The Mad Dash, a foot race that’s been run in the fall as a benefit for the Mad River Path for over two decades, is going to morph into a well-known and much loved former Mad River Valley event, an April-based four-event triathlon.
Originally the Tucker Hill Triathlon, the event was created in 1979 by Rob Center who ran the Tucker Hill Cross Country Ski Touring Center in Fayston for Zeke and Emily Church, former owners. The original event featured cross-country skiing, biking and paddling, but then one year in the early 1980s a lack of snow caused the substitution of running for skiing. The four events stayed part of the competition as it segue-wayed from the Tucker Hill Triathlon to the Sugarbush Triathlon and later the Mad River Adventure Games with the Mad River Valley Chamber of Commerce and Sugarbush Resort presenting the event throughout the years.
The games were not run after 2014 and now Misha Golfman, executive director of the Mad River Path and his board of directors, in cooperation with Sugarbush, the Mad River Riders, Friends of the Mad River, want to bring the event back.
Mad River Path board chair Mac Rood said that unlike the Mad Dash, the new four-event triathlon will be a ‘friendraiser’ that will raise awareness for and appreciation of those community organizations.
“It will be a four-event triathlon, that takes place in April and has the same kind of flexibility that the original event had in recognition that it is impossible to know what the river will look like in April and impossible to know what the snow coverage will be like in April.
Rood said that the course and name have not yet been set but that details would be forthcoming.
Asked about why the change was being made, Rood said that the board and other partners in the triathlon felt there was pent-up demand and enthusiasm for getting a triathlon going again.
He also noted that COVID dampened enthusiasm for the Mad Dash and said attendance had also fallen since the event was moved from a Meadow Road race to a race run on the trails at Harwood Union High school.
