Run Rabbit Run Will Pay Its 100 Mile Champions $100,000 Each in 2027 and 2028

Run Rabbit Run will pay $100,000 to each of its 100-mile champions in 2027 and 2028, the largest winner’s prize trail running is known to have offered. Race founder Fred Abramowitz and Bert Bean, chief executive of the staffing firm Insight Global, made the announcement at this week’s pre-race briefing in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.

This year’s Hares are racing for $20,000, and that figure is newer than it looks. The winners took home $15,000 as recently as 2024, and when the race raised it last year it called $20,000 the largest payout it had ever made. The money comes out of a $100,000 pool, and no other 100-miler in the country puts up as much. Seven places pay in each gender, and what is left goes to masters and senior runners, the team competition, and a preem for the first man and woman over the gondola climb. From 2027, one runner takes home the value of the whole list. Bryon Powell of iRunFar, who was at the briefing, reported the announcement.

Insight Global is already one of the race’s main sponsors, and Bean has run the race himself. He was on the start line of the 100-miler last year. The commitment covers two editions, 2027 and 2028, and nothing has been said about what happens after that.

Broken Arrow Skyrace has the largest total purse in American trail running this year. The California race set aside $150,000 across its June weekend, $30,000 of it for each winner of the headline 23K, after signing a multi-year deal with Nike ACG, a rise of 76.5 percent on its 2025 purse. “We think the increase in prize money will draw an even deeper international field than we’ve already had,” co-director Brendan Madigan said when the deal was announced. Steamboat’s reply puts nearly all of its money on a single line instead of spreading it further across the results.

For scale, the winner of UTMB collects 20,000 euros ($22,900), and that is after UTMB doubled the purse for its championship races. John Korir earned $150,000 for winning the Boston Marathon in April, plus a $50,000 course-record bonus. The nearest thing to a precedent off-road is the $80,000 Tough Mudder paid the winners of its Infinity AlUla race in Saudi Arabia in 2024, and that was obstacle racing rather than a trail event. A 100-mile race in northwest Colorado will be paying its champion more than four times what the UTMB winner collects.

Western States pays its winners nothing at all. They get their name on the Wendell Robie Cup, a bronze cougar to take home, and the same silver buckle handed to everyone else who breaks 24 hours, and the race still draws the deepest fields in the sport. Powell’s point, and it is hard to argue with, is that Run Rabbit Run has been writing big checks since 2012 and still cannot pull a field like that.

There is a catch on the $100,000. Only Hares are eligible. They go off at 1 p.m., they get 30 hours, and they cover the full 100 miles and 20,391 feet of climbing without a pacer. The Tortoise field starts four hours earlier, runs to a 36-hour limit, can pick up pacers at the designated points, and competes for nothing but the finish. Paying all seven places also takes at least 25 starters of each gender.

The 14th edition was still out on the course on Saturday morning with no finishers in. Jesse Rich is back to defend the men’s title he won in 17:42:56 last year, and iRunFar’s preview had Jon Harrison, JP Giblin and Ryan Sullivan, the three men who came in behind him, all entered again. The women’s title changes hands whatever happens, because none of the former champions are in the field. They are racing for $20,000; the $100,000 arrives with the 2027 edition.