A Road Runner's Ode to Trail Running

The first hurdle I had to get over when getting into trail running was pace anxiety. No matter how skilled you are at road running, the curves, elevation changes, and tricky footing will put an inevitable anchor around your waist, corrupting the sacred texts that make up the metrics on your GPS watch. The more closely you tether your self esteem to the exact number of seconds it takes you to cover a given distance, the stronger the animal instinct to revolt when you see that number rise higher as you step off the carefully graded asphalt.

Run fast, run far, run faster and further than fellow apes, run faster and further then self ape did yesterday, faster and further equals more happy ape brain chemicals. For all the pomp and technical depth of running as a sport or dedicated hobby, these are the true universal urges that drive us on a day to day level whether we admit it or not. Trail running represents a credible threat to speed and thus identity.

With enough time and forced re-education, identity can be shifted. I soon learned to embrace the unique challenges of trail running even as they appeared to distract from the purity of chasing the dragon of faster times. The near-constant terrain variation works different muscles and creates a distinctly different workout than the steady monotone of the road. You're forced to focus on every foot/ground alignment, pace varies with the shifting whims of the Earth, and soon you realize that what you lose in speed you gain in a skill set that exists alongside rather than in opposition to the ability to travel in a straight line very quickly. Take that straight line, tie it in knots and fling it into the air, and you get a challenge that's not as uniform but no less worthy of your time.

Then there are the purely aesthetic benefits. The padding of running shoes mixed with birdsong and windblown leaves. Shady boughs overhead giving way to intermittent shafts of sunlight. The steady companionship of a stream running along side you. The dirt is soft, the air is damp, and your shins feel the brush of some overgrown foliage as the woods thicken around you. It would be easy to veer into pretentiousness by speaking of something like a spiritual experience, but I do believe that there is a satisfyingly magnetic relationship between humans and nature that can't be replicated by the brutally functional man-made. Simply put, trail running is just plain neat, and fun. Sometimes one of my local trails will pass along a popular road, and a part of me wants to call out to the runners I see out there: "Don't you know that all of this is right here, just a few steps away? Come on over, the dirt is fine!"

Given just how long it took me to dabble in this new world, I can't really blame them. There are obvious downsides other than slower times and the occasional tripping hazard. Access is the biggest one. I'm incredibly lucky to have moved near a park system, and would otherwise have to go through the effort of driving to a trailhead, a laughable notion when one can just walk out the front door for a weekday workout around the neighborhood. Weather is re-contextualized as a more impactful force than it is on the sidewalks. If the road is a bit slick you watch out for deep puddles and that's about it. If the trails are sodden from a few days of rain on the other hand, I often avoid them entirely. I'm awkward enough on my feet; I don't need more excuses to fall over and running on muddy trails can degrade them for everyone.

The type of run also affects whether I choose to head to the trails or not. For most general aerobic miles it doesn't really matter what kind of terrain I'm on, but for any kind of interval, tempo, or other highly pace-dependent workout I stick to the roads for consistency's sake. Factoring in the roads I have to traverse in order to reach the trails and a desire to mix things up from day to day, I still do half or more of my weekly miles on roads for convenience if nothing else.