We recently reached out to Elevated Trail Racing, a relatively new race company with a really solid 4-pack of trail races in Fall 2021.
Hello, my name is Devin VansCoy, and I grew up in northeast Iowa. I moved out to Oregon in 2008 to experience what the PNW has to offer. I have always been into endurance racing, and am looking for the next challenge. I started as a high school and collegiate XC and track athlete. After college I got into competitive Triathlon racing.
In 2015 I moved to Oakridge, Oregon, which does not have a pool in the entire town and also doesn’t possess the best roads to run on, so I decided to start running on some of the trails there. I instantly fell in love with the feel of running in the woods. The total submersion of rain forested trees all around me was intoxicating. Since then I have sold all of my triathlon gear and have ran trail races all over the United States.
One day in 2017 I was walking in the forest of Oakridge with my dog, and thought of the idea of a stage trail race. I wanted to give back to the amazing trail racing community and always thought it would be cool to put on a race. I didn’t want to put on your typical trail race that someone would run and forget about it the next week. The Oakridge/Westfir area has so many trails it seemed like it would be very doable to create a stage race. I hatched out the entire plan on a hike with my dog Lobo.
We are now in our 5th year of the Oakridge Triple Summit Challenge and this year I added three more races and created a race company called Elevated Trail Racing. All of the races are geared toward a lot of vert and mountainous terrain, which has always been my favorite type of trail.
Very cool! Here is their 2021 schedule:
- Oakridge Triple Summit Challenge (September 24 – 26, 2021)
- 40 Mile Stage Race
- Westfir 35k/50k (October 24, 2021)
- Run the Alpine trail before you do a lollipop loop on the Cloverpatch and Tire Mountain trails
- The Ruff (November 14, 2021)
- Dog Mountain in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area
- Storm the Castle (November 27, 2021)
- Upper McKenzie River
