2027 Pinckney Trail Weekend

The Pinckney Trail Weekend has been sending runners into the woods of southeast Michigan since 1998 — 27 editions of racing on the Potawatomi and Crooked Lake Trails, with a half marathon sharing the weekend alongside a marathon, 50K and 5-miler. This is honest trail running: dirt underfoot and near-constant hills rather than a flat, padded-out road loop.

The half draws a modest, steady field of roughly 300 finishers, and about a quarter of them come back in later years — the kind of return rate that says more about a race than any medal blurb. Spring conditions out here are brisk: race-day temperatures have averaged in the high 30s to mid 50s, with wind enough to notice on exposed stretches.

What waits at the end is the reason people come back. Finishers collect a medal, then settle in for food, beer and a post-race party built around bonfires and music, with a share of entry fees going to the John Rogucki Memorial Fund. It is a small race with a long memory, and it behaves like one.