St. Croix Running Company

St. Croix Running Company St. Croix Running Company coordinates several foot trail races in Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Trail races don’t happen without volunteers, and we need you for In Yan Teopa on Saturday, 9/26.We’re looking for help w...
09/16/2026

Trail races don’t happen without volunteers, and we need you for In Yan Teopa on Saturday, 9/26.

We’re looking for help with:
🏃 Registration: check runners in and get them to the start
🥤 Aid Station: keep runners fueled and cheer them on
🏁 Finish Line: time tracking and greeting
🧹 Sweeping: follow the last runner and make sure everyone gets home

You don’t need running experience. Just show up, spend a morning outside, and be part of a great day on the trails.

Grab a spot here 👉 https://www.stcroixrunningcompany.com/volunteer-inyanteopa

My Superior 100 didn’t go the way I planned, and the new blog post explains why I am fine with that.Eight miles in, the ...
09/13/2026

My Superior 100 didn’t go the way I planned, and the new blog post explains why I am fine with that.

Eight miles in, the day was already asking more of me than I had planned to give it. A while past Split Rock, I came up on another runner who was in real trouble, and the choice in front of me was not much of a choice. I walked with him to the next aid station. By the time we got into Beaver Bay in a thunderstorm, my hundred was over.

The post is the honest version of that decision, including the part where I tried to bargain my way out of it, and the part where letting the race go felt like relief.

The medic looked at him, and his family took him home. That is the part that matters.

Huge thanks to everyone out on that course, to the aid station crews, and to the medics who make this sport possible. And to the friends we got to cheer across the finish line all weekend. That was a pretty good way to spend the rest of it.

Full post linked in the comments.

Taper week does something strange to your head.For months, the training itself keeps the nerves quiet. There's always an...
09/06/2026

Taper week does something strange to your head.

For months, the training itself keeps the nerves quiet. There's always another long run to think about. Then the taper hits, the miles disappear, and all that leftover energy has nowhere to go except straight into your thoughts, where it turns into anxiety, and sometimes into a quiet search for a way out.

Chris wrote about this ahead of his Superior 100 start this week, the twinges that show up out of nowhere, the small aches that suddenly feel like evidence, and the other runners who told him it's more universal than he expected.

If you've got a race on the calendar this fall, whether it's Icebox, Trout Brook, or In Yan Teopa, this one's worth a read before your own taper week hits.

(Link in comments)

Taper week has a way of making you doubt everything you built. The miles stop, and suddenly a weekend with friends feels...
08/29/2026

Taper week has a way of making you doubt everything you built. The miles stop, and suddenly a weekend with friends feels like it’s undoing months of training.

It’s not. The work is already banked.

New post is up about trusting your training when the taper anxiety kicks in, and why sometimes the best thing you can do two weeks out is to show up for your people instead of your training log. Link in comments.

Mark Dowdle just won the Last Soul Ultra after 395 miles and 94 hours on a 4-mile loop, and something he said afterward ...
08/22/2026

Mark Dowdle just won the Last Soul Ultra after 395 miles and 94 hours on a 4-mile loop, and something he said afterward has been living in my head all week:

"Every step is evidence. The story in your head is not true. Forward. Forward."

I’ve been sitting with that line on every run this week, easy days and hard ones, and I think it’s the most honest description I’ve heard of what a hundred miler actually asks of you. Not fitness. The willingness to trust what your body is doing over what your mind is telling you about it.

I’m a couple of weeks out from Superior 100 — my first attempt at the distance since Zumbro in 2016 —, and I wrote up what this quote has meant to me this week, the doubts it’s surfaced, and how I’m planning to use it out on the Superior Hiking Trail.

New post is up. Link in the comments.

There’s a stretch of fall out here that we’ve built our whole calendar around. Three races, six weeks apart, each one a ...
08/16/2026

There’s a stretch of fall out here that we’ve built our whole calendar around. Three races, six weeks apart, each one a little different, but all of them built for the same thing: get outside, test yourself against something real, and stand around afterward with people who get it.

We start September 26 at Frontenac State Park with In Yan Teopa, a course with over twenty years of history and bluff views that stop you mid-stride. Six weeks later, October 10, Trout Brook takes you off the familiar trails at Willow River and into tight single-track most people never find. And we close it out on November 7 with Icebox, our timed endurance event at Whitetail Ridge, where the only question that matters is how far you can go.

You don’t have to run all three. But we’d bet one of them is calling your name. A new post is up on the blog with the full breakdown of all three races.

We line up for races that will hurt us on purpose. We train through cold mornings we could just as easily skip. And some...
08/09/2026

We line up for races that will hurt us on purpose. We train through cold mornings we could just as easily skip. And somewhere along the way, a lot of us started treating that as a burden instead of what it actually is.

This week’s blog is a reminder that most of the world doesn’t get the choice we get. Not everyone has the body, the time, or the circumstances to voluntarily make their life harder for a finish line. That’s not something to complain about. That’s something to be grateful for.

Full post in the first comment. Would love to hear how this lands with you.

There’s a version of “burn the ships” that’s genuinely useful in training — deciding ahead of time that today isn’t up f...
08/02/2026

There’s a version of “burn the ships” that’s genuinely useful in training — deciding ahead of time that today isn’t up for negotiation, so the tired voice in your head never gets a vote.

And there’s a version of it that’s dangerous, if it means you’ve also trained yourself to ignore real warning signs from your body.

This week’s blog is about the line between the two, and why it matters just as much for a 5-miler as it does for a hundred. Link in the comments.

Heat wave got you dreaming of fall? Same.Trout Brook is not Willow’s fall twin. It’s a different race on a different cou...
07/26/2026

Heat wave got you dreaming of fall? Same.

Trout Brook is not Willow’s fall twin. It’s a different race on a different course, ten miles of technical single-track through the corner of Willow River State Park most people never find. Climbs, stairs, a waterfall that stops you in your tracks.

This park is my backyard, and I’m excited to share it.

📅 Saturday, October 10, 2026
📍 Willow River State Park, Hudson, WI
🔗 Register: https://ultrasignup.com/register.aspx?did=132870

Address

Hudson, WI
54016-7641

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