Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont internship, for the Journal Opinion
BRADFORD – This weekend, endurance athletes will gather at the Devil’s Den trailhead to test their limits on a 6.4 mile course up, down and around Wright’s Mountain.
This is the seventh annual Devil’s Den Ultra, which is run in a loop with 1,600 feet of elevation gain. Competitors have the option to run in 30-hour, 12-hour, or 10K races. The course is rocky, rooty and features a whole lot of climbing. According to organizer Jason Mosel, the grueling race is not a test of who can run the farthest, it is about a group of people challenging themselves alongside community and strangers alike.
“It’s this awesome amount of different talent, different skill, different community, different demographic of people that all come together to encourage each other to just keep putting one foot in front of the other,” Mosel said.
Mosel first got into endurance racing in 2015. He says it was a way to work through his experiences in the Marine Corps, where he served from 2003 to 2007. When he first got out, he turned to alcohol and drugs to cope with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then he found racing.
“I used endurance racing to help me work through all my crap with PTSD,” Mosel said.
In 2019, Mosel decided to create his own ultramarathon to support others who have faced similar struggles. A year later, he held the first Devil’s Den Ultra with 15 runners. Finishers received an upside-down devil tarot card, which Mosel says is meant to represent people coming out of dark situations, like addiction and PTSD.
The race benefits the Josh Pallotta Fund, a Colchester-based nonprofit which provides resources to veterans with PTSD. Valerie Pallotta, Josh’s mother, is board president of the organization. She also works in the ROTC at the University of Vermont.
“Our only source of funds is the fundraisers and donations, so we don’t have any federal funding that we receive,” Pallotta said. “So these are highly important to us and having Jay (Mosel) do it as a Marine who struggled himself means a lot more too.”
Unlike other ultra-marathons, Devil’s Den does not set a specific goal for mileage. Instead, Mosel chose to design a race that could be an achievable challenge for people of many ages and skill levels.
“You have the physicality that the runner goes through,” said Mosel. “But then on the other side of it, it’s bringing together a community of people that may have never met.”
43-year-old Tiffany Woodger, from Manchester, New Hampshire has experienced this firsthand. She was one of the 15 participants in the first Devil’s Den Ultra. She signed up without ever running a marathon before.
“It changed everything,” said Woodger. “It made me understand that if I wanted to do hard things, I needed to set myself up properly to do the hard things.”
Woodger says that six months after that first race was the last time she had an alcoholic drink.
Now approaching her seventh consecutive race at Devil’s Den, Woodger has taken up CrossFit and rowing to prepare for the large volume of running. Her goal for this year’s race is to reach 100 kilometers of running for the first time.
“I usually tell people like it’s gonna be really hard, but everyone out there wants everyone to keep going,” Woodger said. “Suffering brings people together so much faster than anything else.”
Registration for the race closes at midnight on Oct. 8. The 30-hour and 12-hour races begin at 7 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 10, and the 6-mile race starts at 8 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 11.