Each year, over one million people use Wisconsin’s Ice Age Trail to recreate, meditate or take in the unique sights sculpted by a glacier thousands of years ago.
Last spring, Coree Woltering, a North Face sponsored ultrarunner, embarked on a challenge that very few have attempted in the IATs 12,000-year history.
For over 21 days, Woltering endured an ankle sprain, remnants of a tropical storm and a barrage of mosquitoes and ticks all in route to setting the record for the fastest known time across the trail. Not only did Woltering successfully overcome every obstacle, but in the process, he also helped raise over $28,000 for Feeding America, a national nonprofit that assists food banks across the country.
In this episode of Off the Record, we sat down with Woltering to discuss his origins as an ultrarunner, his desire to be a champion for diversity in the world of outdoor sports and how cupcakes and Kwik Trip chicken sandwiches fuel his run.
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Learn more about the Ice Age Trail at https://www.iceagetrail.org/
Listen to episode 47 -- Hitting Wisconsin’s Trails With The Thousand Miler
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TRANSCRIPT
ANNOUNCER: [00:00:00] Welcome to Wisconsin DNR's Wild Wisconsin "Off the Record" podcast. Information straight from the source.
KATIE: [00:00:10] Welcome back to another episode of Wild Wisconsin Off the Record. I'm your host DNR's Digital Communication Section Chief Katie Grant. The last six months have been full of uncertainty. Although the changes look a bit different for everyone.
We've all had to adapt in some way. Early on in the pandemic, Coree Woltering an Ultra Marathon Runner from Ottawa, Illinois realized he was going to have to the shift gears as a sponsored athlete, he saw that races were being canceled for summer and his future was uncertain. He decided to turn lemons into lemonade and attempt to break a fastest known time record for running the Ice Age Trail across Wisconsin.
And he decided to take it a step further by raising money for Feeding America, a national nonprofit that helps food banks all over the country. Coree's attempt began on June 1st at the Ice Age Trails, Western Terminus located in Interstate State Park in St. Croix Falls over the next 21 days, 13 hours and 35 minutes.
Coree raced against the clock arriving at the Eastern Terminus in Sturgeon Bay on June 22nd. Beating the record by about four and a half hours. We chatted with Coree via zoom to hear what it was like to run 1200 miles and learn a bit more about the eating, training and music that goes into pulling off the success. So sit back and listen. It.
COREE: [00:01:38] Hey guys. Yeah. So, um, my name is Coree and I am a professional Trail and Ultra Runner for the North Face. Um, so basically I get to go explore trails and different areas and try to run fast on them.
KATIE: [00:01:57] That's a pretty simple way of describing it, but what you do sounds in reality, a lot harder than that. Uh, how did you get into long distance running?
COREE: [00:02:08] Um, that is a great question because sometimes I still wonder that. So I grew up, you know, playing multiple sports and was running usually to stay in shape for the sports and then kind of realized I was decent at it. And, um, So I ran in high school, ran in college, um, but it is more sprints and middle distance that I was doing.
And then I also ran cross country. So I had to kind of get used to a little bit longer of distances. And then, um, just through a few injuries and stuff, I actually took up triathlon because I was like, you know, I know how to run. I can swim. So may as well buy a bike and start riding and next thing, you know, I find myself racing the middle distance and the sprints on the track, but then I'm racing half Ironman races in the summer to stay in shape for everything. And, um, turned out to be pretty decent at that. And so I raced the world championships twice. And then, um, moved to Boulder, Colorado and thought I wanted to become a professional triathlete and started hanging out with trail runners and found out that trail running was my passion.
KATIE: [00:03:20] Very cool. Competing in Ironman triathlons just absolutely blows my mind. I have a couple of friends who do it and it, to me is crazy. Cause I'm not a runner at all, but good for you for doing, is there an official distance where it is no longer? Just long distance running and it is suddenly Ultra Running.
COREE: [00:03:41] Um, so Ultra Running would be considered basically anything over the typical marathon of 26.2 miles. Um, but I believe like the first like official ultra distance is 50 kilometers, so about 31 miles.
KATIE: [00:03:57] All right. That makes sense. Congratulations. You very recently, uh, set the record for the fastest known time running the Ice Age Trail. Why did you specifically pick the Ice Age Trail and why now?
COREE: [00:04:13] Yeah. Um, so I picked the Ice Age Trail because I do a lot of training on the southern Kettle Moraine area um, trails down there, and then I've done quite a bit of stuff in the Devils Lake area. So it just kind of became this thing of like, Okay.
I've seen a couple areas of the Ice Age trail, but now I'd like to explore more of them. So in May, uh, I basically decided that I was going to go after the Ice Age Trail FKT in June. Um, so not a lot of time to plan, but I took a couple of trips up to northern Wisconsin and got on some of the more technical areas up there and just kind of learned in the course a little bit.
And then, um, And then yeah, just went for it in June. And I guess now was the time to do it because, um, like with COVID like we, we didn't have any races happening and we really don't know when the next race will be happening. So because of that and like, I have time to kind of do this and then recover after and not have to worry about getting ready for another race or something.
Um, Yeah. So that was the first part of why. Um, and then the second part of why actually kind of... kind of happened, you know, like, um, you know, three or four days before I started, um, the George Floyd incident, um, I had no idea just like how much of a movement that was going to start. Um, but at the time I felt like this was kind of like my time to do this as, um, just a positive story of people of color in the outdoors, doing awesome things because...
Uh, there just weren't a lot of positive stories happening at the moment.
KATIE: [00:06:03] Yeah, absolutely. The way that you got started in this particular one, I think is a, such a very cool story, especially with everything going on in the world, not only with, um, you know, like you had mentioned the incident with George Floyd, but also with COVID and kind of the world being completely different right now than it ever has been before. Have you ever done a race that's this long before. Or this many like consecutive days?
COREE: [00:06:32] No. So like the longest race that I'v...
