I’m in the early stages of training for a half marathon and I’m already bored with running the streets in my neighbourhood. And then I thought, “Why stick to the road?” We’ve got hundreds of kilometres of hiking trails within an hour’s drive of my back door. Now that the weather’s turning spring-like, it’s time to run away.

Benefits of running on hiking trails:
- Trail surfaces are softer than concrete sidewalks and paved pathways
- Hiking trails are varied in length and degree of difficulty, offering perfect training ground for speed runs, long runs, and hill training
- Never having to run the same route twice
- The views are spectacular
- There’s no car exhaust!

Cautions when running wild:
- Trail surfaces are littered with roots and rocks that require runners to keep a constant awareness of the trail surface ahead of their next foot placement
- Runners can abruptly encounter wildlife (from bears to mountain lions to rattlesnakes – depending on your locale) when rounding corners and summiting hills, so it’s necessary to make plenty of noise to let other critters know you’re there
- Hills are often steeper than found on the roadways and it’s important to keep this in mind on descent if you don’t want to roll your way to the bottom
- Know where you’re going (and how to get back to where you started)

Keys to trail running success:
- Start slow and build up stamina and stability
- Have good trail running footwear
- Stay hydrated
- Take time to stretch (after a 10-minute warmup and at the end of your run) to avoid injury

A selection of organized trail running events in Western Canada:
- 5 Peaks trail running series offers 27 different events (with varying course lengths) in B.C. and Alberta (as well as Ontario and Quebec)
- Powderface 42 trail marathon in Alberta’s foothills
- West Coast’s “Sea to Sky” trail running series: six runs ranging from the easy 5 km to the ultramarathon 100-miler epic
- Frontrunner’s Gutbuster ½ marathon trail running series on Vancouver Island