09/14/2026
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT--PLEASE READ: SIX MONTHS LATER
Six months ago, I said Epic Ultras wasn’t going anywhere. It was evolving. I meant it.
When I made the decision in March to step away from race directing again, I knew exactly what I didn’t want to keep doing. What I didn’t know yet was what the next version of Epic Ultras needed to become. Six months later, that picture is a hell of a lot clearer.
One of the biggest realizations behind stepping away from races was that I wanted the remaining years I spend in this sport to have a broader impact than simply producing another starting line, or several. I’ve spent more than 30 years in ultrarunning. I’ve raced, directed, organized, written, marketed, built communities, watched the sport evolve, watched it occasionally lose its damn mind, and learned more lessons than I could possibly cram into another race calendar. I finally realized I didn’t need to start and direct more races to keep contributing.
That realization ultimately helped lead to the creation of the Kansas Ultrarunning Historical Foundation a completely separate nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and documenting the history of ultrarunning in Kansas through verified race and runner records, archival material, organizations, stories, photographs, historical research, and a searchable interconnected database. For me personally, that project has answered a lot of the questions I was still wrestling with when I wrote that March post. It lets me take decades of experience in this sport, along with my background in databases, marketing, storytelling, management and race directing, and put it toward something designed to outlive any single race, organization or individual.
There was another part of that March post that mattered to me personally: I still wanted to get back out there and participate again myself. I’ve been working at that harder than ever, although apparently my aging chassis didn’t get the same comeback memo my brain did. It’s been a little more stop-and-start than I would have preferred, the bike has gotten considerably more attention than I originally planned, and I’ve had to adjust a few expectations along the way. But none of that changes the goal. I absolutely intend to get back out there and compete again. It certainly may never look exactly like it did when I was younger, and that’s fine. I don’t need to be the runner I was 30 years ago to still love being a runner and keep learning from our beloved sport from the inside out.
Somewhere along the way, the direction for Epic Ultras became obvious too. Epic Ultras is being repositioned as an independent endurance media platform built around the things I still love most about this sport: the people, the stories, the culture, the history, the lessons, the absurdity, the accomplishments, the failures, and the conversations worth having. The podcast is coming. Featured Runners are coming back. Race reviews, interviews, essays, informational and educational content, video, commentary and plenty of opinion are all part of what’s ahead.
And here’s the biggest difference from the old Epic Ultras: I’m no longer building everything around selling race entries. That changes a hell of a lot. For years, even when I had something strong to say, there was always a commercial question sitting somewhere in the background. How will this affect registrations? Will this p**s off a current or potential customer? Does this help sell the next event? That filter is unequivocally gone!
Epic Ultras doesn’t need everybody to agree with it. It doesn’t need to chase every trend, kiss every ring, manufacture engagement, or water itself down trying to please everybody. It can tell great stories, spotlight remarkable people, preserve some of the culture that made this sport worth falling in love with in the first place, share what I’ve learned over three decades, ask uncomfortable questions when they need asking, and occasionally call bu****it when bu****it deserves to be called. That doesn’t mean turning Epic into a grievance machine. Quite the opposite. I’m far more interested in what works, what matters, what lasts, what makes this sport special, and what deserves more attention.
But it does mean "the voice" gets to be the voice. No registration button attached. No transaction hiding underneath every conversation. Just the stories, the ideas, the conversations, the people, the lessons, the laughter, and occasionally a piece that hits hard enough to rearrange the furniture.
There’s another part of the March post worth updating too. At the time, I said camps and retreats would remain part of the picture. I still believe they will, but we learned quite a bit by putting some of those ideas into the marketplace this year, so we’ve deliberately stepped back from camps and retreats for the remainder of 2026. That isn’t because the concept is dead. It’s because I don’t want to force another product simply because we once announced it.
We tested some ideas, watched the response, learned what we needed to learn, and realized the smarter move is to build more genuine interest first and then shape future experiences around what people actually want to participate in. For the rest of this year, the focus will be much more heavily on the media side of Epic Ultras, building the stories, conversations, audience and community around it. Then, as we begin looking toward future camps and run-cation style experiences, we can be much more intentional about where they happen, what they include, who they are really for, and how small or specialized they should be.
So if you see questionnaires or interest surveys from us later this year, that’s what they’re about. We’re still interested in creating those experiences. We just want to build them around real demand and the right people instead of deciding what everybody should want and hoping they show up. That’s another thing I’ve learned after three decades of doing this stuff: knowing when to push is important. Knowing when to stop forcing something and listen is just as important.
So if you wondered whether Epic Ultras quietly disappeared after March, the answer is a resounding no. It was being separated from what it used to have to be so it could finally become what I’ve been circling for years. The races are behind me, but my beloved sport sure as hell is not. If anything, I’m more interested in ultrarunning now than I’ve been in a long time, both as someone who still intends to participate and as someone with three decades of stories, lessons and opinions still rattling around upstairs.
And we’re getting very close to the fun part...you might want to bust out the popcorn!
Eric Steele
