Embrace the Mud

Published by The Bulletin on November 4, 2013

Bend's Max King wants to take cross-country running back to its roots.

Inspired by the surge in popularity of cyclocross — a sort of obstacle-course racing on bicycles — King, one of the country's top trail runners and a former U.S. Olympic hopeful in the steeplechase and the marathon, is hoping to get cross-country off the smooth, manicured fairways of golf courses and back to the mud and muck of its early heyday.

“Cross-country (racing) comes from a background of running through plowed fields, going down dirt trails and maybe even hopping over a couple of fences," says King, 33 and the race director for the 2013 USA Track & Field National Club Cross-Country Championships, which will take place in Bend on Dec. 14. “Somehow we've gotten away from that. It's become more of a grass track meet."

Not this December.

King has been carving out this year's national championship course at River's Edge Golf Course — the past few weekends he literally has been trailblazing, clearing sagebrush and making trails between fairways — and runners will have plenty of short uphills, some hillside scrambles and maybe even a hay bale or two to clear. King's course is a 2,000-meter loop on which competitors will run a number of circuits, depending on their racing division.

“A lot of people will be yelling at me in December," jokes King, who was an All-America cross-country runner at Cornell University. “I had an old cross-country coach in college who talked about taking in the landscape (when designing a race) and letting a course present itself. ... I took that philosophy with me when I started walking around the golf course and let it come to me."