The Cirque Series is coming to Washington State. The team is still looking for volunteers for a spectacular day out at Crystal Mountain on 19 September. Email Steve for info.  

Hot off the presses via iRunFar:

At the pre-race briefing on Thursday, September 17, co-race director Fred Abramowitz announced that the 2027 and 2028 women’s and men’s champions will be awarded $100,000 for their wins.

Race sponsor Insight Global is putting up the prize money, and the race organization says more information is coming soon. This will make winning the 2027 and 2028 Run Rabbit Run 100 one of the richest wins in trail and ultra. Wow!

iRunFar’s coverage of the Run Rabbit Run 100 is brought to you by REl and The North Face. Thank you!

Shared the whole post verbatim to point out a few things:

  1. This is a massive prize purse – biggest in trail running. Will this move the needle for some elites for NEXT year who might want to skip UTMB and Worlds to focus on cashing a really big check?
  2. Will be interesting how these numbers will trickle down to the rest of the podium.
  3. Will the events who are currently in an arms race (ahem) to show off market with their big prize purses respond to this?
  4. Who is ‘Insight Global‘?
  5. And who at the Run Rabbit Run organization has the connections to get these non endemic sponsors to pony up that amount of cash?

The bonus point that I’m making here is that it’s interesting to see that REI is sponsoring iRunFar’s race coverage. This might be REI’s first foray into the trail running marketing space. And I’m not talking about them selling shoes, but them actually getting engaged with the “racing aspect” of trail running. This is new.

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