Named one of America’s most scenic trail races by Trail Runner magazine, the Ice Age Trail Run features a 50-mile and 50K that celebrate their 42nd annual running this year — and their 12th with the 13.1-mile half marathon distance.
The race takes runners on a tromping, hilly run through the trails of the Southern Unit of southeastern Wisconsin’s Kettle Moraine State Forest, which stretches some 30 miles between the towns of Dousman and Whitewater.
The forest area features a diverse natural landscape of ponds and marshes as well as wide-open prairies and forest lands, through which runners will make their way along a series of both single- and double-track trails, along a combination of soft, grassy trails as well as twisting, hilly runs through the woods.
Trails 13,000 years in the making. Several hundred runners crossed the finish line in all three races each year, which takes runners along what is known as the Ice Age Trail, which was formed by the receding of the Wisconsin glacier some 13,000 years ago.
Today, the land forms and impressions left by the glacier are visible all around the Kettle Moraine forest, with hills and depressions as well as land forms like drumlins, kames and eskers found throughout the 18,000-acre park.
