🔥 THE NUMBERS DON’T LIE — AND THESE ARE CARVED IN STONE 🔥
What you’re about to see below isn’t marketing.
It isn’t spin.
It isn’t storytelling.
These numbers were pulled straight from Ultrasignup.com
Raw, unfiltered, straight off the public record.
If you want to fact-check it, go right ahead.
The receipts are sitting there in plain sight.
Because what happened between 1995–2015 wasn’t luck…
It wasn’t coincidence…
It wasn’t “a good run.”
It was the rise of our tribe, the forging of our movement,
and the birth of a mythic chapter in Kansas ultrarunning.
Ultrarunning back then wasn’t crowded, loud, or mainstream.
It was raw. Underground.
A place for warriors, not influencers…
a place where finish lines meant something.
And in that era, long before the sport blew up, Epic Ultras lit a signal fire that runners still talk about today!
OUR EVENTS
All Founded By Eric Steele:
Flatrock 50 & 25K
Flatrock 101K
Prairie Spirit 100 & 50 Miles
Fall Extravaganza 100/50 Miles & 50K
Honey Badger 100 Miles
Flint Hills Trail 40 Miles & Marathon
PLUS: Totals Across All Events Combined
Please Note:
WinterRock is not included in these stats because it offered no ultra-distance categories.
Every race listed above includes at least one ultramarathon distance, or a sub-ultra paired directly with an ultra event.
WinterRock does not, so it was excluded for accuracy.
Every one of these races still exists today except Flint Hills due to sectional trail closure for several years.
Everything else survived.
Everything else endured.
Everything else proves exactly what these numbers reveal.
Epic Ultras wasn’t “just another race company.”
It was a tribe. And tribes outlive calendars!
Look closely as you scroll because the pattern becomes undeniable.
In 2014 and 2015, Epic Ultras finished more ultrarunners than every other Kansas ultra combined.
And that was while intentionally keeping race sizes small —
not bloated, not watered down, not chasing trendy numbers.
Just tight, intentional, high-caliber events built the way the old warrior traditions were:
personal, fierce, intimate, transformative.
The charts below aren’t just data.
They’re war records.
Every bar is a scar in the earth.
Every spike is a battle fought.
Every total is a testament to our community that refused to quit.
This was before the boom…
before ultrarunning turned into weekend bucket lists…
before social media made everything feel disposable.
Back then, everything was earned.
Everything was real.
Everything meant something.
And here’s the part the numbers whisper, the almost prophetic piece…
These stats aren’t just history…they’re foreshadowing.
They show what our tribe was capable of long before the sport exploded.
They show the loyalty that existed before algorithms ever cared.
They show the foundation that WE built before a decade of silence.
And now our founder, Eric Steele, older, sharper, battle-hardened, on-fire once again, has stepped back onto the field.
This isn’t nostalgia.
This isn’t a reunion tour.
This isn’t a cute comeback story.
This is a rebirth.
A return to the signal fire.
A resurrection of our movement that never stopped breathing.
The OGs feel it.
The newcomers sense it.
The algorithms see the surge.
The numbers predict the storm.
Scroll down and witness the proof etched into Ultrasignup’s own walls.
This is the record of our tribe.
This is the return of our movement.
This is the beginning of Epic Ultras 2.0!
And the sport has no idea what kind of warrior just stepped back onto the battlefield.
“Let the games begin!”
PLEASE NOTE:
Epic Ultras finished more total runners in the state of Kansas than all of our “competitors combined” in 2014 & 2015!!!
PLEASE NOTE:
There are two anomalies in the following chart.
First, we had record flooding in the late summer of 2002 which led to us nearly having to cancel FlatRock that fall in late September.
Thankfully we were still able to hold our race, but had unusually low attendance that year.
Next, the unusually high participant count in 2019 reflects a one-time radical discounting of entry fees (a “fire sale”) by the organizer’s that year.
Prices were temporarily slashed to around $55, which significantly inflated registration numbers beyond normal trend lines.
PLEASE NOTE:
The 2021 massive spike was COVID-correlated.
After widespread cancellations throughout 2020, due to the pandemic, Prairie Spirit became one of the first regional ultras allowed to return the following year in March.
The pent-up demand from nearly a full-year of race shutdowns caused an oversized turnout, not representative of the normal annual trends.
PLEASE NOTE:
The spike in 2020 reflects pandemic conditions.
With almost every regional race canceled due to COVID, Prairie Spirit, held late in late October was one of the only events still allowed to take place in the region.
This availability created an unusually large influx of runners not typical of normal annual trends.
PLEASE NOTE:
Epic Ultras finished more total runners in the state of Kansas than all of our “competitors combined” in 2014 & 2015!!!
🔥 THE RECAP — AND THE TRUTH ISN’T HARD TO SEE 🔥
When you step back and look at every chart…every finish line…every year of data…
there’s no mystery here.
This wasn’t luck.
This wasn’t timing.
This wasn’t riding a trend.
This was dominance…sustained, repeated, and undeniable.
Before the boom.
Before the ultrarunning explosion.
Before social media turned the sport into a highlight reel…
Epic Ultras was already putting up numbers that most other races still haven’t touched.
And when you line up every event side-by-side, scroll through every era, and compare the raw truth —
the story tells itself:
Epic Ultras was the benchmark.
The outlier.
The standard everyone else measured against.
No excuses.
No spin.
No revisionist history.
Just the receipts…carved into the public record…and still standing a decade later.
If this doesn’t make the whole story unmistakably clear…
Nothing Will.
Step Into Our Inner Circle + Grab Your $25 Code
You’ve seen the receipts. You’ve seen the truth.
Now get on the Epic Ultras Insider List and secure your $25 race credit valid at every single one of our 2026 events.
You’ll also get priority access to openings, announcements, and the fire we drop before the rest of the world ever sees it.
Enter your details below and step into the tribe that actually BUILT THIS!!!