Introduction to trail running

Trail running is still in its infancy, and speculations vary on the popularity of the sport. The closest anybody can guess at to the number of participants in the sport is about 4.6 million trail runners in the United States. The popularity of the sport is mainly concentrated in the western half of the country because of the mountain ranges which trail runners frequent. The earliest organization trying to govern trail running were set up in 1996. 

Although trail running has a steady base of participants  the number of races and other promotion events is limited because of  the extreme difficulty of many of the races. Most sanctioned trail run events are 36 miles or more going all the way up to 220 miles. Most races however are in the range of 50 to 100 miles with thousands of feet in elevation change. 

The digital age has undoubtedly increased the number of trail runners and helped spread the word about the sport and races taking place. This might be a stretch but similar to hyper-linking or the ability to move through cyberspace in a nonlinear way, some individuals have found the sport of trail running with out any prior running experience. In a way those individuals skipped the unnecessary first step and began a sport they enjoy.