About the Foundation

Our Mission

The Kansas Ultra Running Historical Foundation preserves, documents, and makes publicly accessible the history of ultrarunning in Kansas for current and future generations.

Our Vision

A lasting, accessible historical record in which Kansas ultrarunning’s people, events, and contributions remain discoverable and understood.

Kansas ultrarunning has a deeper history than its geography might suggest. For generations, runners, race directors, clubs, volunteers, writers, photographers, and organizers have built an endurance culture that reaches far beyond the state’s borders. Kansas races have drawn participants from across the Midwest and throughout the country, while Kansas runners have carried the state’s ultrarunning tradition to some of the sport’s most significant events.

Much of that history, however, has never existed in one place. Race results have been scattered across magazines, timing systems, personal collections, club archives, newspaper accounts, websites, social media, and the memories of the people who were there. Photographs, organizational histories, race-director records, stories, publications, and other historical material have often existed separately from the statistical record. As websites disappear, organizations change hands, and generations of participants age, pieces of that history become increasingly difficult to recover.

The Kansas Ultrarunning Historical Foundation was created to bring those pieces together into a permanent, publicly accessible historical record. The Foundation combines verified race and runner data with the broader human history of the sport: races, organizations, leadership, photographs, publications, stories, archival material, and the relationships that shaped ultrarunning in Kansas. The goal is to preserve both the statistical record and the wider history of the sport.

The Foundation is built around evidence, provenance, and transparency. Historical claims and performance records are supported by identifiable sources whenever possible, and the project is governed by published methodology and verification standards. At the same time, the archive recognizes that numbers alone cannot explain how a community developed, why particular races mattered, or how individuals and organizations influenced the sport across decades.

Just as importantly, the Foundation is being designed for institutional continuity beyond its founders. Preservation work only succeeds when the archive can survive changes in leadership, technology, and generations. Governance, documentation, research standards, data structures, archival practices, and succession planning are being built into the Foundation from the beginning so future stewards can maintain, expand, correct, and preserve the record.

A State That Runs Above Its Weight

Kansas ranks 12th nationally in listed ultramarathon events per capita.

The breadth of the state’s ultramarathon history is one more reason its record deserves to be preserved as a connected historical whole rather than as scattered race results and isolated stories.

Kansas listed ultramarathon events per capita, ranked 12th in the United States

Leadership

Board of Directors

The Foundation’s board combines deep ultrarunning experience with administrative, financial, archival, and organizational perspectives.

Eric Steele

Founder | President | Curator

Eric Steele is a Wichita, Kansas native who currently resides in Wichita. He is an ultrarunner, race director, speaker, writer, organizer, and historian whose involvement in the sport spans more than three decades. He began ultrarunning in 1994 and has completed more than 75 ultramarathons, including seven 100-mile (or greater) finishes. His running history includes the Leadville Trail 100, the Badwater 135 followed by a summit of Mount Whitney, the 100th Boston Marathon, and numerous mountain and endurance events across the United States.

In 1995, Steele founded the Kansas Ultrarunners Society and served as its president during the organization’s formative years through 1997. He also created and directed the FlatRock 50K beginning in 1995 and later founded Epic Ultras in 2012, producing a series of ultramarathons and endurance events in Kansas. His writing has appeared in Ultrarunning Magazine, and he co-authored Marathoning 101 in 1999 with Scott Demaree.

Alongside his endurance background, Steele brings more than 30 years of database-management and information-processing experience to the Foundation. That combination of ultrarunning history and data management led directly to the creation of the Kansas Ultrarunning Historical Foundation: an effort to consolidate, verify, preserve, and make accessible a historical record previously distributed across decades of race results, publications, organizations, archives, and individual collections.

Scott Demaree

Vice President | Curator

Scott Demaree is a pioneering ultrarunner and longtime contributor to the sport whose career spans more than four decades. A native of Arkansas City, Kansas, he currently resides in Round Rock, Texas. He was a founding member and first Vice President of the Kansas Ultrarunners Society in 1995 and later helped develop and direct timed ultrarunning events in both Kansas and Texas. As a competitor, Demaree finished second at the 1988 Wasatch 100, won numerous major ultras and timed events, recorded 82 miles in 12 hours at Run Wichita in 1994, and built a remarkably deep record across 50-mile, 100-mile, 24-hour, and multi-day racing. His competitive longevity has extended well into his seventies, reflecting a lifetime of endurance, mentorship, and service to the ultrarunning community.

That longevity gives Demaree a rare firsthand view across multiple eras of ultrarunning. He has experienced the sport as both competitor and organizer, from the club-and-magazine era to modern digital race records. As Vice President and Curator, he brings institutional memory of early Kansas ultrarunning, the people and organizations that shaped it, and the relationships among runners, race directors, clubs, and events. That combination of competitive depth, organizational experience, and historical perspective strengthens the Foundation’s ability to place individual records and stories in their broader context.

Glenda Thornton

Secretary and Treasurer

Glenda Thornton is a Wichita, Kansas native who currently resides in Wichita. She brings extensive administrative, bookkeeping, and financial recordkeeping experience to the Kansas Ultrarunning Historical Foundation. Her professional background includes years of work involving financial records, organizational administration, and related business responsibilities, and she also serves as a commissioned notary.

Thornton brings an independent perspective grounded in administration and financial recordkeeping. Her experience complements the board’s deep ultrarunning knowledge with practical judgment on governance, stewardship, and the responsibilities of maintaining a lasting institution.

Thornton also brings a longstanding personal interest in history and historical preservation. Her enthusiasm for documentary history and preserving the stories behind people, places, and events made the Foundation’s mission a natural fit. As Secretary and Treasurer, she supports the organization’s administrative continuity, financial recordkeeping, and long-term institutional stability.

Historical Guidance

Founding Historical Advisory Council

The Founding Historical Advisory Council brings firsthand knowledge of different eras, regions, events, and traditions within American ultrarunning to the Foundation’s preservation work. Members offer historical guidance and firsthand context; research, verification, and editorial decisions remain the responsibility of the Foundation’s curators.

Ann Trason

Ann Trason is one of the most accomplished and influential ultrarunners in the history of the sport. Her extraordinary career includes 14 victories at the Western States 100, multiple national championships, victories at Leadville and numerous other major ultras, and an exceptional collection of course records spanning distances from 50 miles to 100 miles and beyond. Over several decades, she combined elite-level speed with remarkable durability and consistency, competing successfully across generations of the sport. Her achievements helped redefine what was possible for women in ultrarunning, while her longevity, humility, and competitive excellence established her as one of the defining figures in American ultrarunning history.

Her perspective is especially valuable to the Foundation because it reaches across the transformation of ultrarunning from a comparatively small, relationship-driven sport into a far larger national community. Trason competed at the highest level while women’s participation, visibility, and expectations were changing dramatically, giving her firsthand knowledge of the athletes, races, traditions, and competitive culture that shaped that transition. As a member of the Founding Historical Advisory Council, she draws on that experience to help place records, personalities, and events in their historical context.

Marshall Ulrich

Marshall Ulrich is one of the most accomplished extreme endurance athletes in the history of the sport, with a career spanning ultrarunning, mountaineering, adventure racing, and record-setting expeditions. A four-time winner of the Badwater Ultramarathon, he also completed numerous crossings of Death Valley to the summit of Mount Whitney and became the first person to complete all six major American 100-mile trail races in a single year. Ulrich climbed the Seven Summits, including Mount Everest, all on his first attempts, and in 2008 ran 3,063 miles from San Francisco to New York in 52½ days. His extraordinary range of achievements, competitive longevity, and willingness to continually test the outer limits of endurance have made him one of the defining figures in American ultrarunning and extreme adventure.

Ulrich’s perspective also spans several distinct eras of endurance sport, from traditional ultramarathons to expedition-style challenges that blurred the lines between racing, mountaineering, and adventure. That breadth strengthens the Foundation’s understanding of endurance sport beyond traditional race results. As a member of the Founding Historical Advisory Council, he contributes firsthand knowledge of iconic races, extreme-distance culture, the evolution of endurance achievement, and the people who helped define those worlds across several decades. He also brings perspective on how those achievements were understood at the time.

Marge Hickman

Marge Hickman is a pioneering ultrarunner whose career spans more than four decades and includes some of the sport’s most enduring achievements. A longtime Kansas runner with deep ties to the Lawrence running community, she won the Leadville Trail 100 in 1985 and became the first woman in the race’s history to complete Leadville ten times, ultimately accumulating 14 finishes. In 1989, she completed the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning, finishing Western States, Vermont, Leadville, and Wasatch in a single season. Hickman continued competing well into later life and is also coauthor of a history of the Leadville Trail 100, helping preserve the legacy of one of ultrarunning’s most iconic events. Her Kansas roots, competitive accomplishments, longevity, and firsthand connection to the formative years of American ultrarunning give her an exceptional historical perspective.

Her contribution to the Founding Historical Advisory Council combines Kansas roots, elite competitive experience, deep knowledge of Leadville, and a commitment to preserving ultrarunning history in writing. Hickman’s perspective connects the state’s running community with the formative decades of modern American ultrarunning, giving the Foundation a firsthand historical voice on both the competitive and preservation sides of the sport.

Paul Schoenlaub

Paul Schoenlaub is a Missouri ultrarunner and 2026 inductee into the St. Joseph Area Sports Hall of Fame whose career includes more than 15,000 miles of ultramarathon racing across over 230 events. A longtime fixture at the Leadville Trail 100, he earned the race’s coveted 1,000-mile buckle for ten finishes and has also completed the Spartathlon in Greece and the Hardrock 100. His accomplishments include two victories at Arkansas’s Three Days of Syllamo stage race and Kansas age-group 24-hour records of 103 miles in 2016 and 110 miles in 2024. Across decades of competition, Schoenlaub has combined remarkable endurance and consistency with competitive success in events ranging from 50 kilometers to multi-day races.

His ties to Kansas ultrarunning run deep. Schoenlaub won the 2018 Heartland 100 and was inducted into the FlatRock Hall of Pain in 2010 as “Sir Slam,” reflecting his long involvement with one of the state’s signature trail races. His experience connects the Kansas ultrarunning community with major national and international endurance events. As a member of the Founding Historical Advisory Council, he brings firsthand knowledge of race traditions, the evolution of endurance competition, and the people and relationships that have shaped the sport across generations.

Built for long-term stewardship

The Foundation is documenting its research methods, governance, archival practices, and technical systems so this work can continue beyond its founding leadership. The aim is lasting stewardship: a historical record that future generations can preserve, verify, correct, and expand.