weekend fantasy football draft with 30-year friends, two weeks before Superior 100. Here's why taper anxiety lies, and what to do with the nervous energy instead.

Mark Dowdle ran 395 miles over 94 hours to win the Last Soul Ultra, then said something into a camera that I haven't been able to shake all week. Here's what it's teaching me before Superior 100.

Six weeks. Three races. One good stretch of fall to test yourself on the trails before winter closes it down. Here's what In Yan Teopa, Trout Brook, and Icebox each bring to the table.

We complain about hard training runs like they're punishment. They're not. They're a privilege most of the world doesn't get to choose. Here's your reminder to run grateful, not just hard.

The "burn the ships" mantra says remove every way out. But there's a real difference between quitting because it's hard and stopping because something's wrong — and training is where you learn to tell them apart.

A heat wave has us daydreaming about October already. Trout Brook isn’t Willow in the fall; it’s a different race entirely, one that leads you into the single-track corner of Willow River State Park most runners never find.

Deep in the biggest week of my Superior 100 build, an old friend called with an invite to his cabin. Here's what almost twenty years of running has taught me about letting a race goal become your whole identity — and why the people who knew you first matter more than the miles.

A flare-up in the middle of a high-mileage training block got me thinking, again, about the difference between working through an injury and toughing it out, at every race distance.

Too many of us base our worth as runners on how we stack up against everyone else. That's a game you cannot win. The real race is internal, and it's the only one worth running.

The In Yan Teopa Trail Race is named after a rock with a hole worn straight through it. The more I sit with what that name means, the more it feels like the whole point of showing up.

There's a stretch of every long run where everything just works, and then, almost out of nowhere, the weather turns. Here's the case for why those low miles might be the best part of the run, if you're willing to jump in the puddle.

A 2-mile loop doesn't sound like much. But at hour twelve of a 24-hour race in 86-degree heat, each one becomes a negotiation — and the only way through is the people who show up.

When I was a kid, my dad took me to tractor pulls. I didn't know it then, but I was watching the perfect metaphor for what happens to every endurance runner somewhere in the back half of a very long race.

It came to me somewhere in the middle of a long run. Not a flash of inspiration. Just a quiet thought that settled in and stayed: choose to run.

There's a moment in every training cycle that nobody talks about enough. The race is registered, the plan is printed, the first few weeks go well. And then you wake up one morning and realize the start line is still months away and the motivation that carried you through week one has quietly left the building.

Nearly 230 runners crossed the finish line at Willow River State Park last Saturday, and every single one of them had help getting there. A look back at a great day on the trails, and a thank you to everyone who made it possible.

I was ten miles in when I found myself back near the parking lot. Not finished. Just close enough to see my car. I took the turn away from it — and the feeling I carried home had nothing to do with miles logged.

Seven days. That's what's left between you and the start line at Willow River State Park. The hard work is done. Here's how to use the time you have left.

Fourteen days from right now, someone is going to cross the finish line at Willow River State Park and it's going to mean something to them. If you've had a registration tab open and keep putting off the decision — or if you want to be part of race day without running it — this one's for you.

I have been asking myself a question lately on the long runs. Not out loud. Just the kind of question that settles in somewhere around mile eight when the legs are heavy and the morning is still dark, and there is nobody around to hear the answer. Why am I doing this? I am training for the Superior 100, and somewhere in the middle of it all, I am still working out what that means.