VERMONT 100: ONE OF AMERICA’S OLDEST 100-MILERS, RUN ALONGSIDE HORSES

The Vermont 100 Endurance Race has run every summer since 1989, which places it among the oldest 100-mile races in the United States. It starts and finishes in West Windsor, Vermont, and sends runners across a course of dirt roads, hiking trails, and stretches of pavement through the hills of central Vermont. It is also the only 100-miler in the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning where runners share the route with horses.

That last detail is the race's signature. The Vermont 100 runs as both a 100-mile foot race and a 100-mile horse endurance ride on the same weekend, over largely the same ground. No other ultra in the country pairs the two in this way, and the Vermont 100 is now the only race of its kind still operating.

The ride runs at several distances alongside the 100-mile run and a later-added 100K running option, and the staging area fills with horse trailers and corrals in the days before the start. Runners and riders cross paths through the day and night, an arrangement that gives the race a texture no single-discipline ultra can match. The pairing is not a gimmick bolted onto a footrace. The ride predates the run, and the run was built to fit it.

From Horse Trail to Footrace

The equestrian side came first. Long-distance endurance riding had a foothold in the hills around Woodstock and West Windsor well before any runners lined up, and the region developed a tradition of 100-mile rides through its dirt roads and farm trails. That tradition gave the eventual footrace its shape, its distance, and much of its route.

The running race arrived in 1989. The first edition drew 114 runners, who covered roughly the same distance as the horses already did. The event was founded by Mike Howe and Laura Farrell, and it has been held every year since, apart from a small number of forced cancellations. The format was unusual from the first weekend, with runners moving down the same roads as the riders and aid stations serving both.

Farrell's involvement tied the race to a cause from the start. In 1987 she founded Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports, a nonprofit that provides recreational and sport opportunities to people with disabilities. The Vermont 100 has served as a fundraiser for that organization throughout its history, and the connection has shaped how the race presents itself.

The race also moved during its early decades. It ran from Smoke Rise Farm before relocating to Silver Hill Meadow in West Windsor, the start and finish it uses today. The shift gave the event a permanent home and a fixed staging area for the runners, riders, crews, and volunteers who fill the meadow each July.

A Grand Slam Fixture

The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning grew out of an idea credited to Fred Pilon of Ultrarunning Magazine in the mid-1980s. At the time only a handful of 100-mile races existed in North America, and the original challenge linked four of them: the Old Dominion 100, the Western States 100, the Leadville Trail 100, and the Wasatch Front 100. Tom Green completed the first Grand Slam in 1986.

The Vermont 100 entered the picture in 1989, the same year its running race began. It was added to the series as an option alongside the Old Dominion 100, giving Grand Slam runners a choice for the summer leg of the circuit. The Slam now counts five races in total, with runners completing four of them in a single season to earn recognition.

The placement matters on the calendar. The Vermont 100 sits in mid-July, between Western States in late June and the later Slam races, which makes it a hinge point for anyone attempting all four in one year. It is one of only two 100-mile races in northern New England, and its position in the schedule has kept it central to the Grand Slam pursuit for more than three decades.

The Course and Its Records

The route is not a high-altitude mountain course in the mold of Leadville or Wasatch, but it is not flat either. Runners climb and descend a cumulative total in the range of 15,000 feet across the 100 miles, much of it on rolling dirt roads rather than technical single track. The horses follow a modified version of the same course, rerouted around the most technical trail sections.

The course record on the men's side belongs to Brian Rusiecki, who ran 14:47:35 in 2014. The women's record, 16:42:32, was set by Kami Semick in 2010. Both marks have stood for over a decade, a reflection of how rarely the conditions, the field, and the day align for a record run on this terrain.

The course itself changed over the years, and the race has at times tracked records separately for older and newer versions of the route. That history of adjustment is common for long-running point-to-point and loop ultras, where landowner access, road conditions, and safety all push the course to shift across editions.

Cancellations and Adaptation

For an event that prides itself on continuity, the past several years tested the Vermont 100. The 2020 and 2021 editions were cancelled during the COVID-19 pandemic, the longest interruption in the race's history.

Then came the floods. In July 2023, catastrophic flooding hit central Vermont in the days before the race, damaging the course and surrounding communities. Organizers cancelled the 2023 edition on safety grounds, with key sections of the route, including the Lincoln Covered Bridge near mile 39, left underwater or impassable. The decision came down to the condition of the roads and trails and the state of emergency across the region.

The race returned after each setback, which is part of why its longevity carries weight. A 100-miler that has run since 1989 has absorbed bad weather, course changes, and a pandemic, and has kept coming back to the same meadow in West Windsor.

A Race Built Around a Cause

The disability connection that Farrell brought in 1987 has become more than a fundraising line. In 2017 the Vermont 100 became the first trail ultra to formally recognize athletes with disabilities in their own division, creating an Athletes with Disabilities category for mobility and visually impaired runners. The race later widened that division to include neurodiverse athletes, among them runners managing autism, traumatic brain injury, and post-traumatic stress.

The expansion fit the event's origins. A race founded by an endurance rider who also built a nonprofit for adaptive sport was always going to measure itself by more than finish times. The Athletes with Disabilities division turned that history into a competitive category, and it remains one of the clearest ways the Vermont 100 stands apart from the rest of the Grand Slam circuit.

That focus sets the Vermont 100 apart from peers that define themselves mainly by terrain or speed. The race is hard, the records are old, and the Grand Slam stakes are real, but the event's identity has always run through Vermont Adaptive and the riders and runners who share its roads.

The 2026 edition is scheduled for July 17 in West Windsor, the same hills where the running race began in 1989. The horses will line up alongside the runners, as they have every year the race has been held, and the course will once again climb and drop through the Vermont summer.