Trail Run

Bowie knew it. I tell it to my daughters all the time: change is the only constant in life. The presence of change never changes. Learn to embrace change or wither. Especially on trails. But more so in life. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes / Turn and face the st

The first time I went for a run in my sports bra, without a shirt on, I was about two months postpartum and pushing my newborn(ish) daughter in her stroller. I was rocking that four to five-month pregnant-looking mum-tum that meant I didn't fit comfo

Birdsville local, Jenna Brook, looked out of the window as her plane cruised high over the ochre expanse of the mighty Simpson Desert and thought to herself: “What a shame there are no single stage running events around here.” Two weeks later, she br

Take a good (sunny) dose of Pacific island tropical exoticness, match that to ancient landscapes and traditional kanak culture, plus superb trails with run offerings of between 5km and 132km, then add slatherings of French hospitality (read that with

1. How did your group begin? The MRTR Facebook group has been up since 2014, but had a small number of active runners and had peaks and troughs of activity. It was early 2018 that momentum began to build, with the sport growing and more and more peop

WHEN TRAIL RUN MAG LAST CAUGHT UP WITH JACQUI BELL (EDITION 29), SHE WAS HALFWAY THROUGH HER QUEST TO BECOMING THE YOUNGEST FEMALE TO COMPLETE THE FOUR DESERTS GRAND SLAM (GOBI, SAHARA, ATACAMA, ANTARCTICA). BUT HER PLAN EXPANDED BEYOND THE ORIGINAL

It was 57 hours into the race and the mind games had started within Australian, Jason Reardon. During an ungodly hour of the night, he was descending Tanglang La – a high altitude pass at 5328m on the Manali-Leh highway in the far northern reaches of

My feet are blistered and my knees are audibly creaking as I stumble out of the woods half an hour after sunrise. The first thing that my brain registers is Andrew, a broad grin on his face and words of encouragement on his lips. I don’t know him ver

Mountain adventurer and most famous as the director of the iconic Northburn 100 ultra in Central Otago, New Zealand, Terry Davis is known as the guy who laughs in the face of other people’s suffering - and he doesn’t think that’s a bad thing. But the

Funny how some things strike a chord. I first saw a picture of Cascade Saddle many years ago, in an old copy of Wilderness Magazine lying under a bunk in a hut that my possum-trapper father and I were staying in. Stark, terrifying, more than a dozen

‘Nolan's 14’ describes fourteen 14-thousand-plus foot peaks in the Sawatch Range, Colorada, USA. Achieving the ‘Nolan’s 14’ run is widely considered to require a single foot-powered push across all 14 peaks from Mt. Massive to Mt. Shavano in either d

It's dusk in the desert and I'm captivated by the first stars appearing as the soft evening light dims. With the bustle of the Bedouin-style camp behind me, mesa silhouettes on the horizon, and red sand under my feet, it strikes me how painfully far

“They look, ummm, pretty,” I thought to myself when first unboxing the latest PureGrit from Brooks. I was - to be honesty - slightly disappointed. My general gut feel with trail running shoes is that I want a gnarly veneer. Rough. Ready for the ‘pure

La Sportiva is best known for bringing the European touch to its trail shoes, providing excellent traction, grip and ground feel for the gnarlier stuff, being born in the Italian mountainscapes. But looking back over La Sportiva’s range, they haven’t

Confession time: the first time I ran in The North Face Ampezzos, it was on – don’t judge me – bitumen. I’d broken my cardinal rule. To be fair, it wasn’t boring bitumen – it was a short loop or two that took in the sights of the Sydney Harbour Bridg

THE CRADLE MOUNTAIN RUN KICKED OFF IN 1981. It came about at Nick Goldie’s place looking at a picture of Cradle Mountain on the wall. “I heard that some people walked through in a day. I reckon we could run through,” he said. I wasn’t so sure. But I