Adah Chapman, ultra-marathoner at Moultonborough Academy, bests father's record

It’s just a 3.5-mile course that loops through some woods. How hard could it be?

That question hooks participants, year after year, and draws them to a property in Conway for Bubba’s Backyard Ultra, an unusual trail running challenge that, since it started five years ago, is attracting some of the Northeast’s elite runners and hikers.

At the event this year, the field also included a young runner from Moultonborough who, despite her age, has started to make a name for herself among the region’s trail running community.

Adah Chapman, a 16-year-old junior at Moultonborough Academy, was the only teenager who signed up for the challenge; the youngest competitor by about six years. Most were in their 30s and older, and the winner — a man named Ed Clifford, who has won the event every year it has been held, in fact — is 58.

Backyard ultras

What is this challenge? Bubba’s is an example of a so-called backyard ultra, a format that allows runners to achieve ultra-marathon distances — anything over 26.2 miles — without having to end up a long distance away from where they started. Backyard ultras use a loop course, usually around 4 miles, designed to be easy for trail runners to complete within one hour. And they’ll need to be back to the start/finish line within 60 minutes, because a new lap starts every hour, on the hour. Runners who finish a lap in less time can take a short break for food, rest, or a change of socks, but have to be back at the starting line by the time the next lap starts.

It’s a race format that doesn’t provide much advantage to the fastest runners. Instead, it favors what race organizer Andrew Drummond called “diesel engines — slow but efficient.” The race isn’t won by the person who finishes first, but rather, the runner who finishes last. That is, the last person to complete a lap after everyone else has thrown in the towel.

Drummond said there are a few different types of athletes the event attracts.

“On the pointy end, there are people who are competitive, and they want to finish it,” Drummond said. They look at the course and think it isn’t that long, and last year’s winner was a 58-year-old. “How hard could that be?” Drummond asked. Those make up about 10% of the entrants.

The rest are split between experienced endurance athletes who see the format as a refreshing alternative, and people who are fairly new to distance running who see it as a low-stakes opportunity to see how many miles they can achieve.

“Backyard ultras are low-key, fun, casual atmosphere,” Drummond said. With the unique format, in which runners come together every hour to start the next lap, and have a few minutes to converse after they finished their prior lap, “friendships start strong and fast,” he said.

Bubba’s, which has an atypically short and technical course for an ultra — Drummond laid out a 3.5-mile loop, but he said it takes a bit longer due to bog bridges, muddy sections and soft “duff” where the trail is dry — started five years ago as part of the “Run the Whites” series.

The first year, in 2019, had 19 people sign up. In 2020 it went up to 44, then 66 in ‘21, and last year there were 88 participants. This year, Drummond allowed 112 to register, hoping that he’d have around 100 on race day, and he just about nailed it, as 98 people completed the first 3.5-mile loop.

This was Chapman’s second year at Bubba’s. Last year she finished 15 laps, good for 52.5 total miles. Her father, Justin Chapman, had done 16 laps last year, and decided to come as part of Adah’s support team this year.

Drummond said he’s started to pay attention to Adah.

“She’s come to my events for many years. I’ve watched her come, this really young kid, year after year, and followed from afar what she’s been doing in the White Mountains, really impressive. It’s rare that kids are attracted to endurance sports that early.”

For Drummond, it was Adah’s adventures on the so-called Pemi Loop that clued him in to the possibility that she could be someone special in the making. The Pemi Loop, a 31-mile chain of trails in the White Mountains that takes in eight peaks among its 9,000 feet of vertical gain, is considered one of most challenging hikes in North America to do in a single go. Adah achieved just that when she was 14, and then last year, did two consecutive laps, totaling 62 miles.

Drummond, who makes his living as part of the White Mountains trail running community, said, “When she did that double Pemi Loop, I can only think of a couple people who have ever done that. That puts her in a class of her own. I’m excited to see what she ends up doing in sport in general, she’s a phenomenal athlete.”

Born runner

Both of Adah’s parents are educators, and both are runners. She said she started running with her parents “once in a while” when she was a girl. At age 10, she signed up for her first 5-mile race, “Then I started doing longer events two or three years ago.” Earlier this summer, she did a 50-kilometer trail race, and was ready to give Bubba’s another run.

Bubba’s, she said, is a race of stages.

"It’s kind of weird in the beginning,” she said, because there were nearly 100 people crowding the starting line at the top of every hour, and then it was like a “conga line” moving through the woods. And it takes several laps before participants start to peel off, one by one, to leave a less crowded field.

The race started at 10 a.m. on Saturday, and it was that conga line feel through the daylight hours. For runners looking to pile up serious mileage, those were just the warm-up laps, said Adah.

“It was nighttime at eight hours, and it’s a whole different experience at that point,” she said. Each runner on the course had run a full marathon and a little bit more, and all on the same narrow path. The rainy conditions were combining with the foot traffic to make for sloppy footing.

“The trail was really muddy, you could feel it changing from lap to lap,” Adah said. “It was very slick mud, very different from any other year, so that was mentally challenging. Sometimes you’d step and slide 4 feet, and if you started to go down, there was no saving yourself.”

At 13 hours, Adah had covered 45 miles, and it was nearing midnight. “I was starting to feel very low, feeling ready to quit and yet also knowing that I wasn’t going to quit,” she said. She had a goal: her father had completed 16 laps last year, so she wanted to do one better. With help and encouragement from another runner, who paced her until she got her wind back, she made it through to lap 17. She sat down after finishing it, and spent a few minutes wondering if she was done or just resting. Her father Justin observed that an 18th lap would put her over 100k, a distance she hadn’t eclipsed yet, and so, at 4 a.m. on Sunday, she was back at the starting line again, for what turned out to be her final lap.

Adah’s showing at Bubba’s finished with 63 miles, which was good for 28th out of 98 who started, and eighth place among females.

As impressive as that finish might be, she has some ground to cover if she wants to win such an event. Clifford had to run 136.5 miles to outlast the field — for the last few laps, it was just the 58-year-old perennial champ and Will Peterson, a 25-year-old from Maine, waiting to see who would be the first to end their race. The top female, 38-year-old Megan Jensen from Vermont, ran 119 miles.

Adah said she could have lined up for a 19th lap, but chose discretion.

“There are other factors, like I have a life to live this week, soccer games and school,” she said. Pushing farther would have risked injury. “There was no point in making a silly mistake.”

Adah said she feels “good” about her performance, and knows that her legs can take her at least 100 kilometers.

That’s information that will serve her well next year. Though a junior, Adah studies like she runs, so she’s on pace to graduate at the end of this year. She plans to head to Western Colorado University next fall, to join their trail running and nordic skiing team, and to study exercise and sports science.

Cheerleader, emphasis on ‘leader’

Matthew Katsenes, a teacher and coach at Moultonborough Academy, has gotten to know Adah better than most. He had her in his Latin classes for four years, and is currently teaching her in advanced placement computer science. He saw a seriousness emerge in her as a middle schooler, first in relation to athletics, and quickly thereafter in academics, as well.

Katsenes recalls her ninth grade year, when she competed on both the alpine and nordic ski teams, which would normally have challenged a student’s ability to keep up in the classroom.

“Adah approached the academic challenge with the same determination and dedication she uses to outdistance competitors in a race. She organized her time, kept careful track of her responsibilities and progress, and worked incredibly hard.”

Katsenes, who helps coach the nordic team, has also seen Adah grow as an athlete.

“Adah has skied with us since sixth grade, and has been a leader on our team that whole time,” Katsenes said. “Adah, like no other teenager I’ve ever worked with, understands how to work and how to suffer. I’ve seen her beaten by size and strength, especially when she was young and competing against older kids, but never have I seen her beaten by guts.” She understands that her “guts” are formed at practice, when every bit of effort is like a coin dropped into a piggy bank, to be cashed in on race day.

“This approach has built her into a formidable nordic skier and led her to some frankly unbelievable accomplishments in running. This weekend, she ran 63 miles over 18 hours at Bubba’s Backyard Ultra. And this morning, two days later, she’s in my class, engaged, focused, and working hard to solve puzzles in computer code.”

For all her excellence on the race course or in the classroom, Katsenes said there’s a third angle to Adah, visible when she’s on the sideline. He said the Moultonborough nordic team includes athletes who are just learning how to balance on their skis, all the way up to skiers who have their eyes on the state’s Meet of Champions.

“We work together, we rely on each other to celebrate successes and recover from setbacks. Adah could opt out of this world. She has the ability to train exclusively with a more elite squad. But she doesn’t choose to do that. Instead, she comes to practice with the school team, models dedication, and always stands on the race course cheering and banging a cowbell for that middle school skier who’s finishing their first race.”