Kevin Runs It All

As I mentioned in my intro post, I'll be posting old race reports to get this blog up to date. As I was working on one of my other blog posts, I came across this race report I wrote for the Hellgate 100+km race I ran in December 2016. At the time, I was new to ultra running and this was only my third race longer than a 50km. This race really upped the challenge level from the Umstead 100mi and the Pilot Mountain to Hanging Rock 50mi races I'd run. The night time start, the bone chilling weather, the rugged terrain and running alongside so many accomplished runners combined for a pretty epic experience. Given my limited ultra running resume I was a lightly regarded runner by the "race committee" aka Dr. David Horton. By virtue of my entry the race committee believed I had the ability to finish the race , however, my bib number was number 77, reflecting that he thought I would be the 77th male to finish. Despite the preconceptions I managed to finish 30th overal...

This past weekend I had set off to complete the Birkhead Hiking Challenge . While this was originally set up by Ranger Fox to be a geocaching course, a fellow Backwoods Orienteering Klub (BOK) member Matt Kirk had put in a lot of work to make it accessible to the BOK at a expert orienteers only event back in December 2025. The challenge that Matt set forth was to eschew the use of digital aids such as gps and cell phones to complete the multi-cache course using only maps and compass. For the BHC event he had given a 24hr window to reach as many caches as possible. While only a few members gave the challenge a try, it quickly became apparent how tough it would be to complete. The caches were well hidden and would be extremely difficult to find in the dark. Matt and Carl Laniak managed to find approximately half the caches in about 12 hours, however, turned back due to failing light. The weekend of the BOK BHC event, I was in Georgia competing in the Conquer Backyard Ultra so...

Welcome to the blog! This is the first post. My name is Kevin and I've been running for 17 years already. Over the years I've run some pretty epic races, traveled to very interesting places, and took on some very unique challenges. It's getting to the point that keeping everything organized on my computer has become overwhelming. So I'm going to try to put everything up here. The primary focus of this blog will be to track some of the many completionist projects I've got going on like the SB6000, Run every trail in every state park, run all the streets within the bounds of the Trans-Triangle Marathons, Marathon in every state, all the marathons in NC, etc. I'm also starting to accumulate a bunch of race reports, this will likely be a repository for many of those as well. So over the next few months expect to see some really old race reports pop up as well as some of the newer ones. It is my goal to have everything up to date by the end of the year, wit...