Twenty minutes before the race orientation meeting was to begin, a message was received from the state capital in Tallahassee that every special event being held in Florida State Parks was to be shut down and canceled, effective immediately.
If you’ve never thanked the race director of an event that touched you as a runner, send them a note, because right now we could really use your patience and support.
Melissa takes a look at 3 relatively new headlamps. The Silva Trail Speed 4XT, Knog Bilby, and BioLite 200
Like several runners in the trail running community, I decided that this was the perfect time to go after an FKT. I settled on the Shawnee State Forest Backpack Loop, a 38-mile trail loop in southern Ohio that has over 8,000 ft of vert – enough elevation that Shawnee State Forest is known as Ohio’s “Little Smokies.”
When I started this race in 1995, I had no idea how long I would direct it. I think 25 years is enough. In 2021, Jamie and Brenton Swyers will take over as race directors of Holiday Lake 50K.
On January 3, 2020, I ran my first ultramarathon at Across the Years in Arizona. I should mention that I was only 16 years old.
Despite the weather, there were 65 hardy runners entered into the USATF 50K championship race with many others in the open 50K race. Promptly at 8:30 a.m., the race started, as did an increase in the wind velocity. But ultrarunners are a strong and tenacious group, and nothing stood in their way.
Brooks is making a concentrated entry into the bra category in 2020 with Dare products being introduced this spring and more models coming in the fall. With the Strappy Bra, Brooks offers a visually appealing design that proves strappy bras can be sporty, too.
I’ve been wanting to run the Iron Horse 100K in Palataka, Florida, for a few years. Thankfully, a low-cost airline, a couch to crash on and reasonable race fee allowed it to finally happen this year.
The COROS APEX Pro is an upgrade from the APEX, with an even longer battery life and a more robust set of features, including a built-in pulse oximeter for monitoring oxygen saturation, and touch screen technology.
Some pretty amazing things happened at Peyton’s Wild and Wacky Ultra (5K and 10x5K) this year. There were some incredibly fast times, there were first-time 50k and 5k finishers, and there was my Mom, Phyllis Moore, finishing a 5k on her 81st birthday.
It turns out getting to the starting line is really the hardest part of an ultramarathon. This was supposed to be my Zion 100 race report, but COVID-19 has other plans.
The coronavirus is becoming a big factor in all our lives and apparently, our spring running season as well. School and track practices are canceled, most races, potentially the Olympics, professional sports and more are either canceled or at risk. But the world is not ending. I think that this time has a lot of potential depending on how we handle it.
I signed up for the Chattanooga 50-miler in May as soon as registration opened. The race is 800 miles from my home in Northern Illinois, and the thought of escaping from our frozen tundra in March was part of the allure. My wife and I looked at the calendar and thought that the race wouldn’t conflict with our younger son’s club wrestling schedule. Of course, we were wrong.
Held mid-February, the Tarawera Ultramarathon on New Zealand’s north island has always attracted a high level of international competition, and there are three clear reasons why top level racers travel this far early in the year.
I’d like to thank the unsung heroes of the trails I run on every day – those thoughtful folks who leave bags of dog poop on the trails. As an avid trail runner, I think it’s important to point out what each of your contributions has done to help improve my running game.
The first thing you might spot when you see Lisa DeVona, is her purple ponytail. It may lead you to believe that she has superpowers, and considering how she has climbed the ultrarunning ranks over the last few years, she just might.
The unseasonable heat was gone in mid-January and subsequently, over 50 runners toed the line for the sixth annual Hellcat 50K race at the Military Museum of North Florida in Green Cove Springs.
Although the Nike Pegasus 36 Trail isn’t a brand new release (it debuted in summer 2019), it’s new for our testers. The shoe also represents a new design approach for a model that has been around since before some of you were born.
In a world of conveniences, why take on hard challenges? Perhaps because in the pain, misery and torture that we face in these abbreviated and self-imposed adventures, we grow empathetic and remember that we are all in it together, from the first person to the last person crossing the finish line.
In November 2019, the Lawrence Trail Hawks dedicated Sanders Saunter, their annual charity event, to 22BuddyCheck, a veteran suicide awareness organization, in honor of Colonel Christopher J. Wilson, USAR retired, who collapsed from a heart attack 2.6 miles from the 2018 Hawk Marathon finish line.
Spring 2020 offers a fresh take on two established road models in the HOKA ONE ONE lineup: the Elevon 2 and Mach 3. Both pairs are road and track models that have similar geometry, but otherwise are significantly different in their build and the athletes they will likely appeal to.
This race tested me like no other. A perfect storm of being undertrained, recovering from an injury, my own ignorance of the course and a little too much confidence in my abilities, left me a complete mess as I finally crossed the finish line 21 minutes before the cutoff.
The Plain Endurance Runs require that participants be self-sufficient for their chosen distance (100-mile or 100k)—there are no aid stations. The event is held on standard mountain trails with typical trail junction signs, but the course is not marked, requiring the runner to simply follow a map and associated directions.
Two early releases in the UltrAspire lineup for Spring 2020 are available this month: the new Basham race vest and the Spry 3.0 race vest.
The big news for Surf the Murph, now in its 11th year, was co-mingling with the Savage 100 this time around for a plethora of racing options. The Savage 100 had been held five years prior and was making another appearance for runners who wanted 100k or even better, 100 miles of autumn bliss at Murphy-Hanrehan Park in Savage, Minnesota.
The morning of August 3, 2019, I set off to encircle Mt. St. Helens – the mountain that provided me with the most important event of my life. Its cataclysm forged a bond between boy and father so deep that decades of estrangement, alcohol, shame, failure, fear and disease could not destroy it.
I’m a young girl. In sport. And nearly four years after the diagnosis of my eating disorder, I am finally healed enough to discuss it. We’ve all come to a realization that it is time for the broken system to mend. But how?
With 6,500 feet of vertical gain and loss over 31 miles through the rugged and technical terrain of the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, it is understandable why race director Michael Whisman of Next Opportunity Events (NOE) cautions against making the Rough Trail 50K your first ultra.
I’m in NorCal, few thousand miles away from home, running on a smooth dusty trail surrounded by giant trees. Once in a while, the green opens up and the sight of Lake Tahoe fills my eyes.