November 2026

November Running

We have one more Fun Run for 2026, this time it will be on THURSDAY November 12 at 6:00 pm and will be run from Lions Tail Brewing Co, 116 So. Commercial St, Neenah. We will be joining up with runners from the Run Neenah group. The route is approximately 4.3 miles in length, featuring the Loop the Little Lake Trail, which crosses the Friendship Trestle bridge. This will be our hot cocoa and cookies run, which will be provided inside afterwards.

Saturday morning 8:00 am runs continue every week through the fall, winter and spring from Copper Rock Coffee, College Avenue, downtown Appleton. There are many options to cut or add mileage, the typical routes are 6, 8, 11 and 13.1 miles. Click on link for maps, and see start/finish map below. Water is provided near mile 4. Coffee and cups of conversation afterwards inside.

Pacesetters Christmas Party

Mark your calendars .... our annual Pacesetters Christmas Party will be on Saturday December 19th. We will gather at Pullmans at the Trolley Square Restaurant, 619 S. Olde Oneida St, Appleton, in their private waterfront banquet room. There will be multiple meal entrees and sides to choose from which you will select when you register. We will have free race giveaways and gifts. Here is the registration link, or you can use the QR code below:

Remembering the Past

Let us introduce you to Cliff Young.

He arrived in overalls and work boots. The crowd assumed he was there to watch. Cliff was 61—a sheep farmer from the remote Australian bush who had never competed professionally. The Sydney-to-Melbourne ultramarathon stretched 875 kilometers, or nearly 550 miles. His competition? Elite runners in their thirties, equipped with coaches, sponsors, nutritionists, and state-of-the-art gear. He had none of that. Just his farm clothes and a childhood shaped by necessity.

When reporters asked what possessed him to enter, his answer was simple: "Back home, when storms came, I'd chase the sheep across thousands of acres on foot for days without stopping. I figured I could do that."

The elite runners left him in their dust—literally. They had a strategy: run 18 hours, sleep 6, repeat for five days. It was the conventional wisdom of the sport. Cliff Young never got the memo about the sleeping part. While the professionals rested on the first night, he kept shuffling forward. His gait was strange—barely lifting his feet, almost dreamlike. People would later call it the Young Shuffle. When the runners woke, he was still ahead. He never slowed down.

By day three, he wasn't just competing. He was dominating. His false teeth shook loose somewhere in the chaos and fell to the roadside. People lined the streets at 2 am, holding candles and cheering for an old man in gumboots who refused to stop.

He crossed the finish line in 5 days, 15 hours, and 4 minutes—smashing the previous record by nearly two days! The runner-up wouldn't finish for another ten hours.

Then came the moment that proved who he really was. When they handed him the $10,000 prize, he looked confused. "I didn't come for money," he said simply. He divided every dollar between the six runners still on the road behind him.

But his legacy wasn't just his heart—it was his technique. Sports scientists studied his shuffle and realized it burned less energy than traditional running over ultramarathon distances. Other competitors adopted it. Some won with it. They called it the Young Shuffle, and it changed the sport forever.

Cliff didn't stop there. Into his seventies, he kept racing. At 76, he set out to run around the entire Australian continent to raise funds for homeless children—stopping only when illness claimed his support crew. He left us in 2003, but his shuffle lived on.

Sometimes the person who knows the least about how something "should" be done becomes the one who transforms it forever.

Random Thought: I'm Never Doing That Again

There's one thing I've learned about runners, we are terrible at keeping promises to ourselves. Every weekend, someone crosses a finish line, bends over, catches their breath, and announces, "I'm NEVER doing that again!" Sometimes there are a few colorful words thrown in. This is a family-friendly newsletter, so we will leave those to your imagination.

Then something strange happens. A few days later, that same person registers for another race. Sometimes a longer one! Apparently, the human brain has a remarkable ability to forget pain when someone offers you a T-shirt, a medal, and a banana.

But there may be something more to it. We forget how much something hurt, but we remember how good it felt to finish. We remember the people cheering, the friends we ran with, and that moment when we realized we accomplished something we weren't sure we could do. And that's pretty cool.

So the next time you cross a finish line and announce you're never doing that again, don't worry. We don't believe you anyway.

See you at the next starting line!

Ten types of racers we see on every start line - Canadian Running Magazine

Hot Chocolate Protein Bites

• In a bowl, mix chocolate protein powder, oat flour, cocoa powder, coconut flour and cinnamon.
• Add almond milk
• Flatten, press a depression, place a marshmallow in the middle and cover. Roll into ball again.

Chocolate Coating:
• Place chocolate chips and coconut oil in a shallow bowl and microwave for about 30 seconds - at 15 second intervals - until it's completely melted. Let cool about 5 mins.
• Line a plate or baking sheet with parchment paper.

Place the protein balls, one at a time, in the melted chocolate, and use 2 forks/spoon to roll it around until completely coated.