If you have always been a road runner, you should consider trail running as a way to improve your overall fitness. Elite Kenyan runners wouldn’t dream of pounding out all their miles on hard, paved surfaces, preferring to do many of their workouts on dirt tracks. Whilst trying to copy their running plans would be crazy for most runners, emulating their usage of varied surface sessions has many benefits. If you are interested in learning how to start trail running, I’ll take you through the basics so that you enjoy it straight away. When I interviewed Haile Gebrselassie, he said that his favourite runs were long, easy runs through forests.
Benefits of starting trail running
The benefits of trail running are both mental and physical. The mental benefits are easy to imagine – out for a run in the rolling countryside, fresh air, geese flying overhead and no traffic noise. Time to relax and either zone out, Zen style, or think about life. Whatever you fancy.
The physical benefits come from the surfaces and hills.
Surfaces while trail running
If you were to look at the ground while out road running, you’ll notice that it’s essentially and flat, smooth surface. You may have to jump up and down the occasional kerb, over a pothole, or deal with a slight drainage camber where it’s not perfectly level, but ultimately on roads, your feet are doing exactly the same thing with every step. When you venture off-road and start trail running, you’ll find that the terrain is different. The surface will change on each run, depending on weather and where you go. It might also change within a run:
Surface texture: Imagine all the different types of surfaces you can run on! To get you started: sand, pebbles, chalk, dirt, dust, grass, loam, chippings, leaves. Now imagine how different those will all be depending on whether it has rained or not. For example, chalk will be grippy when dry, but like ice when wet. Dirt will turn to mud. Grass will take more effort. Your feet will move through different ranges of motion on all these surfaces, compared to a smooth road.
Surface variability: The next thing you’ll notice is that every step is different when running trails. Imagine a dry dirt track that has been used by many other people and animals. The indentations left in the ground will mean that every time you put your feet on the floor, the foot will land at a different angle. If it’s muddy or soft, the feet will have to search more for grip, but the same trail frozen in Winter might be completely solid.
Now can see that your feet and ankles will be working through a great range of motion and thus get stronger on trails than if you had just run every step identically on the road. Once you get used to this, it will also mean that trail running is potentially easier on the legs than road running, because it’s not one exact set of muscles with every step, and the ground is often more forgiving than super-hard pavement. Instead, the steps are shared across more varied muscle fibres. I say potentially, because trails can often have much steeper hills than you find on most roads.
Hills while trail running
If you choose to aim for very hilly trails, it introduces a new type of difficulty. Running up hills puts extra effort through the calf muscles and is harder work. Running down hills puts extra effort on the quads, but is easier effort, at least until the hill gets steep and then it’s hard again! For an idea of what it’s like to run down a steep hill, head to your stairs now and try to walk down them in slow motion. All the loading happens while the legs are bending, called eccentric loading while the muscles are getting longer. When running on the flat or up hills, most of the loading happens as the legs are straightening, pushing off the ground and muscles getting shorter. If you never practice this eccentric loading, you may struggle with any road race that isn’t completely flat.
This combination of surfaces and hills means that if you start trail running, long term you’ll become a stronger athlete, reaping the benefits and have a lot of fun too!
Best shoes to start trail running
I see this all the time in online running groups: “What’s the best shoe for trail running?” Runners looking to start trail running often think there’s one magic shoe that can do it all. However, it’s a little more complex than that.
If the trails are dry and firm enough, you can use your normal running shoes, although if the terrain is not smooth, with lots of ruts, roots, and odd cambers, really high cushioned shoes feel a bit unsteady and put a bit of extra stress on the ankles. If that’s all you’ve got, stick to smoother trails while you get started.
If the trails are wet and slippery, then you’ll need a trail shoe, otherwise it’s not going to be fun. Trail shoes have lugs on the bottom that grip into softer dirt or mud. I like to have a choice of trail shoes with really long lugs for deeper mud and some with much smaller lugs for when it’s only a little wet. So there’s no one “best shoe”. It depends on where you are going, what the weather has been like and what’s comfortable on your feet. If you have a local running shop, support them by trying and buying there.
Here’s a six minute video if you want more info about different types of trail shoes:
Trail vision
There’s a temptation to look down at your feet when starting trail running. Fear of tripping and lack of confidence in how the feet are going to cope with uneven surfaces will make the fun less fun, so to give you that confidence, do two things.
Lift your knees a bit higher than on roads. Just a couple of centimetres. This will ensure your feet go over stones and other trip hazards. If you aren’t sure, run on some grass and make sure your feet go over it, rather than kicking through it.
Keep your head up and look ahead of you, whilst glancing down with your eyes every now and then. Look further ahead on the down hill sections where you might be going faster.
Start trail running gradually
Just because you can run for an hour on roads, doesn’t mean you can run for an hour on trails. When you start out, give your legs a chance to adapt to that larger range of ankle movement by doing shorter runs, plus add some walk breaks in if you want. Start once a week too, rather than switching them all to trails straight away. Build up gradually over many weeks, as with any change to your running plan.
Trail safety
If you twist an ankle in a city and have to stop, you can probably just hail a taxi and jump in. If you have to stop on a trail 10 minutes run from a road, that might be thirty minutes hobble with a sore foot, with no one around to ask for help. If it’s cold, windy or wet (or all three!) this sudden change from running to not moving or moving very slowly can be dangerous in terms of heat loss. Take an extra layer and tie it around your waist in case of emergency. Hopefully you’ll never need it. Similarly, I will take a whistle, a bandage, a thin poncho (maybe to help someone else!) and a waterproof coat when running long trails, all in a running vest.
Where are the trails?
Finding trails is part of the fun. Seek out woodland, coastal trails, parkland, bridleways and just nose around, as long as you have right of way. Also see if you can spot paths off bridleways. Explore. You can always turn around.
If you have any questions about how to start trail running, ask in the comments below.
