Our story timeline
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Our story timeline
An about page for a club with a history worth telling. It opens with a photo hero and the club's purpose, then walks through the milestones year by year, from the first run with five friends to a club of 600. The founders get their own cards, and a few numbers and a member's words round it off. Replace the years and milestones with your own, add your founders' photos, and the page works as the About link in your menu and a page to send to sponsors.
Our story
Five friends, one trail, fourteen years
Summit Trail Runners started as a Tuesday run between neighbors. Today it is one of Colorado's largest trail running clubs, and it still feels like that first Tuesday.
Why we exist
We believe trail running should be for everyone, not only the fast and the fearless. Our job is to get people onto Boulder's trails safely, help them find friends while they are out there, and give something back to the land we run on.
Timeline
Fourteen years on the trails
The first run
2013
Elena Vargas and Tom Whitaker, neighbors on Mapleton Hill, start a Tuesday dawn run up Mount Sanitas. Three friends join in. They call it a club as a joke.
A name and a logo
2015
With 40 regulars, the group becomes Summit Trail Runners, opens a bank account and buys its first set of trail marking flags. Saturday long runs begin.
The first race
2017
The Mesa Trail 10K sells out its 120 places in four days. Every dollar of profit goes to Boulder County trail maintenance.
Couch to Trail
2019
Coach Renee Park launches the eight-week beginner program. Its first group of 18 all finish the Mesa Trail 10K together.
Running apart, together
2020
Group runs pause, so the club goes online: virtual challenges, route maps for solo runners and a Thursday video check-in that kept 300 members connected.
The Summit Series
2023
Our races join up into a six-race season with series points, age-group awards and an October party that outgrew its venue the first year.
600 members and counting
2027
Nine weekly runs, two Couch to Trail programs a year and more than 3,000 volunteer hours on local trails. And yes, the Tuesday dawn run still goes up Sanitas.
It started on a Tuesday
"We just wanted company at 6am," Elena remembers. "Tom brought a thermos of terrible coffee and we sat on the tailgate afterward talking for longer than we ran."
That tailgate coffee became a tradition. Every Saturday run still ends with coffee, and the thermos is on display at the awards party every October.
Our founders
Elena Vargas
Co-founder and board chair. A retired middle-school science teacher who has run the Mesa Trail more than 1,000 times and still leads the Tuesday dawn run.
Tom Whitaker
Co-founder and race director. A civil engineer who designs every Summit Series course and personally sweeps the last runner home.
I joined for the running and stayed for the people. This club is the reason Boulder feels like home.
Be part of the next chapter
Your first two group runs are free. Come and see what keeps us going.
Use this page
Make it yours in a few minutes
- Find it in your Control Panel. Go to Content > Page Library and search for "Our story timeline".
- Add it to your site. Choose a title and a department. The page arrives as a draft, with its pictures copied to your site and your site's name already in place.
- Change the words and pictures. Open it in the page builder, replace the sample text and images with your own, and make it live when you are ready.