Trail Running: The UK Magazine That Took Running Off the Road

Trail Running is a British magazine dedicated entirely to off-road running. Launched in May 2010 and published by Bauer Consumer Media, it is widely described as the UK's first magazine devoted to the world of trail, fell and mountain running: mapped routes, gear tests, training advice and race coverage for runners who prefer mud, hills and open country to treadmills and tarmac. Listed in the batch records for London, England, with its website at trailrunningmag.co.uk, the title helped define a new category of British running media as the sport itself boomed.

At its height the magazine appeared six times a year, at a cover price of £4.99, with more than a hundred colour pages per issue. Its proposition was simple and, at launch, unoccupied: be a one-stop shop of advice, tips, news and ideas for people whose running took them away from the road.

Origins: Launched in May 2010

Trail Running was co-founded by Claire Maxted, who edited the magazine from its launch in May 2010 until 2017. Maxted's own route into the sport, which she later recounted in her book The Ultimate Trail Running Handbook, was an unlikely one: she had hated running at school, where it meant competitive tests and cross-country, and developed something close to a phobia of it. At university she took up running to keep fit and to prepare for triathlons and adventure races, discovered the pleasure of veering off-road into parks and woods, and encountered beginner-friendly trail events in the Lake District while working on Trail, Bauer's walking magazine. Trail running, in her description, felt like hiking slightly sped up, with tremendous fun on the downhills.

That convert's enthusiasm shaped the magazine. Trail Running was not written for elite athletes alone; it was written for road runners curious about the hills, walkers who wanted to move faster, and newcomers who needed permission as much as instruction. Maxted later summarised the sport's appeal as a craving for experience and adventure over material goods — a sentiment the magazine channelled from its first issues.

Publisher: Bauer and the Outdoor Stable

The magazine's publisher of record was Bauer Consumer Media, part of the Bauer Media Group, one of Britain's largest magazine publishers. Trail Running sat within Bauer's outdoor portfolio alongside Trail, the long-established hillwalking title. The connection mattered editorially as well as commercially: Maxted had worked on Trail before co-founding Trail Running, and the two titles shared a culture of route-based, practical outdoor journalism.

In later years the teams behind Trail and Trail Running together created Live for the Outdoors, Bauer's outdoor website, whose gear reviews were written by the same experienced specialists. The publisher described gear advice on that platform as the work of experts who spent their spare time climbing mountains, sleeping under the stars and running trails — a fair description of the editorial world from which Trail Running itself was produced.

Inside an Issue

A typical issue of Trail Running ran to over a hundred colour pages devoted to helping readers achieve more from off-road running. The regular architecture of the magazine was consistent and service-led.

Trail News covered the latest from the world of off-road running, including new records and notable events from around the world. Your Bit gave the magazine over to its readers, with their photographs, emails and social media contributions. Mapped Routes presented new and exciting routes for readers to try, described in the practical, followable style British outdoor magazines have refined over decades. A Races section listed upcoming off-road races, functioning as an essential diary for readers planning their season. New Gear covered the latest products on the market, and gear testing was a particular strength: the magazine's own positioning claimed more gear tests than any other running magazine.

Alongside the regulars came expert training advice and fitness plans, interviews with record-breaking mountain runners, and coverage of trail, obstacle and adventure races. The October–November 2016 issue, for example, ranged from athletes running extraordinary multi-day challenges around and across Britain to advice on building stamina for ultra-distance events and avoiding the most common ultra mistakes — a spread that captured the magazine in miniature, mixing inspiration with instruction.

Routes, Gear and the Practical Core

Two things distinguished Trail Running from general running titles. The first was its commitment to place. Mapped off-road routes and inspirational places to run throughout the UK were central to every issue, reflecting a readership that planned weekends around new trails in the Peak District, the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands, Wales and the long-distance paths of England. Getting off the beaten track safely — navigation, weather, kit for remote terrain — was treated as part of the sport, not an afterthought.

The second was the seriousness of its gear coverage. Trail running makes demands that road running does not: shoes with grip for mud and rock, waterproofs light enough to carry for hours, packs, poles, headtorches for night running and layers for mountain weather. The magazine tested this equipment in the conditions it was designed for, and its claim to carry more gear tests than rival running magazines was aimed squarely at readers who bought kit carefully and expected honest assessment.

Training, Ultras and the Shape of the Sport

Trail Running documented, and helped drive, the rapid growth of longer-distance off-road running in Britain. In the 1970s and 1980s, as the magazine's circle of writers later observed, there were no trail running shoes as such and few trail events; runners chose between road races, track, cross-country and fell running. By the 2010s the landscape had transformed, with trail marathons, ultras and multi-day stage races drawing thousands of entrants.

The magazine's training coverage followed readers along that journey, from first off-road 10-kilometre runs to 50-kilometre and longer ultras. Advice covered the standard pillars of training, injury prevention and nutrition, and the trail-specific skills that road running never teaches: running at night, using poles, navigating in poor visibility, and managing effort on long climbs and technical descents. Interviews with record-breaking mountain runners and features on leading races connected everyday readers to the sharp end of the sport without making the magazine feel closed to beginners.

The Run 1000 Miles Challenge

Among the magazine's best-known initiatives was the #Run1000Miles campaign, launched for 2017 under Maxted's editorship. The challenge invited runners of all shapes, sizes and backgrounds to run a thousand miles over the course of a year and, in Maxted's framing, to have their fittest year ever.

The campaign became a community in its own right. Thousands of runners took part, sharing progress and encouragement, and reader blogs chronicled the experience through the year. Its success illustrated the magazine's wider role: not simply reporting on a community but convening one, giving dispersed solo runners a shared target and a shared identity. It remains one of the most fondly remembered reader campaigns in British running media of the period.

Claire Maxted After the Magazine

Maxted edited Trail Running until 2017, by her own account, and went on to found Wild Ginger Running, a trail and ultra running advice and inspiration channel on YouTube. Publishing giant Bloomsbury commissioned her to write The Ultimate Trail Running Handbook, a guide promising to take readers from 5 kilometres to 50 kilometres, covering training, injury prevention and nutrition alongside trail-specific topics such as night running, poles and navigation, plus modern tools from running apps to foam rollers and kinesiology tape.

Athletics Weekly, reviewing the book, described Maxted as a fully-fledged expert on this picturesque strand of athletics who had co-founded Trail Running magazine and gone on to edit the title. Her career arc — from running-phobic schoolgirl to founding editor to author and broadcaster — mirrors the journey the magazine invited its readers to make, and her name remains closely associated with the title's formative years.

The Sport Trail Running Served

The magazine arrived at the beginning of a remarkable expansion. Trail running grew from a fringe pursuit associated with fell running and mountain marathons into one of the most popular forms of participation running in Britain, prized for its scenery, its softer surfaces compared with knee-jolting tarmac, its escape from traffic fumes, and its friendlier, less stopwatch-obsessed culture. Events multiplied, from local trail races to ultras in the Cape Wrath tradition of multi-day journeys through remote country.

Trail Running positioned itself at the centre of that expansion as, in its own words, the UK's first magazine devoted to the exciting, adventurous world of off-road running. Whether readers were escaping boring treadmills for the first time or preparing for record attempts in the mountains, the magazine offered a single home for routes, races, kit and coaching.

Format, Frequency and Availability

Trail Running was published in the United Kingdom by Bauer Consumer Media at six issues per year, with a cover price of £4.99 recorded by subscription retailers. Print subscriptions were sold through Bauer's Great Magazines channel and independent magazine retailers, and digital editions were available through digital newsstand services, with issues from the mid-2010s onward preserved in those catalogues. The magazine's barcode and bibliographic details were standard for a national consumer title distributed through UK newsstands.

Its content also lived on through Bauer's outdoor digital presence, where the teams behind Trail and Trail Running published gear reviews and outdoor advice for a web audience, extending the magazine's testing culture beyond the printed page.

Significance

Trail Running's significance is that it named and served a sport at the moment it became a movement. Before 2010, British runners who left the road were covered piecemeal — by fell running's own circles, by walking magazines, or by general running titles for whom trails were an occasional feature. Trail Running gave them a magazine of their own, edited by a co-founder who had made the same journey from reluctance to obsession, and backed by one of Britain's biggest publishers.

Its mapped routes, exhaustive gear tests, ultra-distance guidance and campaigns such as #Run1000Miles set the template for how British trail running would be covered across print and digital media in the decade that followed. For a generation of runners, the magazine was the doorway from the road to the hills.