Jim Craig On Racing In Nebraska: “The Terrain Will Surprise You”
Cliff White (ARC) / 05.05.2019
Jim Craig, the owner of Angry Cow Adventures, thinks Nebraska is unfairly dismissed by outdoor adventure athletes.
For more than a decade, Craig has been putting on adventure races, trail running races, off-road triathlons, duathlons, orienteering meets, and any other kind of event that might draw people into trying an outdoor adventure in eastern Nebraska.
Based out of Panama, Nebraska, a tiny town south of Lincoln, for each of the past several years, he puts on more than 20 races annually, ranging from one-mile-long Amazing Race-style events catering to families with young children, all the way up to ultramarathons like the 50- and 100-mile Cowboy Ultra.
Craig, a gruff-sounding former Army Ranger, said those who participate in his races are in for a rough surprise – Nebraska isn’t flat.
“The terrain will surprise you. In the last 5K I put on, there was 1,300 feet of elevation gain. We’ve got rivers, hills, and bluffs, and when you put them together, we’ve got some pretty awesome terrain,” he said. “It’ll get your heart rate up.”
Craig has been an adventure junkie since his Army days, and when he got out of the military, he stayed active in the outdoors by competing in running, triathlons, and then adventure racing beginning in the late 1990s. Eventually, Craig leveraged his passion for the outdoors into a position as events coordinator for the Nebraska Sports Council. In that position, he oversaw the organization of the Cornhusker State Games, a state amateur sports festival, where he introduced adventure racing. In his time with the council, he formed important connections with state officials, nonprofit organizations, and private landowners across the state.
“Those connections got me to thinking I could go out and do this on my own,” he said.
Craig founded Angry Cow Adventures in 2008, and named the company after his experience getting run off the road by an irritated heifer while participating in a gravel bike race. He said the theme tying his disparate assortment of races together is “getting people off concrete.”
“My goal is to get people out there, whatever way I can that interests them,” he said.
With four state parks near his base of operations, finding places to host his races wasn’t a problem. But the parks were light on trails. So Craig used his can-do attitude, leaned on his connections and got permission to build trail systems in each of the parks.
“Now have we have five to 12 miles of singletrack in all these parks,” he said. “That got the mountain biking guys into my events – they loved me for that.”
Craig said his goal is to get more people to try new sports, and hopefully put them together into adventure racing. Those mountain bikers that started coming to his races are now skilled orienteers. Some of them have taken up kayaking and snowshoeing as well.
To encourage his racers to try new sports, Craig puts on duathlons such as foot and bike or kayak and foot duathlons, off-road triathlons, and orienteering races. He also puts on clinics, usually in the winter when he has fewer races to manage, regularly partnering with local running stores and bike shops to bring them to his events and do talks and demonstrations on gear, training or maintenance.
Perhaps not surprisingly given his efforts to steer them to the sport, his most popular events are his sprint-distance adventure races, which he says may include special challenges not traditionally found in adventure races, such as tomahawk-throwing or bow- or rifle-shooting, but which always include some element of navigation. He’ll often sell out his races, which he caps at 150 participants because he doesn’t like his races to feel overcrowded.
“The key is to create some kind of crossover appeal. I’ve found people love the mix, as long as it’s kept within the range of what they know they can achieve,” Craig said. “I try to give them some or all of the elements of an AR, while maintaining a fun, friendly atmosphere. In all my races, I try to find a happy medium that will bring new people into the sport, even if that includes quirky challenges, or combining sports that aren’t normally combined.”
He’s had more trouble maintaining interest in his longer adventure races, and now no longer puts on any ARs longer than eight hours. But just because the races are short doesn’t mean they’re easy, Craig said.
“My racers know I have a bit of a sadistic streak,” he said. “My motto is, ‘I’m not happy unless you’re getting lost.’”
Partially through Craig’s long reach into the outdoor sports community in Nebraska and partly through word of mouth, Angry Cow Adventures has developed a wide fan base across the state. This year, Craig had to rely heavily on that fan base as he dealt with the biggest challenge his business has ever faced. Thus far in 2019, flooding has caused $800 million worth of damage in the state. High amounts of snowfall in the early spring forced Craig to change his trail runs to snowshoe races. And then that snowmelt, accompanied by near-record deluges of rain, wiped out roads, destroyed trails, and knocked out infrastructure throughout Nebraska.
Craig has thus far managed to avoid canceling any of his races, but the first five Angry Cow Adventures events of 2019 all required “major changes,” he said.
“Every race we ran in February and March, we had to move to a different park or a different day because of the flooding,” he said. “The parks I usually use for my races were just totally out of commission, so I had to find new locations on higher ground. And many of the roads leading to the parks were unusable, impassible or just wiped out, including major highways. So I had to get really creative.”
The outdoor sports community that Craig played a lead role in creating has rallied around him, doing what they can to attend his events and be understanding of the numerous changes Craig has been forced to make.
“Everybody has been so supportive,” he said. “It really shows that we’ve got a great core of people here, a strong community with great camaraderie.”
To get his trails back into shape, Craig has converted the upcoming Cowboy Ultra on May 20 into a fundraiser, to which he’s received a warm reception from participants.
“The community here is just wonderful, and it’s really all about fun first and sharing a love for the outdoors. Sure, everybody can be a little competitive, but the bottom line is, it’s all about having fun and getting outside,” Craig said.
Craig said one of his proudest moments occurred recently when a team of long-time middle-of-the-pack participants eked out a third-place finish at one of his orienteering meets.
“These are bigger guys who never thought they would do well. But they were just patient and kept coming to the races, and getting better at navigation. They ended up beating some of the faster teams,” Craig said. “Even though I’m working harder now than I ever have in my life, seeing those guys’ smiles at the end of that race – that’s all payment I need. It made it all feel worth it."
