So, you know, when you're running up Long Mountain, when you're entering the Loop aid station and you head through that little wooden gate into the Mountain Laurel and the Rhododendron-lined tunnel of the Loop Trail, when you come down the gravel road and you turn left on Crabtree Falls Highway, knowing you've got like a third of a mile of pavement before you finish at this glorious site of the Montebello Country Store, you're doing that along with 42 years of other people—the ghosts of Masochist, if you will—and there's something really, really special about that.
The Mountain Masochist Trail Run (MMTR) — a 50-mile race in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia — was founded by David Horton in 1983. Horton, who had completed his first ultramarathon at the JFK 50 Mile in 1979, sought to bring a 50-mile race to Virginia. He initially conceived of a route that traversed 46 miles of the Appalachian Trail between the James and Tye Rivers, but the Appalachian Trail Conference (as it was known then) was quick to shut that idea down. (JFK remains the only sanctioned race that uses a significant section of the AT.) Instead, Horton worked with a local ranger to devise a route that was similar in spirit, starting at the James River and running roughly parallel to the AT towards the Tye River—ultimately finishing at a small community campground in Montebello.
That inaugural year was special for a few reasons. Horton himself ran and won a tight race,
finishing a mere 13 seconds ahead of second place finisher Robert Landis. Carole Williams became the first female finisher; she would return in 1986 and win again. And Thomas Green, then a young marathoner who was intrigued by the Ironman distance but not so much by swimming and cycling, completed his first ultramarathon in memorable fashion. Three years later, Tom would become the
first finisher of the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning. (Masochist accounts for 29 of Tom's 240+ ultramarathon finishes
tracked by Ultra Running Magazine.)
While Horton decided that running his own race was something he wouldn't repeat, Masochist continued to attract some of the sport's best through the turn of the century. In 1991, Russian ultramarathoner
Nurziya Bagmanova won the women's race. She would go on to win the IAU 100k World Championships the following year. The 1995 edition saw a men's podium of Courtney Campbell, Mike Morton, and Eric Clifton—a murderers' row of East Coast ultrarunners. Campbell still holds the Laurel Highlands 70.5 Miler course record; Morton proved that one doesn't have to be from California to win Western States; and Clifton was a year removed from setting a JFK course record that would last for 17 years. In 1997, a 24-year-old Scott Jurek placed fifth at Masochist. In 2001, at the same age, Krissy Moehl won the women's race. Dave Mackey won three straight Masochists from 2003 to 2005. Nikki Kimball set the women's course record in 2006.
By 2009, Masochist had become a staple of the
Montrail Ultra Cup—a series of independently owned races in the United States that offered participants a chance to compete for prize packages (
$2500 in cash + gear for the series win in 08/09), automatic qualification for Western States (the gilded vouchers of yesteryear), and—perhaps more important than either of the aforementioned—immortal glory. It was in this year that a bright-eyed, 33-year-old Alaskan named Geoff Roes would set the
final men's course record on the original Masochist course [2]. While the course has changed significantly since, Roes's finish time of 6:27:55 from 2009 remains the fastest anyone has completed any version of the Masochist. This excerpt from
Geoff's race recap brings my arm hairs to attention.
When it was all said and done it had felt like the easiest race I had ever run. My body felt strong the entire way and my mind felt like it had been in a good place the entire time - never too focused on the race itself, but never wandering too far away and getting too distracted. I just ran, and ran fast, and my mind and body simply allowed for me to do that without getting in the way. It was probably the closest I've ever come to running a perfect race because I never really felt like I was running a race and yet I was able to stay focused on my nutrition, hydration, pacing, and other areas needed to run a successful race. I never actually had to think about any of these things. They just happened. I never really had to think about anything, it just kind of all happened as I simply ran quickly through the forest.
I think it's that last sentence that gets me.
The 2010's saw Clark Zealand steering the ship as race director, Horton having passed him the wheel after 25 years in the captain's chair. Montrail left the ultra trail scene (though not before they released a
Masochist shoe), and the Ultra Cup gave way to the Golden Ticket Series. While Masochist faded from national attention, it remained a regional staple, and it even assumed a new role as an informal Barkley finishers' reunion [3].
In 2022, a new ownership group headed by Tim Spaulding began what I've perceived as a very intentional revival campaign. They introduced new distances (a 50k and a 100k), appeared on
podcasts, and developed a
social media presence for the race. This concerted effort is what brought Masochist onto my radar in earnest, and I'm thankful it did. It took me a few years to make my way down to Montebello to race (I accompanied Laryssa there to spectate her 50k in 2024), but I'd always considered it an inevitability so long as I was still around. Simply put, running ultramarathons in Virginia hits different for me, and my race at MMTR this year was an opportunity to reconnect with that feeling in a setting most conducive to my experiencing it. At 5:30am, I and a couple hundred others followed headlamp projections past the Fish Hatchery up towards Porters Ridge. We ran with each other, and we ran with the ghosts of Masochist.
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[1] I recommend checking out John Andersen's entire series of podcasts on MMTR; they are incredibly fun listens and the basis for much of the information presented here.
[2] You can see the old point-to-point course via
Gary Robbins's Strava activity; he finished third in 2009. You can see the current out-and-back course via
my Strava activity from this year's race.
[3] Travis Wildeboer, John "Fegy" Fegyveresi, and Brett Maune ran Masochist together once again this year. Fegy documents the annual tradition in
this video.