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Thirteen years on the trail.
What began as a small group chasing single-track through the Upstate has grown into a race series, a support team for our fellow race directors, and a direct line of giving back to the community that keeps us running.
The Early Miles
Bringing people to the trails
It started with a simple idea: the trails around the Upstate deserved a race series, and the community deserved a reason to get out on them. Upstate Race Series grew out of those roots, one course marking, one finish line, one small race at a time.
What we built has become an annual tradition. Today, our races are still where a lot of runners cross their first trail finish line and where seasoned athletes chase their first ultra. That's the part of the story we're proudest of — we didn't just create races, we created starting points.
Beyond Our Own Start Line
Supporting the races around us
As our own series grew, other race directors across the Upstate started asking for help — with registration, with marketing, with the hundred small logistics that make a race day actually work. We said yes, and that grew into Upstate Event Management.
Today we bring race day staffing, timing services, registration support, and marketing know-how to events beyond our own, because a strong trail and running community in the Upstate isn't built by one race series alone. It's built by making every race around us a little stronger too.
Running For Something Bigger
Giving back, mile by mile
The furthest we've come is also the most personal: our Giving Series now takes direct donations from our participants and channels them straight to 30 local nonprofits across the Upstate.
These are organizations with boots on the ground every day — the ones doing the quiet, unglamorous work of serving our neighbors. Every registration, every finish line, every mile logged in the Giving Series is a way for our running community to show up for them too.
The trail keeps going.
Thirteen years in, we're still doing what we started out to do — getting people onto the trails, holding up the races around us, and putting our community's miles to work for the Upstate.