Upper Midwest Trail Runners:

I have recently joined the Upper Midwest Trail Runner Association, which is an association of runners who prefer to run off road. The organization promotes and helps to encourage people to get out there and enter some of the great trail races throughout the Midwest. UMTR offers trail series which is basically a point system that tracks your results through various races. There is one that includes numerous shorter races such as 5ks, 10ks and 25ks and there is an ultra distance version that has 50ks trail races and longer and then there is the Gnarly Bandit Ultra race series.

This series includes the following races which some you have the option of a 100 miles or 100k. Now I did register for this series, but we will see how long I last. The year starts out in with three 100 miles races within the first 3 months and I also am going to try and do two other marathons within that time frame as well. The good news is that the runner with the most points at the end of the series gets $500 from Wilderness Athlete, so that's a bit of motivation. I'm actually more worried about if I can afford to even enter all of these races and pay for hotels and travel. 100 miles race registrations fees are normally $100-$200 and then there is all of the travel costs, so we'll see. This running thing just isn't as cheap as it used to be.

Zumbro 100 Mile Endurance Run	Zumbro Falls, MN	04/08/2011
Kettle Moraine 100 Mile / 100K	Eagle, WI	06/04/2011
Black Hills 100 Mile / 100K	Sturgis, SD	06/25/2011
Superior Sawtooth 100 Mile	Lutsen, MN	09/09/2011
Wild Duluth 100K	Duluth, MN	10/15/2011