If you’re an ultramarathoner, chances are that you started with a marathon. An informal survey of ultarunning friends reveals that most of them did at least one marathon before moving up to ultras. Going 26 miles seems t...
Articles by Karl Hoagland
We recently conducted a reader survey and received almost 1,000 responses – thank you for your feedback. The positive comments were encouraging and nice to hear. Over 98% of respondents said UltraRunning Magazine is inte...
Most ultrarunners are fueled by a desire to push their limits and explore the boundaries of what is possible. They are drawn to training for and completing ultras because they want to challenge themselves and achieve big...
Kaci Lickteig, Women’s Ultrarunner of the Year: 2016 UR: Congratulations on a fantastic year of ultra-racing, how does it feel to be Ultrarunner of the Year? To be named Ultrarunner of the Year, is such an honor an...
We hadn’t attended the Western States lottery in a few years and I was not expecting the spectacle that was ahead of us that morning in the packed auditorium at Placer High School in Auburn, California. I knew it would b...
This time of year is generally recognized – with reverence and in hushed tones – as the time for looking back on the year and reflecting. But as ultrarunners, we are most often solely focused on what lies ahead – after a...
On Sunday, September 18, at 3:38 a.m., Karl Meltzer emerged from the trail at the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail at Springer Mountain, GA, after departing Mt. Khatadin in Maine on August 3 at 5 a.m. After 2,1...
After a joyous wedding celebration, Erika Hoagland, UltraRunning Contributing Editor, and I had the bright idea to enjoy our honeymoon by taking on a new adventure together – hiking the 170-mile Tahoe Rim Trail. We had n...
As Tropical John Medinger astutely observed, ultrarunning is a hard sport for everyone – back of the pack, middle of the pack and those at the front – and it is this shared experience of suffering that brings all ultraru...
How many times do we see grisly photos of blistered and battered feet? You know the ones – with huge chunks of skin hanging and dangling, or maybe a balloon-like blister filled with who knows what gnarly fluid. Maybe a t...
With the growth of ultrarunning has come the increased popularity of 100 mile races, with 152 different “hundos” in our North American Ultra Calendar for 2016. Everyone seems to be doing them. But in fact, that is hardly...
Toeing the line and completing an ultramarathon is a huge accomplishment. But racing an ultra is an entirely different proposition. Both are wonderful and life changing endeavors, but since this is our racing-themed issu...
The 27th edition of the Way Too Cool 50K will be most remembered for wet weather before – and during – the race. After a week of heavy El Niño storms, the trails were muddier than ever and some of the creek crossings eve...
Eric Byrnes is a former professional baseball player who recently turned his athletic focus to endurance sports and ultrarunning. Byrnes was not just any ballplayer; in his 10-year career from 2000 to 2010, he hit over 1...
If nothing else, ultrarunning constantly presents challenges. This includes the big things like choosing to take on a crazy-long distance. Or to train hard and give one’s all on race day to cover that distance faster...
The UltraRunning Race Series records the race results of every ultrarunner in North America and calculates points for each one based on all relevant factors. It adds up every ultrarunner’s best scores at each of the prim...
Doing ultras is a huge deal, and only driven people and those who dream big are drawn to it. Often, the people having the most fun with it are those who find kindred spirits and form a like-minded and similarly capable g...
Late last year, I was pacing the leader of a 100-mile race when we went off course at mile 75. I had joined her at mile 68 and she was naturally tired and feeling a lot of fatigue and pain, but she was still cruising in...
We recently had a “strategic planning retreat,” which in our case really meant that four of us got together in a fun setting (Sunriver, Oregon) to do some running, eat good food and hang out with local ultrarunners. Oh,...
At age 62, having just completed a grueling 100-mile mountain race in which he finished first in his age group, Fred Brooks died suddenly when his car crashed on an interstate highway just hours after the race was comple...