Use this topic for posts that will collect community stars for the Sweet 1600 course. You can also ask questions or make comments about this course.
Here’s how it works.
Click the “Post Using This Template” button below to create a new post with a Story heading and boilerplate text.
Replace the boilerplate text with your report for one or both sections. The Story header is key for distinguishing between posts and replies—don’t change it.
Your post must be on the same calendar day as your run as entered in the leaderboard.
Story
To pick up a community star, replace this text with a write-up of what your run was like, a photo you took on the run, a link to your Strava track, or something similar. Don’t delete the Story heading above.
The main issue with April and May is that schools will be using them during school hours (and possibly after school). But if you scroll down on the Sweet 1600 course page, you’ll see links. IHS should be open whenever it’s not in use, and Lansing and Groton are always open when not in use as well. Ithaca College’s new track should be available, but we don’t know anyone who has run on it yet. Weekends are probably good on most tracks unless there’s a competition going on.
I was in Italy when the 2026 Challenge started. I had hoped to log a few Sweet 1600 while there, but I was crazy, busy planning the next days’ events/sites or enjoying them. Upon my return, I thought about how I missed opportunities to log miles, but I soon realized that instead, I was enjoying time with my husband and taking in the sites!
On April 16th, I ran a mile on a track in Rezzato in the province of Brescia.
I also marched up stairs in the park behind my hotel. I kept losing track, it was either 135 or 136 steps. I did this 5X, once for each of my family members and myself.
I hadn’t intended to run a Sweet 1600 …. I glanced at my watch on the way to my car and realized there was no way I’d be able to get the Cornell Botanic Course done and still pick up my kid on time. I opted for the Cornell track instead.
Today, I struggled to meet myself where I am.
But I got a couple of miles in and was only 3 minutes late to pickup my kid!
On the drive up to the Highland Forest 1-2-3 Trail Race in Fabius this morning I found myself going right past Tully Junior-Senior High School with enough extra time to stop for a mile. It wasn’t yet raining and I decided to stop and jog a mile for two reasons. 1. To add another track venue to the Sweet 1600 roster, and 2. To continue my daily streak running at least one Challenge course. (The only day I missed was the opening day, when I already had plans for a long run.)
I beat the rain and wind on the Black Knights’ track, then went on to have a good run at the 10-mile trail race.
The oldest and most known 100 mile trail race , The Western States Endurance Run, finishes on the track at Placer HS in Auburn, CA. I’ve been at their training camp to run the last 70 miles of the course over Memorial Day weekend. After finishing the last 22 miles at the track today, I snuck in a Sweet 1600.
The goal at the end of June is to pace the hat to the finish.
Trail had some awesome views and so many wildflowers. A Day 1 highlight though was meeting Ann Trason at an Aid Station and having one of her homemade brownies. She won 14 of 15 women’s races there starting in 1989, finishing 2nd or 3rd overall a few times and often in the top 10. You can’t have an ultrarunner Mount Rushmore without her on it.
Met her again on Day 3. The course runs past her house in the last mile. She was there with two young women handing out popsicles and trash talking the runners using poles (not me).
It’s about time someone added a Sweet 1600 to the Challenge map! Make sure you leave something in the tank next month so you can log another during a 3.25-lap cooldown after finishing the 100. Bonus points if you can convince Ann to register for the FLRC Challenge.
Sad to say, the mile I jogged this morning at the Lansing High School track will be the end of my FLRC Challenge daily streak. Since day 2, on April 19th, I’ve logged at least one Challenge run every day for 41 consecutive days.
I’m writing this from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, where I’m running the Rabid Raccoon 100-mile tomorrow. This has been a goal race for me for the past 6 months. All the Challenge mileage made for a solid training block, including some short and super easy runs on what would normally be rest days, to keep my overall daily streak alive. (I’m trying to run at least one mile a day every day in 2026.)
Ironically the Brady’s Run County Park Rec Center, where the race is staged, has an indoor track where we start and finish, but the track is partially fenced off because of the way the aid station, lap, and start/finish area is set up. Walking several laps around the track is impossible this weekend. Otherwise I’d maybe be dumb enough to hobble through 8 laps for a cooldown run on Sunday to keep up with the streak. Maybe I’ll try for another longer Challenge streak once I’m recovered from this one
Thank you to @kuwanna (who’s also running the race) for taking this first pic.
I’m in Blacksburg, Virginia this week for a library conference and had some time between the last session of the day and dinner yesterday, so thought I’d find the Virginia Tech track for a Sweet 1600 effort. It was a lovely evening and the track was only about a mile from my hotel. I stopped to take a picture for the forum before starting my mile - here is the Johnson-Miller track:
As I was about to head down the grassy slope, I heard hoofsteps.
A heifer trotted down the hill and set off for the trees in the far distance. The other runner on the track stopped and we exchanged ‘WTF’ shrugs, but were soon joined by three police officers, a truck from the Vet Hospital and a golf cart with a dart-gun wielding marksman - the plucky bovine had escaped mid-hospital appointment!
Long story short, I was then locked in the track complex for 45 minutes whilst the heifer eluded all efforts to dart her:
I ran the Charlie McMullen Mile today at East Rochester HS. The McMullen Mile always has strong fields so it’s well worth the trip if you want to run fast. And run fast I did.
My PR going into this race was 4:45, and I thought that I might have a chance to better that today based on the fact that I had run a couple of 4:48s indoors over the winter with not much training.
My race plan was to commit to a fast pace from the gun. I ran my first 400 meters in 69 seconds and I felt great. At that moment I knew I would run a PR. I continued to push the pace and managed to pass a couple of guys over the next 3 laps. I finished in 4:40.22 (which I will log as a 4:39 since a Sweet 1600 is more than one second shorter than the mile). That is the biggest running breakthrough I’ve had in years.
Last week, I got email from the Cornell track coach, inviting track alumni in town for reunion to come to Kane Field for the Ryan Memorial Mile, an opportunity to “race, jog, spectate, or simply catch up with former teammates.” My Cornell track career was the definition of undistinguished (one season of XC with two races and one season of indoor track with a single 3000m race where I was tripped in the first lap), so I doubted anyone would actually remember me, even if there was some overlap.
As class of ‘89, I had the dubious distinction of being the oldest runner there, although there were two guys from the class of ‘91 who sort of overlapped with me—we knew some names in common. Most of the others were from ‘08, ‘09, and ‘10, and one woman, Alana Levy, had raced the New York Mini 10K in the city this morning, laying down a 35:30 (5:43 pace) that was somehow only good enough for 30th place among women. That’s what happens in NYC races where the world’s best show up. Anyway, she had managed an insane travel scenario to get up to Cornell by 5 PM, and unsurprisingly, she won the mile race in 5:20 or so.
A couple of guys ran roughly near her, @GeoffVF ran something under 6:00, and I tried very hard to avoid hurting myself in my second run for the day and came in at 6:50. I spent the rest of the time after the race chatting with people who remembered running with High Noon or FLRC, recruiting the masters runners for Hartshorne (and assuring them that Barton Lung wasn’t nearly as bad as it was before the 2016 resurfacing), and learning all about nasty stuff that runners of Alana’s caliber now ingest before races (we think it’s pushed by Big Broccoli).
