Nine Loops to Enlightenment (Or How to Run in Circles on Purpose)
There’s something deeply unsettling about willingly signing up to run in circles.
Not metaphorically—people do that all the time. Careers, meetings, group texts that never die. I mean physically. You drive out to a quiet forest preserve on a Saturday morning, lace up your shoes, and commit to repeating the same 5.5-mile loop up to nine times. Not because you got lost. Because you paid for the privilege.
Welcome to the CUSS Runners event.
It sounds like a support group for people who’ve recently discovered hills, but it’s actually an ultramarathon. A collection of distances—10K, 25K, 50K, and 50 miles—held at Deer Grove West, where the terrain is mercifully described as “100% runnable,” which in ultrarunning language means: you’ll still question your life choices, just without tripping over roots as often.
The schedule is deceptively normal. The 50 milers and 50K runners start at 7:00 AM, which is early enough to make you wonder if this is a race or a mild punishment for something you did in a past life. The 10K runners get the luxurious 8:00 AM start, which in this crowd is essentially brunch.
Packet pickup happens before sunrise. There is no pomp, no expo, no DJ screaming into a microphone. Just a quiet gathering of people who have collectively decided that running a marathon is insufficiently complicated.
And then there’s the loop.
Five and a half miles. Dirt and gravel. Repeat.
For the 10K, you do one loop plus a turnaround—like the race is gently easing you into the idea that forward progress is optional. The 25K is three loops. The 50K is six. And the 50 mile? Nine loops, which is less a race and more a long-term relationship with a path.
At first glance, this sounds like poor course design. Who wants to see the same trees over and over again?
But that’s the wrong question.
The Loop Is the Point
Most people think a race is about distance. How far you go. How fast you get there. Whether your watch congratulates you in a tone that feels vaguely condescending.
But an ultramarathon like this isn’t about distance. It’s about repetition.
We’re trained to believe progress is linear. You start here, you end there, and ideally, there’s a dramatic finish line moment where someone hands you a banana and a medal that proves you are, in fact, a person who does things.
Loops ruin that illusion.
You start… and then you come back to where you started. Again. And again. And again.
There’s no scenic “new chapter.” No fresh terrain to distract you. Just the same aid station, the same volunteers, the same path that now knows more about you than most of your coworkers.
And something strange happens when you remove novelty.
You start noticing everything.
The slight incline you didn’t feel the first time. The way your stride changes when you’re tired. The exact moment your brain begins negotiating with you like a shady car salesman: What if we just did seven loops instead of nine? Seven is a great number. Prime number. Very respectable.
The loop strips away the illusion that the next mile will feel different just because it’s next. It forces you to confront the idea that improvement isn’t about new conditions—it’s about how you show up to the same ones.
Which is an uncomfortable thought, especially if you’ve built your entire productivity strategy around switching apps.
The Aid Station: Civilization in a Clearing
There’s exactly one aid station.
Not scattered along the course. Not strategically placed to reward your progress. Just one, sitting at the start/finish line, offering water, Gatorade, soda, something called Regain (which sounds less like a drink and more like a command), and eventually, pizza.
This is where ultrarunning diverges from normal human behavior.
In a standard race, aid stations are checkpoints. You pass them, maybe grab a cup, and keep moving. Efficiency is the goal.
Here, the aid station becomes a social hub. A gravitational center. A place where time behaves differently.
You might stop for a quick drink. Or you might sit down for a minute that turns into five, which turns into a philosophical discussion about why you’re doing this in the first place, which turns into eating pizza at 2:30 PM while still technically in the middle of a 50-mile race.
And nobody judges you.
Because everyone else is doing the same math.
The aid station reveals something we don’t like to admit: performance isn’t just about output. It’s about recovery, decision-making, and the ability to keep going when stopping would be easier and more socially acceptable.
Also, pizza.
Never underestimate the motivational power of mid-race pizza. Entire civilizations have been built on less.
The Rules That Quietly Matter
It’s a cupless race, which is a polite way of saying: bring your own cup, because we trust you to be an adult.
Hydration bottles are mandatory for the longer distances, which is less about safety and more about forcing you to take responsibility for your own survival. A subtle but important distinction.
Crews can only meet you at the aid station. Pacers are allowed—but only after four loops, which is essentially the race saying: You’re on your own for a while. Let’s see what you’re made of before we let someone else help you.
These rules don’t feel dramatic. There’s no big speech about them. But they create a framework where the runner has to engage with the experience more directly.
You can’t outsource the hard parts.
And that’s where things get interesting.
The Psychology of “Just One More Loop”
At some point—usually around loop four or five—the race stops being physical.
Your legs are tired, sure. But they were tired two loops ago. That’s not new information.
What’s new is the conversation in your head.
We’ve done enough.
This is good.
No one would blame us for stopping.
And then, quietly:
We could do one more.
Ultrarunning is built on this negotiation. Not grand heroics. Not cinematic moments. Just the repeated decision to continue when stopping is completely reasonable.
It’s not that the runners are tougher than everyone else.
It’s that they’ve practiced sitting with discomfort long enough to realize it’s not permanent. It rises, peaks, and—if you don’t panic—passes.
Which is a skill that applies to almost everything.
Work. Parenting. Trying to fix a website issue that makes absolutely no sense and definitely worked yesterday.
The loop teaches you that you don’t need to solve the entire problem. You just need to commit to the next segment.
Five and a half miles at a time.
Running in Circles vs. Going Nowhere
From the outside, this race looks absurd.
Nine loops? Why not just run somewhere else?
Because “somewhere else” is often just a distraction.
We love the idea of change. New tools, new strategies, new plans. The belief that the next thing will fix everything the current thing hasn’t.
But most of the time, the work isn’t about finding a new path.
It’s about staying on the one you’re already on long enough to understand it.
The loop is honest in a way that linear progress isn’t. It doesn’t pretend you’re constantly moving forward. It shows you exactly where you are, over and over again, until you either accept it or quit.
And acceptance, it turns out, is a pretty powerful performance enhancer.
The Finish Line That Isn’t Really the Point
There is a cutoff time—8:00 PM. Which means you have thirteen hours to complete your loops.
Plenty of time. Unless you’re the one running.
Some people will finish early. Some will finish just before the cutoff. Some won’t finish at all.
And yet, all of them will have spent the day doing something most people would dismiss as unnecessary.
Running in circles.
But by the time they’re done, the circles don’t feel pointless.
They feel precise.
Intentional.
A way of taking something chaotic—effort, fatigue, doubt—and giving it structure.
Loop by loop.
The Lingering Thought
It’s easy to laugh at the idea of running nine loops in the same place.
Until you realize how much of life already works that way.
Same routines. Same challenges. Same conversations, slightly reworded.
The difference is, most of us don’t call it a race.
We just call it normal.
And maybe the real trick—the quiet, uncomfortable one—isn’t finding a better path.
It’s learning how to run the loop you’re already on… just a little more deliberately next time.