State of The Sioux Falls Area Running Club 2025

As we wrap up another year of running in the Sioux Falls area, we wanted to reflect on the good, discuss the challenges, and thank you all for supporting us and the running community at large. In Sioux Falls, we have a vibrant running community with a lot of trail access (paved and dirt), that most communities can’t touch.

It’s important that we all take a moment from time to time, to sit back and be grateful for everything we have…45+ miles of paved bike trails, 21+ miles of singletrack multi-purpose dirt trails, and 20+ miles of dirt/grass/gravel trails at city and state parks within a stones throw of SF.

We have a full marathon, two half-marathons, and countless 5k and other distance races in our community, that are all put on locally. Our Parks n Rec department also puts on free kids races (3 with us), track days, and bike trail races throughout the year (one on Saturday – Frosty Frolics). Our Trail Run Series is turning 10 years old in 2026 as well!

The Sioux Falls Area Running Club is not the only group in town either. Sioux Falls Women Run is a very popular group. 605 Running Company is extremely active in the fabric of Sioux Falls with events, group runs, and community building.

Now, take a minute to reflect on how lucky we are to live in such a great running town…

Okay, thanks for going with me on that. Now, onto our year end recap!

We held our annual winter social at the end of January at Vinyl Taco. This new venue was a success, and we had a great turnout of around 50 members. We loved it so much we are planning on heading back there in February of 2026!

In February we teamed up with members Lance Smith and John Brantsen to participate in the Mallathon! Runners could join for any part or the entire marathon distance in and around the Empire Mall. This event coincided with the LifeScape Mall Walk and we helped raise over $1600 for their worthy cause!

We partnered with Black Hills Running Club to participate in their Frozen Challenge. We had several members join and keep motivated to run through the coldest parts of the year!

We held a group run in early April at the Cattitude Café to help support them as they were in danger of going out of business. We all had a great time having coffee and playing with the cats after the run!

At the end of April, we teamed up with Lance Smith again to run the Kwik Star 50k Fun Run! We ran around Sioux Falls to seven different Kwik Star locations all while raising money for Feeding South Dakota’s 50th anniversary. We helped raise $15,000!

Around this time, we also started up our weekly group run at Good Earth State Park. Jess Walhof, our Group Run Leader, led the way and helped build ‘The Best Night of the Week’ from late April through October on Thursday nights. We had 29 group runs with a couple special nights of smores & hot dogs, lots of popsicles, and tons of smiles.

We had an ice cream group run at Stensland’s in early June and all the trail runners’ pilgrimage to the Black Hills 100 at the end of June.

Our Trail Run Series also kicked off in early June at Oak Grove, with 3 different distances and over 100 participants!

Late July brought a beer group run at Monks that was well attended and we had SF Women Run join us as well!

In late August we had our summer social event spectacular at The Good Earth Farm. This event was amazing with The Clover Fold putting on a concert for us, wood fire pizzas, and the relaxing ambiance of the farm. While we didn’t have the crowd at this event we would have liked, it was very special for those that made it.

August also brought our newest Trail Run Series race location at Camden State Park! This race is a bit further than usual from Sioux Falls, but it was an amazing event, and we had over 130 participants! With local runner Josh Anderson as race director, this race will be an annual event going forward!

September is one of our business months. We put on 3 free kid’s cross-country races with the SF Parks n Rec Department. Each Wednesday features 150-200+ kids running in different races and eating popsicles.

We had our annual volunteer duties at the Sioux Falls Marathon heading up the packet pickup and bag drop table on marathon morning. We’ve helped here for 5+ years in this capacity and it’s always great to be there and see so many runners accomplishing great things!

Our 3rd race at Great Bear wrapped up the busy month. Another great turnout and the ever-popular free kids run was attended by more than 50 kids & parents!

October brought the 24th annual Newton Hills Trail Races to cap off the Trail Run Series. This is always the most attended race on our calendar, and nothing beats the trails in peak fall colors!

We partnered with The Great Outdoor Store and Dakota Sauna Co for a group run and Sauna/Cold plunge in mid-October. We aren’t sure if this just wasn’t something people wanted to do or if everyone was busy, but we had very little attendance at this event.

We also had a presence at the Great Bear singletrack grand opening. Falls Area Singletrack has been a great partner over the past decade building and maintaining singletrack trails in the Sioux Falls area. Phase 1 was completed in early fall, and we had a small group run to check out all the new trails in the park!

Late October we had our Trail Run Series wrap up party at Sunny’s Pizzeria. This is always a fun event to get everyone together to socialize, eat some great pizza, and celebrate another successful year completed.

This November, we met with The Banquet to start working closely with them on The Run for the Banquet on Thanksgiving morning. This annual tradition was started in 2004 by a couple of Run Club members, and they are looking to step back. The Banquet would like our help to elevate the run and keep it well attended, as it’s their biggest fundraiser of the year. We created a dedicated website page on our website to highlight the run and all the details, as well as spreading the work via social media and our email list. We had great weather on Thanksgiving morning, and The Banquet’s donations were plentiful. We’ll continue to work with them in future years as well!

Our final group event for the year was the holiday lights group run and bricks & beers LEGO event at Remedy Brewing Company. We are trying to add in more social events, so we thought doing the group run and adding in the LEGO event would be a fun idea!

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for sticking with us! All those events were organized and put together by a small group of board members. Here’s some history of the Run Club and where we are currently with the board.

The SF Area Running Club has been around for over 27 years. Volunteer board members have kept the Club going with varying amounts of help. There have been many years when the Club was being held together by mainly one person. While in the past nine years things have improved, we still struggle to get help and have very rarely had a full board. When this happens, events don’t take place, things don’t get updated, and we can’t commit to events we should have a presence at. 

We are in need of help in several areas. Communications: Social Media & Email Newsletters, Events: Planning & Execution, and Group Run Leaders. We also have a couple board members who have been helping long past their 2 years terms. We would love to have an exit strategy for those members, so someone else can step in where they left off. I know we are all busy, but if you find yourself able to carve out 3-5hrs a month, we could easily use your help. Not sure where you’d fit in? That’s okay! We have board members without a specific position and are just available to help wherever needed. If you’re interested, reach out and we can sit down for coffee, or you can simply sit in at the next board meeting, and we can go from there.

What’s in store for 2026? Our winter social will be on February 22nd at Vinyl Taco. We hope to have a special group run, at least monthly. Our Trail Run Series will be celebrating 10 years and Newton Hills Trail Races will celebrate 25 years! We’d love to continue expanding on social events, where running is not necessarily involved and we can’t wait to see what crazy adventures we can get up to with Lance Smith!

We’d love some feedback on what YOU want from the Sioux Falls Area Running Club. Please take a couple minutes to fill out the survey at the link below and let your voice be heard! Add in your name/email at the end and we’ll enter you in a raffle for $100 cash or entry into the Trail Run Series!

2 Minute Survey:

https://form.jotform.com/253505554408053

Thank you for your support and we’ll see you on the trails!

Nathan Schwab - President & TRS Director

Chelsea Steinborn - Vice President

Jessica Walhof - Group Run Ambassador

Pete Heidepriem - At Large

Jeff Pratt - At Large