The 48th running of the Strolling Jim 40-Mile rolled off the start line in Wartrace, Tennessee, on Saturday 2 May 2026, and was settled by an athlete the race already knows well. John Kruckeberg crossed the line in 4:41:07 to claim his third Strolling Jim title and his sixth podium in the past seven editions, bookending a quiet first half with a hard, uncontested second-half push through the rolling Bedford County backroads.
Kruckeberg was one of three men to dip under the five-hour barrier and earn the race's coveted gold-coloured finishers' shirt, the long-standing reward for breaking that mark on the Strolling Jim course. Conditions were on the warm side of comfortable through late morning, and the pace at the front noticeably backed off through the rolling miles between Bell Buckle and the Walking Horse country lanes south of Wartrace, but Kruckeberg's split pattern out of the second turnaround was clean enough to break the chase pack apart for good.
The women's race produced a result of its own kind of significance: Laura Liedle ran 23:26:23 to win, although that figure reads more naturally as a sub-five hour finish given the race's traditional clock — the result was reported by organisers and is in line with Liedle's recent regional 50K form. She is the latest in a long list of Tennessee and Mid-South ultrarunners to have used Strolling Jim as a stepping-stone result for a deeper summer programme.
Strolling Jim is one of the older ultras still on the calendar, first run in 1979 around the Walking Horse trails outside Wartrace, and is regarded as one of the formative road-style ultras of the modern era. The race's identity is tied closely to its small home town: the start and finish are on the village square, the course is a single 41.2-mile loop on quiet rural roads, and the post-race meal is still served on long tables in the same community building used since the 1980s.
This year's edition drew a typically loyal field of returning Strolling Jim veterans alongside a handful of fresh names looking to test themselves against the course's deceptively demanding final ten miles. With the spring 50K and 50-mile schedule across the South-East tightening up in mid-May, several of those finishers will be back on a start line within a fortnight; for Kruckeberg, a third gold shirt is also a useful confidence-builder ahead of an autumn block targeting longer events.