Trail Running Stories
Martin Johnson embarks on his most challenging run, as he explores the connection between Black British history and the River Thames.
A runner explores what it takes to find quiet in the world, and in our minds.
Reflections on the 2022 Oak Flat Prayer Run, a gathering and a protest of a planned copper mine that could destroy this sacred site.
An attempt to set the fastest known time on the 184-mile path to the source of the River Thames.
Lydia Jennings honors Indigenous scientists of the past, present and future.
The communities of Cajón del Maipo, in Chile, are seeing their environment be threatened by an unnecessary hydroelectric project.
Trail runner and activist Felipe Cancino takes us on a 120 km run through the Maipo River Valley—revealing along the way the impacts of the Alto Maipo hydropower project on the local ecosystem, its communities and traditions; and the threat it poses to the water supply of Santiago’s 7.1 million residents.
Campaigning for clean air might be a marathon, but progress is finally being made for communities in UK city centers.
Exploring one of the least visited but most revisited national parks, on foot.
A dead-end dirt road is the start to a new challenge—and a fight to protect South America’s Yosemite.
The Red Desert in southwest Wyoming is the largest unfenced area in the continental United States. In order to raise awareness about this threatened ecosystem, several Wyoming conservation groups have banded together to organize a trail race that brings runners, local stakeholders, and concerned citizens together to experience this place and see exactly what is at stake.
Running through the most-visited wilderness in the continental United States, rallying to its defense.
A trail running race in southwest Wyoming brings attention to the importance of protecting the largest unfenced area in the contiguous United States.
Jenn Shelton traverses the Sierra High Route.
Krissy Moehl reports from the inaugural takayna ultramarathon “There are no footprints.” Fellow Patagonia ambassador and New Zealand native Grant Guise voiced what I was thinking. Our headlamps and phone lights dimly illuminated the overgrown double-track from Rebecca Road. “If 100 people are starting a race in five minutes, we would see footprints,” he said…
In his new book, Training for the Uphill Athlete, Steve House joins forces with coach Scott Johnston and athlete Kílian Jornet to develop a comprehensive approach to finding the joy and the payoff of intense training effort. Even lunges. The wind had made its presence known all night, the tiny tent shaking off its layer…
Patagonia is thrilled to publish Steve House and Scott Johnston’s second training book, Training for the Uphill Athlete, for which they teamed up with world-class endurance athlete Kílian Jornet. This is an excerpt from the book, now available in Patagonia stores, on Patagonia.com, and at your favorite bookstore or online distributor. I race a lot:…
For the slo-mo, bug-bitten, exhausted joy of really long runs. Time expands and compresses on long runs. Moments of navigation or extended discomfort can seem endless, while the landscape sifts by like a slow-moving picture. And then suddenly it’s been hours that slipped by without you noticing, except for the subtle changes in light and…
Some families share religion, camping, lavish vacations, opera. Other families go running.
On clear days in the Pacific Northwest, views of Mount Baker depend on the marine layer and the storms. The 10,781-foot snowcapped dome is often obscured by the shifting weather, and though I’d grown up looking at the mountain, I didn’t see it much this year. But when Jeremy Wolf emailed me about running to…
Groggily I stirred in the sweaty musk of my sleeping bag. I’d spent the night on the hard concrete slab directly outside the Independence campground’s pit toilets, with the wafting stench of shit enveloping my fitful slumber. I shut my eyes, trying to forget where I was. My hips were sore, my kidneys ached and…
It starts with the focal beam of a headlamp. Sunrise is more than an hour away and it’s pouring rain. Hands tucked into the sleeves of a jacket, and the pace already quick through the sharp Tasmanian buttongrass—trying to stay warm. There is an urgency to understand this threatened place, to know takayna / Tarkine as…
The map showed an unbroken line contoured to the ridge. We started running along that line and ran past its end, into a space between two worlds. A few orange ribbons hung on branches in natural openings, marking what might eventually be the beginning of a trail. We followed it. When a gravel slope appeared…
As we sat on the tailgate of the truck, our frozen breath swirling under the light of a headlamp, we heard the first distant thud of rubber on dirt. The approaching runner was still a mile away, but you can hear just about anything that happens in the dense stillness of 2 a.m. in the…
It started on a hot afternoon in May, deep in Bears Ears National Monument. Four of us had been going hard for a couple of days and the fatigue from difficult miles was stacking up. One of us was struggling. It might have been lack of training, or perhaps improper fueling for back-to-back 12-hour days…