Essential Skills for Trail Runners
Every sport has certain skills, or knowledge that are fundamental to the enjoyment of the sport. Learning these skills can sometimes be a painful process, take skiing for example. The transition from newbie to capable independent skier often follows a fairly set path, with different classes at ski school, colour graded runs to progress through and an obvious skill level to aspire to.
With trail running, there is no clear pathway to follow as you enter the sport and gain experience, but there certainly are essential skills that will help you progress from newbie, to becoming a capable and independent trail runner.
1 - Working out where to run!
It is common to start running trails by accident, without consciously becoming a “trail runner”. Lots of people start out running on the roads, but then get curious, venturing into parks or woodland, working out where they are just by joining the dots between known places. Eventually your repertoire of route options grows and you just know where you are. That is all well and good, but it is a slow process and doesn’t help when you are away from home and want to get out for a run, or in the hills on a misty day.
The ability to look online or on a map and plan a route that is going to work, take about the right amount of time, have the right amount of hills, not involve crawling through brambles or getting shouted at by farmers is our first essential skill.
2. Running where you planned to run!
The first skill of route planning is useless unless it is also paired with the ability to actually navigate around the route that you have planned! With or without the help of GPS technology, recognising features and keeping track of your progress mean that you can focus on the running. Of course, working out where you are if it all goes wrong is a pretty handy skill too!
3. What kit to carry
Some kit will just make your run more comfortable, the right shoes might give you more grip in slippy conditions and some kit will keep you alive if you have an incident out on the trails and you need to wait for help. Knowing what to carry on any given day is definitely an essential skill.
4. How to look after your body
There is no doubt that running can be hard on your body and it is a sport associated with a lot of injuries. Daily good habits like a mobility warm up and actually using that foam roller that sits on a shelf can make a huge difference to how sore you feel after running. A thoughtfully prepared strength programme will also help reduce your injury risk and help you move better.
5. How to not fall over
Watching someone run confidently down steep, slippy and technical terrain is truly a thing of beauty! The perfect physical expression of the complexity of the human body. It can seem like this level of downhill running somehow breaks the laws of physics, but if you break it down the individual elements aren’t that complicated and used with the appropriate level of pace and enthusiasm that your body can handle, you might find some flow!
You can learn all these skills and more on our Trail Running Essentials weekend.
We also have single day courses for:
- Martin Moran Round
- How to choose a running guide
- Essential Skills for Trail Runners
- Supporting the Green Runners
- Tor de Geants 2023 - race report
- Trail safety - Getting help in the hills
- Trail safety - Essential kit for trail running safely
- The northern traverse - A successful DNF
- Better running - Strength training for runners
- 5 reasons your next goal doesn't need to be a race!
- Tot Dret 130 - 2022 Race report
- Bob Graham Round - 10 years on
- Paddy Buckley Round
- Cape Wrath Ultra 2021
- Charlie Ramsey's Round
- 2021 dates now confirmed
- Cairngorm Parkrun - Part 2 - The running
- Cairngorm Parkrun - Part 1 - Planning
- Rigby's Round
- Better Running - Ankle strength and stability
- Better Running - Warming up for running
- Approved training provider - The OMM - Original Mountain Marathon
- Team goal setting 2020 - Ben
- Team goal setting 2020 - Ian
- Effective goal setting
- Salomon Skyline Scotland weekend report
- Book review - The Big Rounds, Cicerone
- Running the Tour Du Mont Blanc
- Berghaus Dragons Back Race - The power of the mind
- Mountain Marathon Preparation, a Newbie’s Reflection – By Vernon Gayle
- Mountain Marathons, Madness?
- Inov-8 team clothing
- Custom maps from Harvey maps
- Inov-8 partnership
- Berghaus Dragon's Back race - Training update
- Rigby's Round - A winter attempt
- Gift vouchers now available
- 2019 dates launched
- Failure or Success - A matter of perspective
- Navigation for runners and Mountain running skills
- Trail Running Skills weekend
- Cape Wrath Ultra - Race report
- Cape Wrath Ultra - Race time!
- Huge thanks to Inov-8 for support for Cape Wrath
- Navigation for runners - 8 April
- Training progress
- Gift Vouchers
- Goal Setting - Cape Wrath Ultra
- Welcome to Trail Running Scotland
Trail Running Courses
Latest News
On the 29th May I completed the Martin Moran Round in Torridon, in a time of 21 hours and 45 minutes, becoming the first person to repeat the round since it was created in 2022.
Just because someone puts some nice pictures on instagram and seems to do a lot of skydiving, you wouldn’t jump out of a plane with them before asking a few more questions! If you are heading into the mountains, or remote trails of Scotland, you should also have a few questions to ask when choosing a running guide.
Vision
At Trail Running Scotland we are working hard towards the vision of a vibrant community of runners, connected through shared values of health, wellbeing, personal performance and an appreciation of the wild places we choose to play in. We aim to do this by providing the highest quality of skills training and inspirational experiences.
Values
We believe:
- The environment in which we run is fundamental to our enjoyment of the sport.
- Connection with our landscape and natural history fosters a greater appreciation of our environment and therefore our impact upon it.
- Every runner has the potential to develop given the right training and motivation.
- Every runner can find their own personal version of high performance.
- Every running experience should be fun.
- The trail running community should be welcoming, inclusive and diverse.
We are proud to support The Green Runners
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Trail Running Scotland Ltd. Company registration number SC786843