I first met Phil Parsons in 2018 at the Band of Runners camp. Established with the goal of sharing the community of trail running, Band of Runners provides military veterans and their family members with lessons about th...
Articles by Ellie Greenwood
In today's trail-dominant ultrarunning world, it’s easy to forget that the roots of ultrarunning lie in pedestrianism and road races. Events like Comrades, Spartathlon and Badwater are competitive and high profile, but t...
If you’ve been following 100 and 200-mile races in recent years, it’s hard to escape the name Annie Hughes. Hughes’s race results speak for themselves but it was her age that initially drew my attention – there are not m...
Roxy Vogel, a Seven Summits finisher from the USA, at about 16,000 feet altitude on Day 1 of the Snowman Race. In the lower right of the image, you can make out the rocky moraine and glacial lake left from th...
If a summer ultra is in your future, it’s time to start thinking about race-specific training. While it might be ideal to already have a plan and a base built, there’s still adequate time to prepare and reach your raci...
Eleanor Robinson, second from right, is seated with (L to R) Erik Seedhouse, Don Ritchie and Yiannis Kouros, the day before the 1990 Edmund Fitzgerald UltraMarathon (IAAF 100K World Cup and TAC National 100...
I’ve worked as an online ultrarunning coach for the last eight years, and when I tell people what I do, they often make the assumption that most of my runners are in their 20s and finishing at the top of the field. Bu...
British Columbia’s Vancouver, Squamish and Whistler are all underrated world-class destinations for trail running, but North Vancouver has been my home for a decade, so I’m obviously a little biased. Winters here are m...
ERIC CLIFTON UROY: 1992 In 1992, I was honored with both the Ultrarunner of the Year and Ted Corbitt awards mostly for being the first to win four of the (then existing) 11 100-mile trail races in the US, finishing t...
How is another year drawing to a close so soon? It feels like we’ve been living in a time warp over the last 18 months, with the traditional annual markers missing. It throws me for a loop when anyone asks me the date....
The word “legend” is often overused, but in the world of ultra-distance running, the 65-year-old South African Bruce Fordyce is truly a legend. He is the nine-time winner of the 89k Comrades Ma...
Vancouver is a city famed not only for its oceanfront promenades, easily accessible beaches and towering high rises jammed into downtown, but also for its backdrop of magnificent mountain peaks. The North Shore Mountains...
Experience true mountain grandeur and majesty by visiting the Rockwall Traverse in Canada’s Kootenay National Park. I ran this 34-mile (55k) route 10 years ago, and it still ranks as one of my favorite days of mountai...
As humans, I fear we often have rather short memories. In the racing scene, if we’ve not heard from someone for 12 months, we’re prone to forgetting their former podium dominance. It’s too easy to get caught up in...
It’s 4:30 p.m. and I’ve been at work since 8 a.m. There are still emails to reply to and admin tasks to complete, but those don’t matter now – it’s time to quickly tidy my desk and head out the door. A brisk walk home...
It’s been a weird year. January and February were pretty standard for most of us, but by the end of March it truly seemed like the world had been turned on its head and nothing was anywhere near normal — whatever normal...
When you think of Western States (WSER), who do you think of? Maybe it’s Jim Walmsley and his outstanding course record from 2019? Or Ann Trason and her mind-boggling 14 wins? As with any race, elite competitors at Weste...
The North Coast Trail on Vancouver Island, BC, is a true backcountry experience. Don’t be deceived by the lack of elevation – it’s remote, wild and rugged. When I backpacked the trail last summer with three girlfriends,...
Ultrarunning as a sport has technically been around for over 100 years, but the format that most of us know as “ultrarunning” today (trail and road races, typically 50k to 100 miles) is barely 50 years old and evolving r...
Love them or hate them, treadmills are an excellent training tool and can be a lifesaver in winter. I’m impressed if you continue running outside when the temperature is hovering around zero – that’s dedication for sure....