About the Club

Stevens Creek Striders Running Club is based in Cupertino, California. It has about 75 members residing in and around Silicon Valley. The club is a casual, fun loving group with a very diverse membership. Runners of all ages and abilities get together to train, run, and sometimes just play.

Stevens Creek Striders meets on Saturday morning at 8.30am to run on the trails of Stevens Creek County Park. There are about 40 miles of trails in the park and these vary from easy to quite difficult. After a short meeting, members form groups of similar ability and run or walk for around 90 minutes, followed by breakfast in Hobee's Restaurant in Cupertino.

There are numerous mid-week runs and the offerings vary as members and tribes come and go! The "hard-core" trail runners, who are preparing for demanding ultras such as Western States, meet on Sunday mornings for long difficult trail runs in the mid peninsula mountains.

On the social side, the club has an event about once a month. Some are simply fun, such as the Holiday Party with dinner, dancing and the presentation of awards nominated by the membership. The Striders has occasional picnics, expeditions, relay races, camp-outs and ski weekends. The club has an active web site and the newsletter "What's Afoot?" is published quarterly.

Striders at Last Chance, June 2005
Photo by Jean Pommier

Stevens Creek Striders is proud of its involvement with the Western States 100 mile Endurance Run and has been providing the aid station at Last Chance (mile 43) for more than 25 years. The name Last Chance is derived from a ghost mining village which stood at the site. Today it's a forested wilderness. Our 30 volunteers aim to make Last Chance the best aid station in the event.

In addition to the aid station, members always compete at Western States. In 2007, 5 Striders ran and 4 successfully completed the course. Our station captain Jean was 15th man from around 400 starters. It's becoming more difficult to obtain places in WS these days and in 2008 we'll have 2 runners and a crew of 30 volunteers at Last Chance.

Members of our club participate in many other events. Every year we have representatives at the Boston Marathon, Miwok 100k and many 10k's, halfs and marathons throughout California. Mark W completed the 152 mile Spartathalon in Greece during 10 consecutive years. Several members have participated in TNT and many tens of thousands of dollars have been raised for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. We also provide an aid station at our neighboring running club's ultra event in Almaden Quicksilver County Park in May. The last hurrah of summer is to camp at beautiful Big Sur and run in the River Run 10k at the end of October.

We think ourselves lucky to live and run in California. The weather for outdoor activities is simply perfect. It's seldom too wet, too cold or too hot for outdoor fun, and we're close to some of the natural wonders of the USA. In recent years we have enjoyed expeditions to Yosemite, Mt Whitney and Grand Canyon.

To learn more about Stevens Creek Striders, please visit: http://www.stevenscreekstriders.org. To get to know us, come and run one Saturday. You'll be welcome. And don't forget to bring $6 to feed the parking meter in the park.