Registration Opens at Midnight (MST) 12/15/2024

Dates & Key Details for 2025 Trail Races

May 10: Quad Rock 25 & 50 Mile Trail Races

50 Mile Early Entry: $145
25 Miles Early Entry: $125
Location: Lory State Park, Fort Collins, CO
Race Cap: 450

July 25-27: Never Summer 60km/100km/Dirty Double

60km Early Entry: $175
100km Early Entry: $225
Dirty Double Early Entry: $370
Location: State Forest State Park, Gould, CO
Race Cap: 600

Aug 5, 12, 19, 26: Lory Summer Series (5k Flat, 10k Hills, 5k Hills, 12k Flat)

Series Early Entry: $80
Individual Race Early Entry: $25
Location: Eltuck Picnic Area, Lory State Park
Race Caps: 140

August 23: Staunton Rocks! Marathon & Half

Half Early Entry: $90
Marathon Early Entry: $110
Location: Staunton State Park, Pine, CO
Race Cap: 315

September 6: Black Squirrel Half Marathon

Early Entry: $90
Location: Lory State Park
Race Cap: 350

September 26-28: Red Feather Trail Jamboree (50mi, 50km, HM & 3-Day Challenge)

50km Early Entry: $120
50m Early Entry: $130
Half Early Entry: $90
3-Day Challenge: $280
Location: Ben Delatour Scout Ranch, Red Feather Lakes, CO
Race Cap: 500

October 18-19: Blue Sky Marathon & Half Marathon

Half Early Entry: $90
Marathon Early Entry: $110
Location: Horsetooth Mountain Park, Fort Collins, CO
Race Cap: 500

November 1-2: Colorado 24 Hour Run

Early Entry: $90-$150
Location: Colorado Youth Outdoors, Fort Collins, CO
Race Cap: 350

What’s New for 2025?

After reintroducing the Blue Sky Half Marathon two years ago and then reconfiguring the course this year, we are once again tinkering!! For 2025 we will be offering a two-day Blue Sky Trail Running Festival. The Marathon will take place as always on Saturday from the Blue Sky Trailhead, while the Half Marathon will run from South Bay, utilizing the new Bay to Bay Trail. The new half marathon course will connect with the Blue Sky Trail and run south to the Indian Summer loop and then back to the finish at South Bay. The changes will allow us to offer more slots in both races after a sold-out year in 2025 while also reducing congestion on the trail and at the trailhead.

With the inaugural running of theColorado 24 Hour Run successfully in the books, we’re excited to extend our partnership with Colorado Youth Outdoors by making the race a permanent fixture on the Gnar Runners race calendar.

We’re also excited to continue our Skills for Race Credits program. We happily offer race credits to runners who grow their own skillset:

First Aid/CPR/WFA/WFR
Trail Crew Leader
Ham Radio
Leave No Trace
For any of these, get newly certified, send us a copy of your receipt, and we’ll give you credit toward a Gnar race this season or next for that amount (up to $100). While we certainly hope you bring these skills to volunteer with us, there’s no obligation – we simply want to help equip the worldwide trail running community.

For the 2025 Never Summer 60km & 100km weekend we will again be including a registration option for those that want to take things to the next level. Those registering for (and finishing) the Dirty Double (60km Friday, 100km Saturday) will receive a beautiful personalized finisher award in addition to eternal bragging rights. Are you up for the challenge?

We continue to be committed to trail racing across all distances. In addition to our slate of longer trail races, we will once again be offering our popular 4-race Summer Trail Series with distances ranging from 5km to 12km. The races will again take place on Tuesday evenings in August at Lory State Park.

On the road side, we’re delighted to continue management of the Horsetooth Half Marathon on behalf of the Fort Collins Running Club. It is Northern Colorado’s largest and oldest half marathon and we’ll be celebrating the 52nd running of the event in 2025 (4/13). In addition, we’re looking forward to the seventh running of the Long View Marathon, Half & 5k (10/11). And our last race this season is the New Year’s Resolution Run 5k.

For 2025 and beyond we will be using RunSignup as the registration platform for all Gnar Runners races. This means lower registration fees for our participants and a host of backend benefits for us as race organizers and timers. All volunteer and deferral credits have been migrated over, so the transition should be seamless. If you experience any issues or have questions, please reach out.

Giving Back

We are incredibly humbled to have staffed over 700 volunteer positions with the help of some 300+ volunteers across all races in 2024. Volunteers are the lifeblood of any race organization, and we count ourselves as incredibly fortunate to be able to draw from such an enthusiastic and talented local running community. Thank YOU!

If you’d like to be a part of our volunteer team for 2025, we’d love to have you. As a token of our appreciation we offer race credits towards future years. Learn more on our Volunteer Page.

Hosting events has an impact on the resources we use. We are keenly aware. As a local and community-centric race organization, part of our mission is to encourage stewardship of public lands. In 2024, we helped organize close to a dozen trail work days, focusing primarily on the trails that we host races on. Our team of over 50 trail volunteers put in two days of trail work in Lory State Park, two days of trail improvement and rebuilding work at State Forest State Park, and a couple of days on the private trails of the Boy Scout trails in Red Feather Lakes. In addition to organized trail work days, we cleared our usual quota of downed trees at State Forest State Park on the trails we use for the Never Summer 60km/100km. And we loved every minute of it! To learn about 2025 trail work opportunities with Gnar Runners, please visit our Volunteer Trail Work Page.

We also want to say thanks to all of you who helped us with our inaugural year of working with South Pole and Trees Not Tees to reduce our impact. We had 118 runners opt to have a tree planted in lieu of receiving a race shirt and offset just under 200lbs of CO2 emissions from race operations and participants travels. You can help build on our efforts with your selections in your 2025 race registrations.

Training Runs

Sometimes you need a little help from your friends to get those winter miles in the bank. We’re incredibly thankful for the wonderful Gnar Team and other community run leaders who come out week after week throughout the year to organize local trail runs in Fort Collins and around Northern Colorado. If you’re interested in learning more about local group runs, be sure to join the Fort Collins Trail Runners Facebook Group for updates.

In addition to the weekly group runs, we really enjoy hosting some bigger, race-specific runs and weekends. As always, the Quad Rock training runs were incredibly well attended through the winter and spring months this year, culminating with a ~~big~~ huge crowd at the Preview Run. And we had a fantastic and super supportive group up at State Forest State Park for the Never Summer training and trail work weekend in July. We also continued to offer a training weekend for the Red Feather Races and plan to do so again in 2025.

The training season will begin again in January with the build-up to Quad Rock. And we’ll keep on rolling from there. Stay tuned for full dates & details, but put these dates in your calendar as placeholders: