Anton Krupicka is a renowned mountain runner with a philosopher’s heart. Though he’s won at the sport’s top level, it’s his soulful outlook and trademark appearance that’s developed a worldwide following. Often running shirtless and sporting long hair and a beard, he’s a symbol of freedom on the trails and the timeless nature of the sport.
Anton was born in Nebraska and began running at age 11. He took to it immediately, creating training logs and completing his first marathon at age 12. Later, he attended Colorado College, obtaining three bachelor’s degrees in philosophy, geology, and physics while competing in cross-country and track.
He won back-to-back Leadville 100s in 2006 and 2007, with numerous top performances and FKTs to follow. He’d share deep perspectives on his running blog while training upward of 200 miles per week.
Today, he resides in Boulder, Colorado, where he spends summers exploring the surrounding peaks of Rocky Mountain National Park. When you watch him run, there’s something deeper going on, something more meaningful than pure exercise.
I wanted to know what it’s like to run at his level and how his experiences and wisdom could impact everyday trail runners. Here’s what he had to say.
(Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and length)
The Manual: Did you get out there this morning?
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, today I — where are you located?
The Manual: I’m in Stowe, Vermont.
Anton Krupicka: OK cool. I was climbing in Eldorado Canyon this morning. And then just did a short bike ride after, maybe 30, 35 miles. Kind of just a couple easy hours, flat. Yesterday I did an 8-hour run, so I was pretty tired.
The Manual: What were the stats on that one?
Anton Krupicka: Well, so the run was complicated because just west of town here is the Continental Divide, Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Indian Peaks Wilderness.
And I did run where, oh, you park up about 10,000 feet, and then you run up to the Divide. And then you traverse along the Divide on this section that is — it’s all off-trail scrambling and some technical, like low-class rock climbing through, let’s see — I’m trying to think.
Toll, Pawnee, Shoshoni, Apache, Navajo, Arikaree, Deshawa — there are nine peaks. And then it’s like a long run back. The loop that I did was like a like a 50k basically, 31 miles. So then I had to run 18 miles on trail to get back to my car at the start.
The Manual: Oh, wow.
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, the point of the run was to do the traverse on the Divide itself, through all the high peaks there.
The Manual: Oh man, that sounds cool.
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, it was a good day out. Right now, well, we’ve been having a pretty strong monsoon this year. So it’s been pretty stormy and unstable weather in the afternoons over the past month or so. But this week, it’s finally stabilizing, which usually happens in the fall. So that was — I was kind of going actually to get up there and get a good long one in, while the weather’s good.
The Manual: Yeah, it’s good to hit that window when you’ve got a minute.
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, exactly.
The Manual:In one of your recent interviews, you said, “Running is still the sickest thing of all time.” Can you expand on that?
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, I think that — maybe this is just inside my own head — but I have a tendency to get a little bit cynical about running. And so I think I probably said that to — like in defense of running. What I say, what I have grown to say recently, I guess, is that I love running. I just don’t love kind of the scene and the culture around running.
But running itself is so stripped down and elemental and simple, and that’s what I find really attractive about it, I guess.
The Manual:Say this run that you just went on, when you go out the door, what’s getting you excited about the day?
Anton Krupicka: For me, what’s getting me excited is a couple things. One is I want to be in the alpine, moving efficiently and unfettered through technical terrain, because to me, that’s what is the purpose of summer. I like to be in the alpine in the winter, as well, but you’re on skis, the weather’s horrendous. It’s a lot more complicated in the wintertime.
In the summer, I can go up there with a jacket and shoes and shorts and be out all day with, you know, maybe a couple gels in my pocket. And it’s super simple, you know. So being just — relying on your fitness and your skill, and your experience to move efficiently in an environment that is normally quite inhospitable, kind of like foreboding or forbidden. And so that’s what gets me excited about that, is you know, like I said, I tagged like 9 or 10 peaks, all above — almost all of them above 13,000 feet. And then dropping back down.
It’s the combination, though. It’s like being able to approach quickly and then have the skill lset to — how do I say this? It’s like a mixed-terrain run. In the cycling world, gravel bikes are all the rage right now. It’s because you can have one bike that kind of does everything OK.
You can ride a road on it and it still feels pretty fast. You can ride some dirt road and it’s in its element. But then you can duck onto some singletrack.
And that’s what I like with running as well, is like OK, there’s an approach of an hour. And then I’m scrambling up a talus slope. And then I’m doing some actual technical climbing on a ridge or of a peak. But then the egress is alpine tundra running back down to tree line. And then slower singletrack back to the car, past lakes. It’s just a big variety of terrain and a big variety of movement styles, I guess, from running mid-6-minute miles on a forest service road to doing rock and boulder hopping for what feels like hours on end, to even technical rock scrambling.
I like that — I really like that mix of movement. You’re covering a lot of ground. It’s a 31-mile run and you get it done in 8 hours.
The Manual: Recently, you broke your 11-year personal record on Long’s Peak. What does it feel like when you get into the zone?
Anton Krupicka: It’s just pure focus and presence, I guess. For me, that’s the purpose of bringing intensity to any pursuit, I guess, is that it demands focus and presence in the moment.
The Manual:Oh, an in-the-moment kind of thing.
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, and when you can achieve that, usually you’ve entered some kind of flow state that it just feels like you’re existing and operating on a different plane than you normally do. And that’s kind of the goal with all movement in the outdoors, is being, like, fully inhabiting your body.
It’s easy — like right now, I’m literally sitting on the couch, talking to you on the phone. It’s easy to feel pretty divorced from my body, like there’s no purpose for it. I’m tapping out emails or whatever. It’s like it’s all cerebral and kind of administrative.
But the thing about sport is that it requires the synthesis of mind and body in a way that, I don’t know, a lot of life doesn’t, modern life doesn’t. And I find that to be, I would say, immensely satisfying and enriching.
The Manual: Say you’re climbing these 13,000-foot peaks, and you enter the “pain cave.” How do you manage that and keep going?
Anton Krupicka: I’m 41. I’ve been a runner for 30 years — like a serious runner. My first training log entries are from 1995. And the discomfort of the sport is just — of endurance sport in general — is just second nature for me, I guess.
I don’t intellectualize it. It’s just part of the — it’s not the point. It’s just kind of like a thing you have to deal with. I don’t know. But — what am I trying to say? The discomfort of endurance sport is — that’s where the challenge comes from usually.
And part of why we pursue these things is to be confronted with a challenge, where you’re forced into a choice between OK, am I going to be proud of the decision I make in this moment, or am I going to regret it later?
And that’s kind of like the decision between choosing the hard option or the soft option. So I just try to always choose the thing that is not going to be instantaneously gratifying but that I’m going to look back in a few hours, or a few days, and be proud that I persevered. I don’t think of it as a “pain cave.”
The Manual: You see it as part of the process.
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, it’s just part of the whole game. I get turned off by — I feel like the culture picks up on these clichés, and then everyone starts saying them. But the short answer is discomfort is just part of the activity. And that’s something that, over the course of three decades, I’ve just reconciled with.
The Manual: I agree with you. It sure feels better when you challenge yourself rather than just giving in.
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, it’s A, more memorable. But B, you’re going out there, you’re trying to do a difficult thing for a reason, and that reason is to see if you can do it. So if every time it gets hard, you just give up, then why are you even out there? You know what I mean? If it was going to be easy, there wouldn’t be any meaning.
The Manual: What is something in your experience over the years, a nugget of wisdom, that you could share with a recreational runner?
Anton Krupicka: Running is an injury-prevention game. If you can stay healthy, you will see improvement. But running’s super abusive, so it’s hard to stay healthy. You’re literally just pounding the ground with your body. It’s really destructive.
For me, that perspective comes from spending a lot of the last 10 years on the bike or even backcountry ski touring. It’s just so much easier on the body. There’s no impact. You’re coasting along, you’re just sliding along. But running is, yeah, you’re hitting the ground.
The Manual: After one of your epic runs, like the one yesterday, what do you like to eat?
Anton Krupicka: Last night we had spaghetti with pan-seared tomatoes and sardines. Probably parmesan cheese grated on there. And then like a big spinach festival salad.
I don’t run for the reward afterward. I like all the normal foods. I like burgers. I like pizza.
But yesterday, that run wasn’t an end in and of itself. So there wasn’t — it wasn’t the end of some big training block or season, or something. It was another preparatory run. But soon, hopefully, I hope to do a couple big runs. And one of those will be like, I’m done, I need a break. And then, yeah, I’ll go out and get some pizza or something.
The Manual: It sounds like in your running, you’re all about the moment, experiencing it as it happens.
Anton Krupicka: That’s the ideal. I’m not always successful at that. I can spend a lot of time on a run wishing it was done, too. But that’s just not — I try not to be in that headspace.
The Manual: How do you balance performing your best versus having a good time?
Anton Krupicka: Performing your best is having a good time. One of the best times for me is when I’m performing my best.
The Manual: Yeah, it feels good.
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I don’t think those are all — I think they’re kind of one and the same and not mutually exclusive.
The Manual: Can you describe your role in developing the La Sportiva Prodigio?
Anton Krupicka: I don’t know if I had much of a role (laughter). I mean, I got a pair a year ago and I had some minor feedback from that. But I definitely was not involved in the conception of the shoe. Like I wasn’t like, here’s the brief on the shoe that I’m looking for.
But in getting a very early sample in my size, I suppose I played a small part in some wear-testing feedback. But that’s just a pretty standard part of being a sponsored athlete, is you have those kinds of opportunities. But it definitely wasn’t a shoe that was for me or anything.
I really like it. I’m a big fan. But it wasn’t a shoe that I conceived, no. I wore it yesterday.
The Manual: So you use it in the high alpine?
Anton Krupicka: Yeah, it totally depends. There are two shoes from La Sportiva, the Mutant and the Prodigio, that are my main running shoes. But they’re very different shoes.
The Mutant has a much deeper lug and kind of a more supportive and burly upper. So it does well in scree and snow I would say. And earlier in the summer, in the alpine, I was having to cross a lot of snowfields and that kind of thing. And I really liked them.
But the Prodigio has a lower lug and is generally a little more cushioned. And so it grips really well on rock right out of the box because the lug is lower. But it’s nice, you know, yesterday was an 8-hour run. And on a long day like that, the roomier toebox and the cushier midsole are really helpful for being out there that long.
The Manual: I appreciate the time, Tony, and I hope all your adventures go great.
Anton Krupicka: All right, thanks a lot, Mark. Have a good one.
