Mount Sunapee to host national mountain running championships in 2026

Mount Sunapee will turn into a championship stage for one weekend, with bib pickup and course preview activities on Saturday and men’s and women’s starts set for Sunday morning. The race will bring elite runners, coaches, volunteers and spectators into the resort area, making the hill as much a community gathering place as a competition site.

The Sunapee Scramble’s 2026 race page says the event will serve as the 2026 USATF Mountain Running Championships, while the Collegiate Running Association has also named it the 2026 Collegiate Mountain Running National Championships. That double designation puts the race far beyond a local trail run. It gives Mount Sunapee and the surrounding region a national profile for the weekend, with championship implications for both open and collegiate athletes.

The men’s race is scheduled to start at 9:00 a.m. Sunday, followed by the women at 9:15 a.m. The course is listed at about 9.3 miles, with more than 3,300 feet of climbing. Runners will tackle a service-road ascent and trail sections that carry them to the summit of Mount Sunapee before a fast descent back to the base lodge. That route will make the mountain itself part of the show, with the climb, summit and downhill finish all visible pieces of the action.

The event also carries national team implications. The race page says it will serve as a selection race for the U.S. Classic Up/Down Mountain Running Team, which will go on to compete in the WMRA World Cup finale in Quebec later in the year. A $30,000 prize purse, provided by Brooks, adds another layer of stakes and should draw a deeper field than a typical regional race weekend.

For Sunapee and the surrounding towns, the practical impact will be hard to miss. The base lodge and the Shanty Pub will be part of the event’s social and logistics footprint, and the flow of athletes, support crews and spectators will change the pace of the mountain for the day. Even residents who never set foot on the course will see Mount Sunapee functioning as a regional stage, with championship racing, college titles and national-team spots all decided on the same summit-to-lodge route.