Winning the World Snowshoe Championships with Jennifer Britz

Wild Ideas Worth Living

REI Co-op

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jennifer Britz is a trail runner based in Bar Harbor, Maine. She spends half the year on Acadia National Park’s rugged trails and the other half perfecting her craft on lightweight running snowshoes built for speed. Over the past decade, Britz has dedicated herself to mastering this niche sport, pushing her limits across varied terrain. In 2022, she earned gold at the World Snowshoe Championships in Argentina.

Transcript

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0:00.0	On a quiet morning in the mountains of Bar Harbor, Maine, Jennifer Brits laces up her running shoes and heads out to the trails of Acadia National Park.
0:11.8	For about half the year, she also straps on running snow shoes.
0:16.3	Unlike the long wide frames you typically see, running snowowshoes are designed to be more compact and
0:22.2	lightweight. Snow shoe running is a niche sport, but Jennifer has dedicated the last 10 years to
0:29.5	mastering it. In fact, in 2022, Jennifer even took home gold at the World Snowshoe Championships in
0:36.5	Argentina. I'm Shelby Stanger,
0:38.8	and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One
0:45.7	and the REI Co-Op MasterCard. When she's not on the trails, Jennifer works at her local YMCA,
0:53.7	running youth programs and helping with fundraising.
0:56.8	She also coaches cross-country and track and field at Mount Desert Island High School.
1:01.8	As a lifelong runner, Jennifer gets outside whenever she can, which is what brought her to snowshoe running in the first place.
1:12.4	Jennifer Brits, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living,
1:15.9	your first snowshoe racer on this podcast.
1:19.7	Very exciting.
1:20.8	It is a pretty old sport,
1:22.8	so I'm surprised you haven't anybody else yet.
1:24.8	So first of all, snowshoe racing.
1:27.4	Has it been around since
1:28.6	like the beginning of time, since people put rackets on the bottom of their feet, or like,
1:33.3	tell me a little bit about the history of this sport? The classic snowshoe is that kind of tennis
1:38.1	racket shaped wooden snow shoe. Those been around for, you know, since Native Americans use them
1:42.2	here, at least North America, when the Europeans came over, they kind of, you know, hey, we used them here, at least North America,
	...

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