Natchez TraceTrail Run
An Old Road That Still Asks Something Of You
Two hundred years ago this was the loneliest highway in America. Boatmen walked home on it. The Army cut it wider. The forest took most of it back. On the first Saturday of November we run what is left.
The Natchez Trace Trail Run starts from the Garrison Creek trailhead south of Franklin, Tennessee, on the Highland Rim section of the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail. Roughly 25 miles of singletrack follows the ridges above the old road bed, with creek crossings, a handful of road crossings, and long uninterrupted stretches where you will not see another runner for an hour.
It is not a mountain race, and that is exactly what makes it dangerous. The early miles are runnable, people go out too fast, and the last fifteen collect the debt. Smart pacing, steady fueling, and respect for the second half get you to the finish. Peak fall color usually lands right on race weekend.
Distances
50 Mile
- Out and back from Garrison Creek
- Up to 8,000 feet of gain
- Turnaround cutoff 1:00 PM at mile 23
- Final cutoff 7:00 PM at mile 46
Marathon
- One way, point to point
- Bus to the far trailhead, run back
- Bonus 2.5 mile loop available
- Arrive early for transport
Half Marathon
- One way, point to point
- Best entry point to the Trace
- Same trail, same history
- Full aid and finish line support
13 Mile Ruck
- HardRuck division
- 20 lb dry over 150 lb bodyweight
- 10 lb dry under 150 lb bodyweight
- Weigh in 30 minutes before start
Pricing includes fees as listed on UltraSignup and can change. Registration closes race day. Shirts are a separate add on.
Highland Rim
The trail leaves Garrison Creek and climbs onto the rim, then settles into long rolling ridge running. The tread is alternately leafy and rocky, wider than a modern footpath in places because it is not a modern footpath. Sections of it are the old road corridor, narrowed by two centuries of forest.
Expect several road crossings, a few creek crossings that will get your feet wet in a normal November, and trail that sees very little traffic the rest of the year. It is not technical in the western sense. It is remote in a way that surprises people twenty five miles from Nashville.
Fifty mile runners cover the point to point twice, out and back. Marathon, half, and ruck entrants ride the bus to the far end and run home toward Garrison Creek.
Cutoffs
This is a national park unit. The resource is fragile and our permit depends on how we behave out there.
The Race Director Holds The FKT On The Natchez
John Hardin holds the current supported speed record for the full 444 mile Natchez Trace Parkway, set in December 2024. It stands as the fastest known time on the route.
Course Records
50 Mile
| 1 | Bob Adams | 7:32:13 | 2023 |
| 2 | James Ebert | 7:57:09 | 2023 |
| 3 | Anthony Groft | 7:58:29 | 2022 |
| 1 | Jewly Hight | 9:33:23 | 2023 |
| 2 | Greta Conlon | 9:55:28 | 2025 |
| 3 | Sally Thompson | 10:06:02 | 2018 |
Marathon
| 1 | Kevin Mills | 3:25:27 | 2020 |
| 2 | Bruce Johnson | 3:45:59 | 2021 |
| 3 | Cody Case | 3:48:35 | 2023 |
| 1 | Brooke Yowler | 4:24:00 | 2024 |
| 2 | Amy Macintire | 4:34:07 | 2018 |
| 3 | Francesca Muccini | 4:34:22 | 2021 |
Half Marathon
| 1 | Ryan Paxton | 2:09:22 | 2025 |
| 2 | Ryan Balch | 2:09:46 | 2025 |
| 3 | Dan Albert | 2:12:36 | 2023 |
| 1 | Stephanie Dickson | 2:20:45 | 2023 |
| 2 | Annie Moore | 2:30:51 | 2024 |
| 3 | Jennifer Wenneker | 2:34:36 | 2024 |
13 Mile Ruck
| 1 | Bryon Cuthbert | 2:52:18 | 2024 |
| 2 | Adam Wood | 2:56:04 | 2024 |
| 3 | John Winborn | 2:57:38 | 2025 |
| 1 | Sarah Mattson | 3:23:42 | 2025 |
| 2 | Amanda Tidwell | 3:31:18 | 2022 |
| 3 | Angela Bosma | 3:36:03 | 2024 |
Fastest recorded times per UltraSignup and UltraRunning Magazine. HardRuck records compiled from the official ruck division results, 2022 to 2025.
Carry The Weight
Thirteen miles on the Trace with a loaded pack. Over 150 pounds bodyweight carries 20 pounds dry. Under 150 carries 10 pounds dry. Steel ruck plate, vest blocks, bumper plates, or anything with the weight clearly stamped on it.
Weigh in 30 minutes before the start. Weight stays on the whole way and random checks happen. A weighted vest division runs in 2026 with the load distributed across the torso.
Sign Up to RuckThe Day Itself
Awards
Snacks and water at the finish. No alcohol permitted at the park.
Questions
Does this race sell out
Every year. The field is capped at 180 across all four distances and the 50 mile is usually the first to go. If you are thinking about it, register.
How hard is the 50
Up to 8,000 feet of gain over 50 miles with no single climb that will scare you. The difficulty is cumulative. The out and back format means you learn the second half before you have to run it tired.
Can my crew meet me
Only at designated rest stops. Parking along the Parkway roadside is illegal, so crews must use official pull offs. No pacers and no outside aid anywhere on course.
What do I have to carry
Your own hydration. The race is cupless. Bottles, flasks, or a vest. Aid comes about every 5 miles.
How does the ruck division work
Over 150 pounds bodyweight carries 20 pounds dry, under 150 carries 10 pounds dry, clearly stamped weight only. Weigh in 30 minutes before your start. Weight stays on the whole way and random checks happen.
What is the weather like
Early November in Middle Tennessee. Frost at the 6:00 AM start is common, afternoons often reach the 60s, and the leaves are usually at or just past peak. Bring layers you can shed.
The Old Road, If You Want The Story
The Park Service calls this corridor an avenue of travel, trade and conflict for more than 10,000 years. Most races have a course. This one has a body count, three empires, and a president’s explorer buried at milepost 385.
Long before it had a name, it was bison paths worn toward the salt licks of Middle Tennessee, then the road of three nations: the Natchez on the southern bluffs, the Choctaw in the middle, the Chickasaw up here. When de Soto’s Spaniards wintered in Chickasaw country and demanded two hundred people as porters, Chickasaw warriors burned his camp to the ground in a single night in March 1541. Europeans did not try again for 150 years. The French built Fort Rosalie at Natchez in 1716, took Natchez land for tobacco, and after the 1729 revolt that followed, destroyed the Natchez nation and sold its survivors into slavery. Their descendants are still here, mostly in Oklahoma.
The American road came by treaty. The Chickasaw and Choctaw signed in 1801, the Army widened the footpath to a wagon road, and the soldiers garrisoned south of Franklin for that work gave Garrison Creek, your start line, its name. By 1810 roughly ten thousand Kaintuck boatmen a year were walking home on it, four hundred plus miles, because you cannot float a flatboat upstream. Inns a day’s walk apart sold hominy, whiskey and floor space.
Not all the traffic chose to be there. Enslaved people were marched south in coffles to the Natchez slave market at Forks of the Road, the second largest in the Deep South, until Federal troops tore its pens down in 1863. Steamboats had already killed the road by then. The forest took it back, Congress made it a Parkway in 1938, and the ghost of the road is what you race.
The Devil’s Backbone
Travelers named it that for the remoteness and the highwaymen. The worst was Samuel Mason, a Revolutionary War captain turned outlaw who signed his robberies “Done by Mason of the Woods.” Arrested in 1803 carrying seven thousand dollars and twenty human scalps. He escaped, so two of his own men killed him for the bounty and carried his head in to collect. They were recognized, tried, and hanged.
Meriwether Lewis Died Here
October 11, 1809, at Grinder’s Stand, seventy miles southwest of Nashville. Gunshots in the dark, wounds to the head and gut, no witness. Jefferson called it suicide. The 1848 commission that opened his grave called it murder and set a broken column over him. It has never been settled, and he is still there, at milepost 385.9 of the road you are running.
Sources: National Park Service, the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, Mississippi Encyclopedia.
Walk It, Run It, Carry Weight On It
Ten thousand people a year once went north on this ground because they had no other way home. You get to choose it. November 7, 2026.
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