26// Who is a Trail Runner?

On the demography of trail runners and how they’re not dissimilar to golfers

Hey pals,

One thing you’re probably sick of me saying is that there is there isn’t enough research in trail running to really know anything about who trail runners are.

Well, we finally have a survey that give us a benchmark for the demographics of trail runners in the UK and US. Unexpectedly, the results seem to show that we’re not too dissimilar to the demography of golfers…

Hope you enjoy,

Matt

At any trail race you’re bound to find an assortment of people. It’s easy to think that trail runners don’t tend to fit into a demographic niche, that they’re a diverse group of people tied together by a shared mindset, an activity of the ‘soul’.

It’s hard to pin down who a trail runner is.

A few months ago a gabble of trail runners on Twitter debated the veracity of an article that claimed ultrarunners are a more academic, scientific crowd. The article was flawed by its anecdotal nature, but the counterpoints were equally as skewed by personal perspective.

Sure trail running appears to attract a wide variety of people, but anyone whose done any form of research knows that groups of people are never as diverse as they seem. The problem for trail running is that we lack significant research that explores who trail runners are.

When you consider that products, publications and events are all trying to cater to trail runners, if they don’t know who the trail runner is the resulting experience is going to be tailored to one group and feel exclusionary to another. This impacts a small podcaster and a large race corporation. When decisions are made on anecdotal experience and copied and pasted across the landscape, thats when bias becomes ingrained.

Now, companies like Salomon and Hoka have likely already done large scale segmentation studies, so they should have an idea of audience characteristics. But outside of private companies, media industries tend to rely on large syndicated surveys to draw upon the attitudes, behaviours and demographics of an audience.

As someone who spends their life in these surveys, i can tell you now trail/ultra/fell/mountain runners are not part of them.

Hence, when i saw the ‘Trail and Ultrarunning survey’ that launched at the start of this year i was intrigued.

The survey was conducted by Dr. Carl Morris, a sociologist in Lancaster University to better understand who trail and ultra runners are across the UK and US. The survey is broad, covering attitudes, demographics, media consumption, running expenditure and racing experience - pretty much covering all bases.

The results were quite unexpected, but before i get to them, one methodological caveat - the sample was recruited through media outlets and publications via emails and websites which undoubtably skews the results to a section of trail runners who consume trail running media. As my last foray into Reddit taught me, some trail runners cannot fathom why they’d want to consume content about trail running, so take all the results with a fist full of salt.

The demographics were some of the most interesting results - runners across the US and UK were more likely to be aged 30+, medium-to-high income earners with a masters degree or above, very different from the average person.

In Carl’s words “Runners are overwhelmingly white, economically privileged and well-educated.”

What minimal data we do have can back this up - the ultrarunning database shows racers to be getting older with the male to female ratio getting smaller, but still dominated by men. Only 13% of the 2022 ITRA survey respondents were below the age of 35. In summary, the average trail runner is closer to an IPA drinking, corporate dad than a student that studies by day, TikTok’s by night.

What does this all mean for trail running media? On the sponsorship side, trail runners have similar demographics to golfers and Ironman participants (thats a sentence that scares me a little to say considering the issues of diversity they’ve had), and thus could attract the same high-end brands that traditionally sponsor both sports. For media deals, the GTWS broadcast deal with Eurosport makes a lot more sense considering the trail running demography matches that of a pay-tv subscriber. And Media organisations would do best sticking to podcast, newsletters, Insta and Twitter to capture the largest audience.

More broadly it’s clear that trail running is still quite an insular sport. As Carl mentions in the report, we face the same issues of diversity as other outdoor sports, compounded by a small youth population taking up trail running.

There was a lot more in the report that I highly recommend everyone interested in trail running should take a look at. Honestly for me it’s changed my perspective on growth. I talk a lot about how trail running is growing and professionalising, but if the sport continues to cater to the same audiences, does that growth come at the cost of creating a larger social bubble distant from society? Are brands and trail running media doing enough to promote different perspectives and attract younger participants?

The issue of diversity in trail running is a critical one that demands attention. If anything, the growth of trail running is held back by perpetuating the status quo, limiting the potential benefits of diverse perspectives, experiences, and talents that can enhance the sport's quality, popularity, and societal impact.