New Respect for Trail Racers

Thank you. I am trying to preach that for years.

Exactly. It's a different skillset....but I will say that doing some training on trails will make you a better road runner. For example. Do the race you just did. It will make almost any marathon you run seem pancake flat. Hard to complain about the hills of Newton during the Boston Marathon when you have done runs where you climb 1500 feet in 2+ miles (and equal descent).

Yeah I'm usually of the ilk that trail runners are categorically sub-elite, and while still true that doesn't quite capture the scope.

Example: a popular hiking route in Yosemite is JMT from Tuolumne meadows over Donohue pass (11,000) and by thousand island lake and stay on JMT till Mammoth, CA and the bus stop for the return.

It's like 28 miles and 5k vert, my dude jogged this in 3.5 hrs as a training run, that's amazing. Sure everyone else is carrying 40# on that route and I think he brought a lifestraw and a couple gus but I'm impressed.

This type of run would definitely help with road racing because it’s almost like a cross training exercise that also involves some running. We were actually joking about the Newton hills as we were climbing stair shaped rock croppings at about 9000 feet.

I never felt like my cardio system was being redlined like in a road race though the altitude was making it hard to catch my breath after an intense bit of climbing. The limiting factor was always either the impossible climbing or being too scared to fly down the rocky switchbacks. If you misstepped going down, you could have taken a pretty gnarly 10-20 foot tumble yet people were bombing down full blast.

I definitely understand now why aspiring elite runners people move to the high country to train. I would love to be able to vary my workouts with this type of workout every once and a while.

I also like it because when there's lots of vert involved, it's easy to get the HR sky high without as much pounding as I would experience on a track or road (slower speed but same high HR) for 5k-effort workouts.

Yeah, I don’t think the same person could ever be both a world elite road racer and trail runner at the same time. I also don’t think it’s fair to say that trail runners are just wannabe elite road runners. It seems to me that the extra muscle required to pull the hills and stay stable on the downhills would hinder someone from becoming a truly elite road runner. Likewise, those silky smooth East African road running strides aren’t going to do much good negotiating technical trails and rocky downhill switchbacks.

I had ran a few “trail” races before but they were all at close to sea level and mostly hard pack dirt with a few roots and stumps. I had also hiked a bit on the southern portion of the Appalachian Trail. I feel like most people outside of the mountain west region have never actually experienced the type of high altitude mountain trails where most of the big name trail races take place. Its a different beast.

I don’t get OPs argument. Isn’t 6:30 pace pretty slow and easy? So is he trying to say trail running is easy?

I think people don’t understand it because most people don’t have access to the type of high altitude mountain trails where these big trail races are ran. I honestly had no clue how tough it would be.

My last road half from a few months ago was 1:18 and my PR from 2020 is 1:16. I wasn’t out there trying to win this trail race against a bunch of locals who live at altitude. I was saying that holding an 11 minute pace took as much energy from me as holding a 6:30 pace.

Yeah, I got to the point where I was just hiking the uphills because the little bit of extra speed of trying to “run” straight up was not worth the HR spike. Especially since I was not at all acclimated to 9,000ft.

Max King, circa 2009 to about 2013, would beg to differ.

Just 2012 alone:
Houston marathon 2:14:36
Olympic Trials Steeplechase 8:30:54 (Finished 5th, I believe)
JFK 50 Miler 5:34 (Won)
UROC 100K 7:57 (Won)
Pikes Peak Marathon 3:50 (3rd place behind Kilian, 10 minutes behind)

Plus, he also once pinned a bib directly to his chest..no shirt. (Yes, this has been verified).

ya brah, 2 different spirts

2011: World Mountain Running Championships (won)

2013: World 100K (road) Championships (won)

It's too bad mountain/trail racing has been too low-profile to interest most and/or nearly all of history's stars. It's not hard to imagine how things might have shaken out. A few examples -

Probable bosses: Pre, Deek, Porter, Lopes, Kenny...

Probable gone home devastated: Viren, Shorter, Geb, Mobot, Kip...

Actually, Porter did win the 1981 PP Ascent (half-marathon) in 2:13ish. Not sure how that measured up to CR at the time, but the current CR (2:01) was set by Matt Carpenter in 1993 as his turnaround split during the full marathon.

Right, 2:14 is an amazing time, but not close to world elite. Likewise, I’m sure Kipchoge or Bekele wouldn’t be world elite at a trail race, but would probably post a pretty impressive time.

Show Kipchoge or Bekele a nice prize purse and appearance fees and I beg to differ.

I've done some of both and they are utterly different things. I can see how fire road running on long, fairly clean and wide tracks out west could be comparable to road running, except that the climbs on those trails are unlike anything a road runner is going to deal with.

In the east, especially midwest and northeast, the mud, roots, rocks, VERY sharp inclines make trail running a completely different sport than running. It's more like speed hiking combined with picking your way through obstacles downhill, plus focusing to maintain footing and not trip, plus inclines that force you to walk.

Different sports that happen to use legs and feet.

In trail races, you can hit the red zone at the end of an early ascent and recover in the upcoming downhill.

No such thing in road races.

The ability to recover extra quickly from multiple hard efforts over a short time span is a big plus in trail running.

From my personal experience, it takes 3 years to adjust from full road mode to full trail mode.

Some people never adjust, though.

It’s possible that either of those two could convert to ultra distance and dominate IF the ultra was on the roads or nice dirt trails. There is no way either of those guys are going to hang with elite trail racers over mountainous, technical trails. It’s just totally different.