Adaptive which this race fundraises for, and your club-mates who are racing!

Volunteer Challenge Update

The 2025 Volunteer Challenge is on! Every hour that you as a UVRC member spend volunteering at a race/running event or doing trail work will get you one ticket into a drawing for some sweet swag and prizes at the end of the year. Each time you volunteer at an event, email us at volunteering@uppervalleyrunningclub.org with the subject line “UVRC Volunteer Challenge”. Let us know the number of hours and at what event you volunteered. We’ll keep track of your hours for you until the big drawing at the end of the year!

Running Warehouse Discount Code

As part of your UVRC membership, you are eligible to receive 20% off socks and clothing and 10% off nutrition, select clearance shoes, and hats/visors. Enter the discount code Z3XX6UYP at checkout. 

Sponsorship Opportunity

Do you work for a company or know of a local business that is supportive of UVRC and our mission to provide an inclusive community for runners of all abilities? We are currently seeking business sponsorships to fund swag items for UVRC programs. Opportunities for advertisement on such items is an option. Please reach out to contact@uppervalleyrunningclub.org to learn more!

Great job to everyone who ran the BarnArts Race Around the Lake 5K/10K, May 18th in Barnard VT. For the 4th race in the Upper Valley Running Series (UVRS), we had a challenging course with a few muddy spots, but spirits were high for the many UVRC finishers. Results:

https://runsignup.com/Race/Results/15854#resultSetId-551642;perpage:100

We’ve got a couple of races coming that will likely be before the July newsletter. First is the classic Skip’s Run 4 miler in Lebanon NH, on Father’s Day June 15:

https://skipsrun.org

Then, on July 4th, it’s the Red, White, and Blue 6.2, 5K/10K also in Lebanon NH:

https://lebanonnh.gov/823/Red-White-Blue-62-and-5K

What’s the UVRS? It’s our club’s series of local road races. Checkout the UVRS website for the latest information:

https://uppervalleyrunningclub.org/upper-valley-running-series/

UVRS results are now available! Check the UVRS website (above).

Not running? Got a friend or family member who will be there but not running? Consider volunteering:

https://uppervalleyrunningclub.org/volunteering/

Happy Running!

Geoff and the UVRS committee

It was never my intention to participate in the Upper Valley Segment Running Challenge. As the organizer, it felt weird to simultaneously oversee a challenge and compete in it. But I changed my mind when someone – jokingly, in good fun – gave me their thoughts on the whole thing:

“The Segment Challenge? Oh yeah, I heard about that! Isn’t that the thing where you have to run along a small small stretch of land like a million times? That’s the exact opposite of what I want to be doing. I want to be running as many segments as I can, the least possible (non-zero) amount of times. I want to be exploring as wide an area through running as I’m able to.” 

This perspective hadn’t really crossed my mind, even though it’s a sentiment that I immediately knew I shared internally. It’s a feeling I’ve tapped into every time I’ve preferred a looped-course over an out-and-back, or every time I’ve gone out to run with the intent of exploring (which is many times!) 

So then it became a matter of “getting a taste of my own medicine”, of not being above having to try the thing you’ve set up. It’s like when you go to a barber and maybe subconsciously judge their hairstyle. If it doesn’t look great you might be slightly more concerned about your impending appointment. I know the analogy falls apart since most barbers I imagine do not cut their own hair, but I hope you see what I’m getting at. I didn’t want the challenge to seem like it was constructed to ensure mental warfare on its participants, and one of the ways I thought I could communicate this was by showing, “hey! even the person running the challenge is excited enough about it to be participating!”

Besides, I was also just really curious about what the experience might be. Despite the shared sentiment with the individual for whom this challenge really was not appealing at all (which is totally fair!), I – maybe paradoxically — simultaneously had an incredible enthusiasm for the whole thing. Upon hearing about the challenge that inspired it in January, I was immediately caught hook, line, and sinker. I was so gung-ho about the format; it really spoke to the qualities of running that have always appealed greatly to me. Persistent, dogged, unrelentingness, both in the physical act of running and the requisite mental fortitude. Sprinkled in with a kind of fun arbitrariness, reflected in the randomness of it all – why is this the segment? why does it only count one way? how did I end up here, having lost all sense of time, running back and forth and back again in the woods? Just why do we run anyways?

Funnily enough, taking away one reason for running – the dimension of exploration, of covering wide swaths of ground – reinforced for me how much I love running for the sake of running itself. There is just something about your state-of-being in a run that momentarily changes how you experience the world. And by God is that experience intoxicating.

The segment challenge gave me new reasons to love running as well. Pine Park for the month of May became a second home. When I’d go out for a run, I’d be thinking of “checking” on the park, seeing how it’s doing. I’d be thinking of the family of deer who seemed to live right at the start of the segment. Would they be skittish today and avoid me? Or would they continue to graze, unfazed as I ran past? Would the low hanging leaves from the one tree (that sometimes seemed to deliberately smack me in the head) hang lower today on account of holding the rain? Would the roots that I’ve tripped on tens of times over hide themselves in mulch, spilt over by the dogs roughing the trail earlier? 

The feeling, I hoped, was reciprocal. I like to think that the park missed me while I was gone. That the family of deer wondered whether the crazy runner would be showing up today. That the roots rolled their rooty-eyes and groaned exasperatedly while bearing the brunt of my footsteps.  

Knowing a place so well, it’s every nook and cranny, is something special. The place becomes a part of you, and you become part of the place. Pine Park, even before this segment challenge, had long been my go to run. But running this little segment, over and over and over, gave me new and distinct ownership. I don’t actually believe in the concept of owning land, but I think the closest you can probably get is through running. To “own” the land is to run the land, or at the least, to spend time with it. I’m sure I heard that somewhere, and even if I’ve forgotten where, the challenge has ensured I remember it.

——————————————————————————————————————————–

I have many more thoughts here, too much to fully flesh out, so I’ll put some bullet points below:

• There definitely was a period of buy-in. I remember the first “segments-run” to be pretty grueling, partly because I was in recovery mode, but admittedly partly because of the introduction to a new mental game.
• Once I got into the flow of things, there was something very soothing about zoning out and knowing exactly how much to run, when to turn around, how long it’d take, etc.
  • I’ve been meaning to add more speedwork to my running routine, and I think I will incorporate sessions up and down the segment – and I promise it won’t be Stockholm syndrome!
• Lots of people love pine park like I do. There were many familiar faces that grew even more familiar throughout the month
• I wish I had started sooner! But unfortunately I had some races planned in the beginning of May which hindered mileage – here are those race’s recaps:
  • White Mtn. Marathon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ViumA3oTeg 
  • Dandelion Half Marathon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUX9RKOB3ss 
  • BarnArts 10k: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbVVLZ-Rh9E 
• The competitive aspect of it was incredibly motivating. It reminded me of when I was a kid; I would run home to check the computer for chess competition results that had been released earlier. I’d be so excited to see what other competitors logged that day, and I think I literally laughed out loud when I saw Ben Jones’ first marathon on the WRJ segment
  • Meeting Elijah (a fellow pine-park segment runner) on the course was very cool. It made the challenge feel so much more real and hyper-accelerated both our competitive gears. And he really dropped the mic with his final 100km (!!!) run
  • Dan Collison’s approach to running all the segments 31 times was a very unique approach to the challenge! Also quite motivating and awe-instilling was his sheer consistency – like a train that just did not stop in its tracks
  • Ryan’s historical blurb that accompanied his WRJ runs really made me want to run there (but alas, not having a car hurts in that regard) and try to live the history myself – it also made me think about how different the segments were and the very different experiences that must have come with it.
• I have a newfound appreciation of running on dirt/trail. So much more comfortable and injury-preventative than running on pavement. 

The Segment Challenge email sent to the club in late April by William Ren came at just the right time for me. I had not run much over the winter, and the nudge of a challenge is just what I needed. Here are some of the things I experienced and learned. Spoiler alert: the Upper Valley is a great corner of the world. Experiencing its facets with the changes of spring and the weather made it even more interesting.

Five of the six segments were “old friends,” but even they changed throughout the challenge. This was most obvious in the arrival of spring along the Rail Trail. Spring also meant that the short bike trail by Hartford Avenue leading up to Dothan Brook School gave me a nice view of blossoming but invasive garlic mustard. Garlic mustard volunteers I met along the Rail Trail gave me a sign to post there; over the days I ran it, the pile of invasive removed by fellow pullers made a bigger pile.

The segments in downtown WRJ and Mt. Support Road gave a view of urban and suburban life in the UV, including the puffing of locomotives and chain smokers, and the trains of commuters traveling to and from Dartmouth and Darthmouth-Hitchcock.

I saw the interplay of natural and man-made: the changing patterns in the grit, flotsam and jetsam loosened by the sometimes torrential rains that hit urban WRJ. I picked up sacks of litter and recycled bits of metal dropped by vehicles. I saw the deepening groove in the mulch on Pine Park trails set by me and fellow segment runners, and remembered that the beautiful Connecticut River alongside those paths used to be a running sewer up until the early 80s. I saw the progression of construction projects along four of the six segments: Beaver Meadow, Mt. Support Road, by Hartford Ave (a very different view of the single-lane renovation of the overlying I-91 bridges), and at the far end of the WRJ segment.

I had many learnings and relearnings:

• While it’s true for all running, for ultra events especially, the race is in the pace. Don’t let the efforts of now spoil the efforts of later.
• This is especially true for skin care – skin for the win. I learned the judicious use of Hypafix, Leukotape P, and rubbing alcohol. I threw away my 20-year-old piece of mole skin. I learned better regimens for rotating shoes, insole liners, and socks.
• David Roche and other ultra runners are teaching us better ways to fuel the effort. Energy deficits make both the legs and the mind more sore. For me, Clif bars pre-cut into sixths or eigths and put into snack Ziplocks and eaten every 30 or 60 minutes beat faffing around with wrappers on the trail.
• David Roche also taught me better ways to strengthen and activate the hip flexors. His YouTubes and checklists are gold.
• I learned better practices for recovering well and not to lose my gains by trying to overextend. This is a big change from the “no pain no gain” mindset I learned of yore, and confusing “totally gassed” with “worthy fatigue.” Ultra events mean you’re continually between a rock and a hard place. What Sisyphus didn’t know is that the occasional “zero day” rock, and breaks during the day do, too.
• And not just being aware of fatigue: if you aren’t alert to niggles & hot spots, you’ll get blisters or injuries and the boulder you’re pushing will slide back down the hill.
• For those into tracking, HealthFit is a great app for synchronizing or exporting efforts recorded on AppleWatch to Strava or Training Peaks.
• Portapotties along running routes are a blessing, e.g., at the Norwich Community Pizza Oven and George Ratliffe Park.
• I learned that ticks don’t drop on you, but transfer to you from vegetation like trapeze artists reaching out or “questing” and grabbing on. They climb up on vegetation and stretch out their front pair of legs, waiting for a host to brush past.
• Speaking of questing: ask and ye shall receive (much of the time). Many of the things I needed to learn during the challenge were from answers given by Perplexity AI or ChatGPT. I’ve also learned to take answers from LL/Ms with a grain of salt, since if the answer isn’t obvious they’ll confabulate or hallucinate.

In summary, the challenge was an example that, as Yogi Berra said, “You can see a lot just by observing.”

Or in questing. The Segment Challenge gave me an ever-changing kaleidoscope of experiences and learnings to latch on to.

Name: Seth Stemmer

Current Town: Lebanon 

Hometown: Duluth, MN

Profession: Physical Therapist

Why did you join UVRC? 

I was new to town and the best advice I got from a college was to take something you enjoy and join a club to meet people in the upper valley

What prompted you to start running?

I hurt my back around five years ago and I remember going out for a jog to “loosen up” and it actually worked, I remember texting my wife that I thought running was going to fix my back.

I continue to run because…

The amount of great interactions I have with people in my community really encourages me to keep running. Running has become a central part of being around people I really enjoy to spend time with.

I’ve been running for…

Five years

Do you run competitively?

No

Do you have a favorite race or distance?

I love Grandmas Marathon along the shores of Lake Superior in Duluth Mn

What is your favorite running route?

I really enjoyed the Shamrock Shuffle

Tell us about your training partners.

I love going for evening runs with my wife Harmony

What do you do to cross train? 

I have been known to mountain bike and cross country ski

Do you have an injury and recovery story?

I have been lucky that the majority of my running has been pain free except the day after my long runs

Share your notable running streaks or unusual running events.

I ran the Reykjavik Iceland marathon and that was a lot of fun

Share a recent notable running moment.

I was able to do an entire 6 mile run at almost the same consistent pace!

Proudest running moment?

I came in 2nd place in a 17 mile trail race

If you could run with anyone, who would it be and why?

My wife Harmony, the longer the run the longer the date lasts

What is your running motto?

See you on Saturday mornings!

Anything else you’d like to add?

Take time to stretch your mind, body, and soul everyday