Jeffrey Stern

This week’s What’s Up In Ultra is our 50th consecutive column that highlights events on our  UltraRunning Calendar each week. We’re always looking to improve and would love to hear any feedback you have about the weekly column, so drop a comment below. Standouts on our calendar for the first official week of fall include a mountain 100-miler in the Wasatch Mountains, a point-to-point 50k in the Cascade mountains and a classic 50-miler in the Green Mountain State.

It’s finally starting to feel like fall in many places around the country and on our UltraRunning Calendar, with a welcome relief from late summer heat and some much-needed precipitation to help big wildfires out West. Leading our calendar is a Colorado ultra with the biggest ultrarunning prize purse in the world, a qualifying race for next year’s Barkley Marathons and the state of Georgia’s longest-standing 100-miler.

Last weekend across North America, events on our UltraRunning Calendar suffered in the sweltering heat. However, this weekend looks to provide some late summer relief in a few locations. We have a quartet of challenging 100-milers, Canada’s largest ultrarunning festival and a collection of other fun events in unique places. 

Labor Day weekend signifies the proverbial end of summer, but that doesn’t mean the number of races on our North American UltraRunning Calendar is diminishing. We have an exciting mountain ultra in Montana, an age-handicapped race in Tennessee, a last person standing event in Maine and much more.

This week we’re in Chamonix, France, at the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc trail running festival, more affectionately known as UTMB. Still, there’s tons of North American races worth noting on our UltraRunning Calendar to close out the month of August.

We’re closing in on the official end of summer on our UltraRunning Calendar but still have some heavy hitters to wet your ultrarunning appetite. Whether you prefer a high-altitude 100-miler in Colorado, a historic Southern California 50k, a Canadian technical 50-miler or a fun, low-key race, we’ve got you covered.

This week our UltraRunning Calendar features a nice mix of races from the East Coast to the West Coast, up to Canada and even, Alaska. 

It seems like summer just started, but now kids are already gearing up to head back to school. Time sure does fly, especially when your UltraRunning Calendar is as loaded as ours is each week, and this first week of August is no different.

This past June, the top two women and men at the sixth annual Broken Arrow Skyrace 52k in Olympic Valley, California, qualified for the 80k US Trail team competing at the inaugural World Mountain and Trail Running Championships.

Climbing up Little Cottonwood Canyon Road out of Cottonwood Heights via Salt Lake City to Snowbird Resort, the Wasatch Mountains dominate the skyline. If you’ve spent any time exploring them on foot, you know just how unforgiving they can be. That’s just why Karl “Speedgoat” Meltzer decided to organize the Speedgoat 50k 15 years ago. 

For the last weekend of July on our UltraRunning Calendar we’ve got a true classic 50-miler in the Pacific Northwest, a beast of a course in Canada, a 100k in southern Utah that’s quickly becoming known as one of the most challenging on the circuit and much more.

If you thought you could take a breather after last week’s excitement across the country on the UltraRunning Calendar, think again. This week we have a few epic hundreds, some mountain 50ks, a backyard bash and even a couple of fixed time ultras.

It’s a big week for notoriously challenging and historic 100-milers on our UltraRunning Calendar, from California to Vermont and a big loop in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado. 

Summer hits its stride on our UltraRunning Calendar this week, with three-dozen races to choose from, coast to coast. 

As we come down off the high of last weekend’s Western States Endurance Run, our  UltraRunning Calendar takes a bit of a breather with a rather tame dozen and half races. However, we still have some fun highlights below to get you over the halfway hump of the year and into the second part of 2022.

Deep in the heart of Mount Edziza Provincial Park in British Columbia, Canada, it’s easy to feel lost, but perhaps just as simple to find oneself. At over 500,000 acres, the expansive wilderness is home to the Tahltan Nation and abundant with opportunities for adventure and discovery — the awe-inspiring moments are limitless.

Summer is finally here and so is arguably the most anticipated ultramarathon in North America, the 49th Western States Endurance Run. As with all the Golden Ticket races on the calendar, UltraRunning doesn’t just prognosticate on who might take the title, we talked with the contenders to get a sense of how their build-ups went, gather insight into their thoughts and feelings, as well as what they’re most looking forward to on race day.

If you thought last week’s UltraRunning Calendar was deep, wait until you see the 55 races on tap this weekend before the official kick off of summer.

In 1905, 16 years prior to the first Comrades Marathon, the world’s oldest organized ultramarathon, the Dipsea Race, officially began. While there are a number of prestigious road races with even more history— the Boston Marathon comes to mind—the legacies of trail and ultrarunning are intrinsically tied.

We’re just under two weeks away from the official start of summer, but many schools are already on summer break and vacation vibes are spreading across the country. On our UltraRunning Calendar we have over 40 races going down this weekend to help launch you into the last week of “spring training.”

The first weekend of June really starts to heat up on our UltraRunning Calendar, especially on the East Coast, with some of the longest running ultra classics. Our true summer kick-off and big preview of the Western States Endurance Run is still a few weeks away, but there’s plenty of excitement to whet your appetite until then. 

Memorial Day arrives on our UltraRunning Calendar as the unofficial first weekend of summer, even though the big kick-off is still three weeks away. Whether you’re celebrating your kids’ break from school with an ultra camping weekend or keeping it close to home, we’ve got you covered with the top events around North America during this three-day weekend. 

With so many races on our UltraRunning Calendar this weekend, it was hard to choose just a dozen to highlight, however, the first event was an easy pick to kick off What’s Up In Ultra. The 37th running of the ultrarunning classic, Silver State 50k/50m races, is on Saturday, May 21, at the 580-acre Rancho San Rafael Regional Park in Reno, Nevada.

As summer inches closer, our UltraRunning Calendar continues to go deeper than ever before. We have 49 different races to choose from this coming weekend, May 14-15, scattered across the country. In this week’s What’s Up in Ultra, we’ve highlighted a handful that caught our eye.

We’ve hit a bit of a mini-milestone this first week of May with the 30th consecutive “What’s Up in Ultra.” It coincides nicely with our UltraRunning Calendar which includes 42 different races across the US this weekend.

In just her fifth ultramarathon to date, Jazmine Lowther of Nelson, British Columbia, delivered a surprising wire-to-wire win at the recent Canyons 100k. Not surprisingly, just five weeks earlier, she ran in the lead at the Chuckanut 50k and held on for third place just a few minutes back from elite athletes in the sport.

Just when you expected a lull in the UltraRunning Calendar after a drama-filled weekend, the ultra race lineup continues to deliver from coast to coast. Although not officially beginning until next Monday, May 2, the second annual Cocodona 250 beginning in Black Canyon City, Arizona, and finishing in Flagstaff is worth noting as it will be nearly wrapped up by the publishing of next week’s What’s Up In Ultra. The 255-mile point-to-point course across the heart of Arizona links together some of the most iconic trails and towns in the Grand Canyon State.

With the Western States Endurance Run just over eight weeks out, we have our final Golden Ticket race and six spots on the line at the 2022 Canyons Endurance Runs 100k this Saturday, April 23, starting at 5 a.m. in Auburn, California. There is also an accompanying 50k race this year.

When it comes to performance, ultrarunners depend on reliable running shoes that can sustain hundreds of miles while providing a comfortable ride. But where post-race recovery is concerned, or that period between back-to-back long runs, there’s a need for footwear that can allow maximum healing for the feet and the body.

Despite last week’s warmer temperatures around the country, a bit of Old Man Winter was reported at a handful of races on UltraRunning Calendar over the weekend. It’s hard to say exactly what we’ll see during the rest of this month, but we’ll take all the additional precipitation we can handle ahead of the hot summer ahead.