Pro ultrarunner. Community organizer.
The long-distance grind.

Canyon Woodward is one of the top-ranked 100-mile and 100K runners in the United States, with back-to-back top-three American finishes at UTMB and major wins across the country. In 2025, he earned a Golden Ticket at the Javelina 100M — capping a season with four wins and three course-record performances across eight races. This June, he finished 8th overall at the 2026 Western States 100 in 14:45:24.

Raised in the mountains of western North Carolina, Canyon was homeschooled through high school, then attended Harvard. He is a Patagonia Ambassador, Mount to Coast athlete, and member of the Green Racing Project. His running is inseparable from his sense of place — whether he's on the logging trails above Franklin, NC, in the canyons of southern Utah, or racing across the high country of the Sierra Nevada.

Off the trail, Canyon is a community organizer, co-author of Dirt Road Revival: How to Rebuild Rural Politics and Why Our Future Depends On It, and co-founder of Dirtroad Organizing — a nonprofit equipping the next generation of rural political organizers. He holds the fastest known time on the SCAR route, a 72-mile traverse across Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and has organized winning electoral campaigns in rural Maine. For Canyon, the long-distance grind of running and the slow work of political change are one and the same.