Anton Krupicka is one of the most iconic ultrarunners and long-distance trail athletes in the U.S. Known for his minimalist approach—shirtless miles, long hair, and a bushy beard—he became a defining figure in the sport. Over nearly three decades, Anton has won the Leadville 100 twice and earned podium finishes at ultramarathons around the world. Beyond racing, he’s set 28 fastest known time (FKT) records on notable routes, solidifying his reputation in endurance running.
Anton Krupicka is one of the most iconic ultrarunners and long-distance trail athletes in the U.S. Known for his minimalist approach—shirtless miles, long hair, and a bushy beard—he became a defining figure in the sport. Over nearly three decades, Anton has won the Leadville 100 twice and earned podium finishes at ultramarathons around the world. Beyond racing, he’s set 28 fastest known time (FKT) records on notable routes, solidifying his reputation in endurance running.
Connect with Anton:
Listen to:
Thank you to our sponsor:
Anton Krupicka:
To me, running requires this level of focus and intention that then turns on all those happy brain chemicals and those moments of clarity and those moments of flow. I think connecting to nature, the outdoors, getting outside at all in any form is a positive thing, but running is like an elevated version of it.
Shelby Stanger:
Anton Krupicka is one of the most iconic long distance trail runners in the US. During the peak of his career, he was known for his minimalist approach to the sport. He often raced shirtless with long hair and a bushy beard, a look that made him instantly recognizable on the trail. Anton has been chasing big mountains, long miles and complicated routes for nearly 30 years. Over the course of his career, he's won the legendary Leadville 100 race twice, along with many other wins and podiums at races around the world. Outside of the competition circuit, Anton has also racked up 28 fastest known time records or FKTs. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard.
Anton Krupicka, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. We're so excited to talk to you.
Anton Krupicka:
Cool. Yeah, thanks for inviting me on, Shelby.
Shelby Stanger:
So you're in Boulder, Colorado.
Anton Krupicka:
Yep.
Shelby Stanger:
That's a great place to be a trail runner.
Anton Krupicka:
It is. I mean, I suppose that's why I live here. I moved here 17 years ago for grad school and never left. I mean, it is an excellent spot for trail running. There's a very large and, I don't know, passionate community of trail runners in Boulder, but there's lots of good trail running over the Mountain West. But I would say what's kept me in Boulder i s probably the access to the rock climbing. It's one of the few spots that has so many different types of rock within anything from five minutes to an hour drive from town. So yeah, it's good.
Shelby Stanger:
I love that. I'm curious, but you're mostly a runner. That's what people know of you for. Were you always a runner ever since you were a kid?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah, I've been a runner since 1995 when I was 11 years old. I started running daily February of '95 and by April of '95, I was keeping a daily training log, training journal.
Shelby Stanger:
Who got you into it though?
Anton Krupicka:
The presidential physical fitness test in just PE class. Yeah. You have to run a mile, or you used to have to do a mile time trial twice a year or something like that. And I was just the best in my class, so this positive reinforcement. And I just remember in that year, this would've been my fifth or sixth grade year, I remember thinking, "Oh, the mile run is coming up, so in the month leading up to it, I'm going to practice by running a mile every day." And that's how I became a runner and then just never stopped. Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you know how fast your mile was?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah. In the sixth grade at least, I remember I was super happy because I broke six minutes. I ran like 55. Yeah. I don't remember what it was in fifth grade, but yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Okay. That's pretty fast. I read that then you just kind of busted out a marathon a whole year later.
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah. So in '96, I ran my first marathon a few weeks before my 13th birthday. I was 12. And I don't know, at that point in time, I already saw the marathon as being the ultimate, this is what a real runner does. They run a marathon, which seems kind of crazy for a 12-year-old now looking back on it, but yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Anton grew up in rural Nebraska where he ran for his local cross-country team. While his race times were okay, he wasn't a top ranked athlete. He certainly never imagined he'd build an entire career around running. But after high school, Anton went to a Division Three college in Colorado where he started to really develop as a runner.
What is it about distance running that lord you in, especially on trails? Could you just go out and run and clear your thoughts? There's got to be some motivating factor that just makes you love running long. What is that?
Anton Krupicka:
I mean, whenever you have an aptitude for something and you're in middle school, I think you lean into that because it's just positive reinforcement, or there's validation from your peers and your community when you win a race. So then when I was in college, our cross country team, we would do a long run every Monday and we'd always do it on trails in the mountains, which I think is actually fairly unique for a cross country program, like a college program. Our coach would have us do long runs on mountain trails, like with two, 3,000-foot climbs on single track, up to maybe two and a half hours, which is pretty long when you're just racing 8K on a golf course generally. But on those longer runs, I just found relative to my peers, I was maybe the strongest on the team on those longer runs, but I had a hard time making varsity, the top seven to actually score in meets and stuff.
So the shorter distances, the speed wasn't so much my skillset, but the long runs in the mountains at high altitude with a lot of vertical gain, it was just obvious early on that that's what I was good at. So yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
When did you make an actual career out of being a runner?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah, 2006.
Shelby Stanger:
How old were you?
Anton Krupicka:
I would have been 23, yeah. I graduated from college and was working at the college and I had a college cross country coach, assistant coach who had done the Leadville 100. And so I kind of always looked up to him during college and was like, "Oh, that's something I want to do." I don't know. Obviously I ran a marathon when I was 12. I always gravitated towards the longer distances. So I knew that when I graduated, I wanted to try an ultra marathon. I ended up doing the Leadville 100 in 2006 and I won it, and that kind of like set me on the path to becoming a professional runner. I mean, it took four or five years before I was making like a living off of it, and this is a long... The sport was in a much different place 20 years ago.
Shelby Stanger:
2006, the very first time you ran Leadville, you won?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
You say that very nonchalantly.
Anton Krupicka:
Well, I mean, my life is my life, so it feels like... And to me, it's like a very familiar story, I guess. But yeah, I don't know. I guess a little more background. While I wasn't a fast runner, I was, I would say a very passionate and dedicated runner. So before that race, I was running 200 miles a week, which is not... I wouldn't recommend that. That's not effective training. That's like over-training.
Shelby Stanger:
I mean, I run like 20 miles a week. That's amazing.
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah. So it was... All I'm saying, I guess, is that it was natural for me to do ultra marathons.
Shelby Stanger:
Were you surprised when you won Leadville in 2006?
Anton Krupicka:
No. I'd won the Leadville Marathon in June of that year and the Estes Park marathon that summer as well. So I started having some success, and I mean, I was 22, 23 years old. I just had some arrogance about it, I would say, and also ignorance. But I was just like, "Oh, I set this course record at this marathon," and then one, it's like I should be able to win this race. And I was running 200 miles a week. I ran 50 miles twice in training before the race and it went well. And like three weeks before Leadville, I ran the first half. It's an out and back course. You run 50 miles out and 50 miles back. So I ran the first 50 miles of the course and I did it under course record pace. And so I was like, "Yeah, I should be able to win this race."
Shelby Stanger:
That's amazing.
Anton Krupicka:
But of course it's also like, it's a hundred miles. It's completely unknown for me at that point in time. So there was also the small matter of actually finishing the race too, because it's a really long ways to run. So I won the race in August 2006, and shortly after that, Nell, a good friend of mine, Buzz Burrell, he was the manager for the La Sportiva mountain running team at the time. And I had bought a pair as my first ever trail shoes, a pair of La Sportiva shoes for the race and wore them in the race, won the race with them. And so Buzz emailed me and was like, "Congrats on Leadville. Saw you were wearing some Sportivas. You want a couple pair for free?" And I was like, "Yeah, absolutely. Of course." When you're that age, free anything sounds amazing. And so that was my entree to the outdoor industry, I guess.
Shelby Stanger:
The following year, Anton went on to win four more long distance races, including his second attempt at the infamous Leadville 100. After that race, he was approached by New Balance about sponsorship, which allowed him to pursue running professionally. For the next four years, Anton made the podium in every single race he ran, cementing his status as a top tier ultra runner.
You won the Leadville 100 twice, the Miwok 100K, the Rocky Raccoon 100-miler, the Collegiate Peaks 50-miler, the White River 50-miler twice, the High Mountain 50K, the Estes Park Marathon, so many. Which was the most challenging, I guess, and why? And which one was the most memorable?
Anton Krupicka:
Probably the most memorable ones have been the ones that I've dropped out of.
Shelby Stanger:
Failures?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah. Yeah. Just because they're really hard and they kind of leave an imprint. The wins sort of... I mean, one that people are going to know is in 2010, I ran the Western States 100, but I finished second. I didn't win it. I led 90 miles of it until very late in the race, but a buddy of mine then passed me and won the race. And that's memorable because a movie was made about it. The day itself, I felt like I had a good run. It's a very historic, and there's a lot of lore around the Western States 100 in North American ultra running. And so that was a memorable day. But I guess what was memorable or notable about that is, so Western States was founded in, I want to say 1974, and pretty much all throughout the history of that race, people have been really competing at it. Certainly by the 80s, people were really competing at it.
But in 2010, it's kind of recognized as maybe a bit of a watershed moment in the sport where we went from going from just surviving the race to really competing and racing a hundred miles. And yeah, I don't know. That makes it memorable. And I don't know. I really like studying and making myself knowledgeable about the history and traditions and what's come before me in all the sports I do. And Western States is kind of like, yeah, the biggest source of that kind of lore in the sport of ultra running. It started out as a horse race and this one guy, Gordy Ainsleigh, decided he wanted to just try and do it on foot because his horse came up injured that year, and he did and he did it in less than 24 hours and basically 100-mile racing in the mountains was conceived. And I don't know, it's really satisfying to me to be able to connect to a long lineage of an event or a sport. And Western States, it's a proving ground, but it's also a connection to a deep history.
Shelby Stanger:
Why are you so interested in learning about the history of these races?
Anton Krupicka:
For me, the reason it's important is because it connects me to a larger community and tradition. And so it gives more weight and meaning to the whole activity, in my view. It's the same for climbing or cycling. I feel I'm super interested in the history of those sports too. And anything that I've been able to achieve in this sport is building on people who've come before me anyways. It's not like I just did it in a vacuum. So I don't know. I think it's just important to educate yourself and have that kind of context. But then I don't know, it just makes it all more nutritious if you know what came before.
Shelby Stanger:
Anton Krupicka is a legendary ultra runner who has been competing around the world for the last several decades. His approach to trail running is unique. He often challenges familiar ideas about discomfort, ego, and what our bodies are capable of.
Tell me what you love about ultra running. I've never really... I raced cross country track D3. I'm kind of a 5K runner, and then I break after that.
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah.
Shelby Stanger:
Take me through what you love about long distance races on trails.
Anton Krupicka:
I don't do the running for the racing, but the act of, let's call it ultra running, I guess. For me, it's the most pure elemental way to immerse yourself in a landscape and kind of be both humbled by your surroundings and empowered by them. It's very unfettered. You need a pair of shoes, a pair of shorts, and that's it. I have a lot of other passions in the mountains. We were talking about climbing earlier, skiing, cycling, but all those things, there's all this gear involved. It's just like a lot of BS, and running is super simple and very, very straightforward. There's nothing between you and your surroundings and the elements. And then with running all day in the mountains, usually there's some kind of flow state where you feel very integrated with your surroundings, but then also if you're out for an all-day run, there's going to be some really hard points too.
And doing hard things is gratifying. It's satisfying. I don't know. So it's just a combination of all that. The caveat to all this is running is super abusive. It's hard on the body. Anyone who's been a runner for any amount of time has been injured.
Shelby Stanger:
There's a lot of discomfort in running long distances. There's something about discomfort though that you enjoy. I'm curious about your relationship to discomfort.
Anton Krupicka:
I mean, discomfort, it's a very privileged thing to take on elective discomfort. There's a lot of people in the world who are truly suffering, truly have hardship in their lives that they can't escape. And I'm fortunate enough that I've had a life where I've had to contrive the discomfort in my life for the most part. Sure, I've had plenty of challenges in my life, but a lot of the things I do, I'm contriving discomfort in order to have the satisfaction of meeting the challenge, overcoming it, and then getting to sit on the couch afterwards. It's rewarding to endure and work through it, and that gives some kind of satisfaction. And maybe not meaning, but definitely just self-validation, I suppose.
Shelby Stanger:
I really like the phrase elective discomfort. I haven't heard that before, but how has this affected the rest of your life, like running and these challenges you do? Because you're not the average guy. You're doing it at a really high level and you do FKTs. I mean, I'm curious how this path has affected the rest of your life.
Anton Krupicka:
I don't know. I don't really buy into the thing of like, say I finish a hundred-mile race, that proves to myself that I'm strong and then I can take that strength and apply it to other areas of my life. I've never really felt that way. That kind of projection of one kind of ability to deal with hardship, I don't think that makes me any better at dealing with other forms of hardship necessarily. I know that that's a very popular thing for people to say, but I've never really felt that in my own life.
Shelby Stanger:
That's so interesting. So it hasn't given you courage to pursue different parts of your career or your relationship or anything else?
Anton Krupicka:
Maybe it does. The way that it does is that I've always used running as this source of self-confidence, because it's something that I feel competent at and now at this point in my life, I have a lot of experience with it. I have a lot of knowledge about it, I guess. So it just integrates my identity of you're an adult who knows how to handle himself in the world. And I can get into sticky situations and generally have been able to get myself out of them, or I can confront something difficult. And if I just am stubborn and try hard, I'll get through it. And that gives me the confidence then, I guess, to just walk through the world feeling like a valid human, I suppose. But that's the extent of it, I suppose.
Shelby Stanger:
As magical and exciting as long ultra races sound, they could also be brutal. Every event is a delicate balance. You have to have the right fuel and hydration and be able to run for so many hours and miles. After running for that long, the human body starts to shut down. Some runners even experience intense hallucinations from pushing themselves so hard. About a decade into his ultra career, Anton had dealt with so many different injuries that he had to take a break. He expanded his interests from trail running to climbing, cycling, and ski touring, and even competed in these sports. Eventually, Anton made a comeback to ultra running in 2021. He shifted his focus from races to FKTs, and most recently he set a record on a route called the LA Freeway.
I want to switch gears to FKTs, because that's something that you've also pursued, and you have some really interesting ones. You have one that involves an LA freeway. Can you tell me about that?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's sort of like a joke name for a route in the mountains. Yeah. I forgot that you're in Southern California, right?
Shelby Stanger:
I was like, "What does this mean?"
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah, so it means... I can explain. So here on the front range in Colorado, Longs Peak is our local 14-er, 14,000 foot peak in Rocky Mountain National Park. And then just south of Rocky Mountain National Park is the Indian Peak's wilderness. And the highest point in that is Arapahoe Peak. So the LA freeway is traversing on the Continental Divide on a 12,000-foot ridge for about 30 miles from Longs Peak to Arapahoe Peak, hence the LA freeway. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I suppose that's my most recent FKT. That was a year ago I did that. And I would say that it's probably my most proud. Last year, I was in the best shape of my life, and that's a route that I've been wanting to do for over a decade. And I ran a lot faster on it than I expected to. And I spent the whole summer preparing for it, and it went really well. And yeah, so it was a very satisfying season.
Shelby Stanger:
How old are you?
Anton Krupicka:
I'm 42.
Shelby Stanger:
So at 41, you're in the best shape of your life.
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah, it was unexpected for me too, because I've went through not a decade, but I would say five to seven years where I was like, "Yeah, it's over. My best days are for sure behind me."
Shelby Stanger:
What do you think made you in the best shape of your life? What were you doing? What were you eating? How was your training?
Anton Krupicka:
I was able to be consistent. I've had this ongoing Achilles tendon injury for the last eight years and last summer. For no good reason, I don't know, it just was kind of working better. And so I was just able to be very consistent with getting time at altitude, running a lot of vertical, still doing a lot of cross-training with cycling and climbing. But at the age of 41, a couple of things.
I had 30 years of running in the bank. They just have a lifetime base. That doesn't go away. That's something that accumulates over the decades. And two, finally, at least a little bit of maturity and wisdom with regard to listening to my body. And if something was feeling a little bit off or a little bit on edge, having the wisdom and the humility to back off. I still make that mistake all the time of pushing too far, but I've gotten better at it in the last 30 years. And also, the kind of running I do, it lends itself to both experience, but also it's not so much power-based. It's more like aerobic endurance-based and strength-based. And that's something that you can maintain into your 40s, I think.
Shelby Stanger:
While Anton is in a season of his athletic life where things have really clicked, there are still setbacks, doubts, and the constant negotiation that comes with decades of endurance running. It points back to an idea he returns to again and again, his relationship with discomfort.
You've described trail running as learning to exist inside discomfort, and I'm just curious, what has that taught you about yourself?
Anton Krupicka:
Oh, man. I guess what I've learned about myself is that, man, there's just always room for improvement. There's always room to... I've just been humbled so many times by my in effectuality and moments of difficulty and stress.
Shelby Stanger:
Do you have any specific moments you'd be open to sharing, like how that looks?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah. So in 2013, I ran the ultra trail in Mont Blanc, UTMB, and I was doing well. I came into the race with carrying an injury though, which is never good, because 100 miles is going to exploit an injury, but I was in the lead for the first 80 miles, but I got to the 80-mile aid station and ended up dropping out there because of injury. But I came back the next year and I got to that same 80-mile aid station and I hadn't been able to eat for the previous 10 hours because I was basically racing above my fitness level. And when you do that, you can't digest food anymore. So you're just throwing up, not getting any calories then. So I got to the 80-mile aid station again, the same one I dropped out at the year before. And I was just disappointed.
I was just like, "Oh, here we are again. Trient, Switzerland, in this aid station, it's all just going to go to crap again." But I spent four and a half hours in that aid station and I think I was in fourth or fifth place when I came in or something and 50th place when I left. But I had this realization in the middle of my nausea and unable to eat and everything of like, "Oh wait, you don't have to drop out. This isn't some forewritten script that you drop out here. You still have the power to choose to keep going." And I don't know, that was like a big... It sounds so simple and silly, spoken as an English sentence, but I don't know. It was this huge realization at the time.
I was like, "No, you can still choose to write a different story today." And so I did. I ended up getting up, putting my shoes back on and I ran some, but mostly walked the last 25 miles to the finish, and I finished UTMB, which was sweet, because it would have sucked to have DNF that at two years in a row.
Shelby Stanger:
In those moments when you're super uncomfortable, what's your self-talk like?
Anton Krupicka:
Yeah, there's no strategy for me. It's vacillating between positive self-talk, because that truly does work, and just sort of like self-loathing, just like a lot of swearing to myself about the situation, but then also just positive reinforcement. In 100-mile races here in North America, you're allowed to have a pacer most of the time, and a lot of people have different things that motivate them, I guess. I have a buddy who, he responds to sort of like negative like, "Pick it up," blah, blah, blah, that kind of thing. I'm the opposite. I just need someone to tell me I'm doing a good job. That's the most motivating thing for me. If there's not a pacer there, that's what I'm trying to do with myself, basically. It's just like, stay in a positive mindset.
Shelby Stanger:
To keep in touch with Anton, follow him on Instagram at antonkrupicha. That's A-N-T-O-N-K-R-U-P-I-C-K-A. You can also watch the documentary of his journey in the Western States 100 on YouTube. We'll link to it in the show notes. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Peers Nitzberg of Puddle Creative. Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Mottola and Joe Crosby. Thanks again to our partner, Capital One and the REI Co-op Mastercard. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.