Temperatures at the start dropped to minus 2 with wind gusts of 50 mph. Even Interstate 80 carried cautions to any driver brave enough to venture along its winding lanes. Just enough snow covered the ground to whip against our legs in a fury of white.
In other words: It was the perfect day for a race.
The Twin Mountain Trudge, as it’s appropriately called, asks racers to traipse 11 miles around gnarled ponderosas, over the tops of stacked sandstone boulders and frozen creeks, and through drifts of snow that, depending on the year, can reach their hips. The worse the conditions the better for those hardy, or unhinged, enough to give it a go.
Apparently my two friends and I were both as we sat in a car at the start, waiting for the last possible minute to open our doors and hop out. Minutes later, with the ringing of a cowbell, we shuffled forward alongside a ragtag group of 30-ish runners bracing ourselves against the harsh, southeast Wyoming winter and enjoying the surrounding beauty with a heavy dose of misery-loves-company.
“Laramie is a harsh place to live in January,” said Katie Hogarty, the race’s newest director. “If you can get out with friends and find the beautiful parts of community, it makes you want to be here.”
The Trudge started 23 years ago as a way to build community in a town known best for its high winds, higher elevation and forbidding winters. It’s usually on an early Saturday in January, but it’s not geared toward New Year’s resolutions. It’s not a weight-loss 5K or a way to jump-start a new year with a new you.
It occasionally draws elite athletes, ones known for taking top finishes in some of the West’s most grueling mountain races, but it also brings out the rest of us. And nobody – not even the fastest runners – are here for fame, awards or Strava bragging rights.
It is, as the name suggests, a trudge. And it’s a delightful one, completed for no other reason than the perverse joy of being out there together and about as far removed from typical mountain running events as a race can get.
For starters, it’s free. Secondly, it’s capped at no more than 50 participants.
There’s also no real start line, just a spot we loosely gather. We finish by stumbling into a parking lot to be greeted by cheers, hugs, cowbells and a couple folding tables filled with snacks, pots of soup, and a thermos of hot water.
The only thing the race, or its officials, take very seriously is safety. It is, after all, an event held above 9,000 feet in early January.
So each participant must check in at the beginning and show proof they’re bringing at least 40 ounces of water, 400 calories of food (for the one lap, 800 calories for those foolish enough to sign up for two laps), an emergency blanket, a whistle and a way to start a fire.
The extras seemed less important on years like this one where only an inch or two of snow covered the ground and the sky stayed blue. But last year, snow drifted knee high and a white-out blizzard rolled in partway through, obscuring the little pink ribbons pinned to trees marking the way. Getting lost or injured is a real risk this time of year no matter the conditions, and we all had to be prepared.
A bottle of Tincup Whiskey perched under the boughs of a towering ponderosa halfway through offers the only nourishment. Anyone interested can take a sip and pass it along, warming their throats and bellies.
As races grow bigger and more expensive, demanding hundreds of dollars in entry fees, the Trudge feels like a balm, a salve even. It’s the antidote to all of us racers, me included, who take ourselves entirely too seriously in the outdoors.
It’s a reminder of why we live in a state like Wyoming and a pocket like Laramie, where some days the weather really does seem too miserable to venture out, but the community reminds us of warmth and togetherness.
“I’ve been running for a long time, and I’ve done a lot of races,” Hogarty said. “I have never experienced one like this.”
Why is it so special? She’s not entirely sure. And neither am I. Maybe it’s the goofiness, the sheer idiocy of running in those conditions. Maybe it’s that the Trudge is kept small and free of corporate sponsors.
It’s probably a little bit of both. But I think it’s also a reminder in the darkness, amid bad news where communities feel fractured and people feel scared, that we can still come together and find joy in nature and in one another.
Even if from the outside it looks, well, a little masochistic.
To bad you could not leave more information about when, where and how to sign up.
Seriously? A quick Google search showed this race took place on January 10th and was available to sign up on Ultra-Signups website.