What Is Ultra-Trail Running

Spend enough time in a group of trail runners and sooner or later you will hear the term ultra trail mentioned, but what does it mean?

What is an ultra-trail? Ultra-trail is the term used to describe running further than the 26.2-mile standard Marathon distance on trails and unpaved roads.

Ultra-trail effectively combines aspects of two different running events to create something absolutely epic.

Let’s look at the recipe of that unique blend.

One Part Ultra Marathon

An ultramarathon is a running event that is longer than the standard Marathon distance of 26.2 miles the four most common ultra-marathon distances 50 km, 15 miles, 100 km, and 100 Miles.

The ultra marathon was developed because there were runners that wanted to test themselves on distances beyond the marathon. The most popular ultra-marathon in the world in terms of annual participation is the Comrades Ultramarathon and is run on paved roads.

One Part Trail Running

Trail running is a division of the sport of running with athletes run on unpaved surfaces mainly trails. Trail running is similar to fell running and mountain running.

You can read my article on the difference between trail running and fell running by clicking here.

Ultra-Trail Takes The Best Of Both

With the ultra trail, you take the Best of both worlds, blend them together so that you get to run an ultramarathon but out on the trails surrounded by clean air and nature.

Ultra-Trail World Tour

The Ultra-Trail World Tour is a series of 15 events spread across six continents with each event is a maximum of 100 km length.

However, none of the iconic stand-alone ultra-distance trail running events is included within the ultra-trail world tour. By those stand-alone events I mean events like the Ultra-Trail Du Mont Blanc, the Western States 100, the Leadville 100, the Hard Rock 100, or the Barkley Marathon. None of these are part of the Ultra-Trail World Tour as they are iconic in their own right.

These iconic ultra-trail events are so popular that each has a qualifying system to just get to the start line. So having them as part of the World Tour would be unfair to runners with aspirations to running all or most of the World Tour.