Find the Opening

In Yan Teopa - Frontenac State Park

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 is a rock on the bluff above Lake Pepin with an opening worn straight through it.

The Dakota called it In Yan Teopa. The name means “rock with an opening,” and for a very long time, before any of us laced up a pair of trail shoes, this was sacred ground. People climbed to that bluff to stand near the rock and look out over the water, to be somewhere that felt set apart from the ordinary run of things. The opening in the stone was the point. A gap through which you could see the sky. A place where the light got in.

I think about that name a lot when I think about this race.

Because an opening is a way through, it is the gap that lets you pass from one side to the other. And that is exactly what a race like this is for a lot of people. It is the way in.

If you have never run a trail race, In Yan Teopa is a good place to start. Not because it is easy. It is not. But because it shows you, in five or ten honest miles, what the sport is actually about. You will run rolling prairie with the grass moving around you. You will drop into tight single track through the woods, where you have to watch your feet. And you will climb. The hills here do not apologize. They make you work, and they hand you the view at the top only after you have earned it. That trade, effort for beauty, is the whole deal in trail running, and this course teaches it to you in one morning.

The North Shore gets all the attention in this state, and I understand why. It is stunning. But somewhere in all those miles, I keep coming back to the fact that one of the most beautiful places I run is an hour south of my home, sitting quietly above the Mississippi, where hardly anyone outside the area thinks to look. Frontenac is the overlooked one. That is part of what I love about it.

Late September is the right time to be there, too. The park sits on the Mississippi Flyway, and more bird species have been counted at Frontenac than at any other Minnesota state park. On race morning, it is not unusual to look up and find an eagle riding the air over the bluff while you run. The leaves will be turning. The river will be wide and patient below you. It is a good morning to be outside and moving.

So here is the invitation. On Saturday, September 26, we will run the In Yan Teopa 5 and 10 Miler at Frontenac State Park. The ten-milers go out at 8:00, the five-milers right behind them at 8:05. Bring a bottle or a vest, because we run cupless, and there is water at the start and at the midway aid station on the 10-mile course. Registration is open now.

If you are new to this, find your way in. If you have been running trails for years, you already know the kind of course that is worth the drive. Either way, there is a rock up there with an opening in it, and a view on the other side of some climbing.

Find the opening.