Trailblazer

What do you do when ultra marathon races get boring? If you’re Greg Wingo, you start creating your own long-distance, solo trail runs around the country and around the world.

Wingo is a Homewood resident since December 2016 and works as a trail consultant for local governments, community groups and tourism boards through his business, ROAM Projects. He helped create the Birmingham Ultra Trail Society and is also an adventure runner who has mostly left behind organized ultra races for self-created runs.

It’s an opportunity to blaze his own trail — sometimes quite literally.

“I get a lot more thrill out of creating my own runs and … spending the time investigating and finding something that maybe not everybody else is doing,” Wingo said.

“I typically like to do things that are a little bit different, see amazing places and then document that as much as I possibly can.”

Wingo said he started out like most runners, racing 5Ks and moving up to marathons and ultra marathons of 100 miles as a “middle of the pack” runner. He did his first adventure run on the Bruce Trail in Ontario, Canada, in 2014. That run helped lead to the creation of his company and promoting trail systems and adventures to others.

Since then, he has run in the western U.S., Canada and Costa Rica, with distances varying from 30 to more than 100 miles. It’s more exciting to go on these solo runs, Wingo said, because he can plan routes that lead to beautiful views and new experiences, sometimes in cities where he doesn’t know the language.

“As much as I enjoy the actual running, being able to go somewhere in a foreign country by myself, where I don’t speak the language, and be able to do runs and things like that is exciting to me,” he said.

Despite the enjoyment, Wingo said adventure running carries all the same dangers and difficulties as regular ultra runs. He recalled a seasoned running partner who almost experienced kidney failure due to dehydration on a run from rim to rim in the Grand Canyon. Plus, there are the emotional blocks.

“It’s exciting before you do it, it’s a little scary right before you do it. And then, in the moment, it’s all the emotions you can think of. It’s exciting, scary, tiring, overwhelming. Every kind of feeling that can hit you, hits you in a longer distance run,” Wingo said. “You have so much time on your feet and time inside your head, so much of wherever you are to look at and take in.”

His running style comes with some hazards of its own, as Wingo has encountered difficult terrain, bears and other wildlife, without other runners or even race volunteers at aid stations. He said he and a running partner were once stalked during a late-night run by an unknown animal.

Wingo’s upcoming run combines adventure with a chance to serve as an ambassador for Birmingham. He finds sponsors to help defray the cost of his trips, and in November he will work with the Birmingham Sister Cities Commission on a trip to Hungary.

While in Hungary from Nov. 7–16, Wingo will visit Birmingham’s sister city, Székesfehérvár, to build relationships and talk about his hometown, as well as some sightseeing and trips to Hungarian wineries. But the climax of the trip is his 140-mile solo run around Lake Balaton, the largest lake in central Europe.

Wingo is hoping to visit and run in other sister cities with the Sister Cities Commission in 2019 and 2020, and he’s also considering trips to Belize, South Africa and Norway.