The Empire State Trail draws a gigantic, sideways T across New York State. Three hundred and fifty miles from Buffalo to its sole junction in Albany, where 400 more miles of linked rail trails, towpaths, and road shoulders trace a continuous route between Manhattan's Battery Park and the Canadian border. Many of those miles are calm and bucolic, passing through rolling farmland and sleepy upstate towns. But if you head out onto the route in mid-May, you might encounter a rare and recent phenomenon: a horde of runners clad in hi-viz vests, hurtling southward at breakneck paces. You've just become the unknowing spectator of Southbound 400, an unsanctioned, multi-day, team relay race from Canada to NYC unlike any other running event on (or off) the books.
Inspired by a New Trail
Southbound 400—SB400 or just Southbound, for short—is a nascent affair; 2025 was the third time the race has been held. The event, like today's running boom, flowered out of the misery of the pandemic; that's when Matt Roberts first heard of the Empire State Trail, which had been a disconnected chain of existing thoroughfares until the final links were put in place at the end of 2020. Roberts, a triathlete and ultra runner, began having conversations with a group of like-minded athletes and friends who shared a connection to MOTIVNY, a physical therapy and coaching practice in New York's Lower East Side, about using the route as a venue for a race.