Featured

As a zero-drop shoe, the Terraultra G270s fills that void for the minimalist runner who wants a lightweight and energetic shoe for aggressive running, with just enough cushion to stay comfortable.

Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, PhD is a sports doctor who happens to specialize in ultrarunning injuries. She is an accomplished ultrarunner herself, and continues to pursue a balance of being a working mom, wife and ultrarunner. We discuss how she found ultrarunning and became interested in studying the sport, her medical research at Western States, and how the current pandemic is affecting athletes. Dr. Høeg writes the column “Ultra Doc” for UR.

I am sealed inside my home—a prisoner to the hazardous air that has choked Oregon for over a week. The state is on fire. This year is a reminder that life is too short not to dive in headfirst after your goals. All we have is right now.

Odds are that for the really long distances, like 100 miles, almost everyone will need to power-hike at some point during a race. To put it in context, each time I won the Leadville Trail 100, I typically power-hiked around 25 miles

Fall has arrived. In a typical year, back-to-school activities would be in full swing and fall races would fill the weekends. While much of that has changed, brisk morning runs and leaf-lined trails are a sign that summer is no longer around to keep us warm.

The Maah Daah Hey Trail consists of 144 miles of single track that weaves through the badlands of western North Dakota. Its name comes from the Mandan language and can be translated as “an area that has been or will be around for a long time,” “long lasting,” or simply, “grandfather.” However, one should not imagine a gentle grandfather, always ready with a Werther’s candy in the pocket of his flannel jacket.

Innovation can be an interesting process. Any creative-minded person can attest that you have to throw some ridiculous ideas into the world before you develop one that lands precisely where you’d like it. If it took working our way through the TenNine shoe to get here, the Clifton Edge certainly seems to have justified the creative process.

As the co-founder of Squirrel’s Nut Butter, Chris Thornley is in the business of chafing – well, preventing it, that is. But it may come as a surprise that SNB was not originally created to prevent the dreaded skin burn.

One of the cool things about racing versus a long adventure run is that you don’t have to carry all of your gear and calories with you. Aid stations offer general food and hydration needs, but if you have specific requests, using drop bags or having a crew with a dedicated crew bag can help, if your race allows them.

Chip Howard felt his adrenaline pumping as he began buckling himself into the thrill ride Superman, alongside his family at Six Flags New England, but he had a problem. The buckle was not big enough. An attendant approached him and explained he would have to get off the ride.

We’ve spent the summer testing four high-performance trekking pole options in mountain running environments and big vert days on our home trails: LEKI MCT 12 Vario, Ultimate Direction FK Ultra, Black Diamond Distance Carbon Z, and Black Diamond Distance Carbon.

“Anything can happen in the mountains,” I tell my 19-year-old son, Kyle, as I show him how to use the SOS button on my GPS tracking device. When I hand him a windbreaker, he looks at me as if I’m insane, because we’re living through a heat wave and the sky is cloudless.

Adam Kimble crossed the finish line in Tahoe City with a new supported FKT on the Tahoe Rim Trail. Says Kimble, “I love the supported effort from the standpoint of that it’s really fun to get your core group of people together, your team in life, and go after something together.”

In January 2019, something unexpected happened at the 20-mile mark of the Hong Kong 100K. Dylan Bowman broke. Something more was going on than merely not finishing a race. It was something deeper and profoundly unsettling. For the first time ever in his celebrated career, Dylan felt used up and over.

At 4 a.m. on July 11, on a moonlit track in Fairplay, CO, the ultrarunning world experienced something that it had been longing for—the beautiful cacophony of sound that is a 100-mile start line. The Silverheels 100 Mile Endurance Run, with an average elevation of 11,000 feet, is the second highest 100-miler in the country, second only to the Hardrock 100.

Thirty years ago, at age 39, endurance athlete Marshall Ulrich completed his first 146-mile crossing from Badwater Basin (282 feet below sea level) to the summit of Mount Whitney (14,505 feet). At 6 a.m. on Monday, August 24, 69-year-old Marshall Ulrich began his journey across the desert to climb the highest mountain in the contiguous United States for his 30th crossing of Death Valley and his 27th summit of Mount Whitney.

Good races – races I want to run, crew and volunteer at – all have some key characteristics in common. It often boils down to leadership: good races have race directors who evolve.

In a pandemic world, live races are possible. On August 1, we held the 12th annual Dahlgren Heritage Rail Trail 50K as a live event, on an old converted railbed in King George, Virginia. We took COVID-19 seriously and produced a quality event centered around safety, respect for others and personal responsibility.

Kevin Draper grew up in the coastal town of Guilford, CT, where his adoptive parents helped him cultivate a love of nature. Yearly trips took them to the mountains and lakes of New Hampshire where they swam in Lake Winnisquam and spent time exploring Gunstock Mountain together.

We all continue to listen, learn, unlearn and roll with the punches, and as this pandemic continues to evolve, so do we. But one thing is for sure: the sheer joy of that finish line will never change.

For Latoya Snell, there’s something about the smaller ultra community. She’s drawn to the enthusiasm shown for new runners toeing the line and feels right at home on the trails. It’s why she encourages others to invest in themselves by getting out the door each day from her home in Brooklyn, NY. Leading by example, it’s a risk that Latoya continues to take and one where she finds that the hardest things can become the best teaching moments.

John Trent has become a fixture in the ultrarunning community on the West Coast and is one of the best storytellers in the sport. Not only has he been on the Western States board since 2004, he’s also a race director and 10-time finisher of Western States. We discuss John’s big plans for 2020 prior to COVID-19 and his incredible ability to tell people’s stories in his column, Voice of the Sport.

This longstanding trail favorite is the most famous model in the Brooks lineup, and for good reason, as it performs well for a broad spectrum of users under a variety of conditions. The shoe dependably gives you a comfortable, stable ride with more than enough support and durability to handle ultra-distance mileage.

The Warriors UltraRun stands as one of the most unique road races in the country and allows runners to recreate the escape route from the iconic 1979 cult film “The Warriors” by Walter Hill, wherein a street gang is framed for a murder and must race through the dangerous streets of NYC in order to reach their home turf in Coney Island.

Like most of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic hit us hard – as people, as a company and as members of the racing industry. As the shelter-in-place orders continued, we realized that waiting this out wasn’t an option. The Bryce Ultras at the end of May was our first opportunity to see if there was a way to hold races during the pandemic while also keeping our runners and staff safe.

Originally Candice Burt had planned to spend the week before her next race, the Badwater 135, adapting to the heat in the Badwater Basin, but with Badwater’s official cancellation, she instead spent a week at altitude in Lake Tahoe for her new goal: the 171-mile Tahoe Rim Trail unsupported fastest known time.

Was I nervous? Absolutely. I had one week to prepare for a high elevation mountain race. But despite that aforementioned absurdity, my excitement to pin on an actual race bib completely trumped my fears, and I dove in head first without looking back.

Were it not for the circumstances of the pandemic, I would never have been shopping around for a race, but fate brought me together with the Strawberry Fields Forever 30 Hours in North Bonneville, Washington, near the Columbia River. It turned out to be a wonderfully well run and satisfying ultra with just 3,200 feet of elevation gain.

At the end of the day, whatever it takes to preserve our sanity and keep us moving is a good thing. And maybe, just maybe, when all this is over, our running community will have gained a few members for life from this surge in virtual races.