Trailrunning

Lately I keep asking myself what trailrunning really is.
In the Netherlands, for example, we would happily call every run that had some unpaved paths a trailrun. I vividly remember how my lower back couldn’t handle the tiny hill behind the Ikea after 28 km in one of my first trail races in Delft, and how my hips and ankles were screaming after running on uneven surface for the first time.
I don’t want to insult any of my Dutch friends, but after running around in Spain for one year now, I wouldn’t really call the routes in Delftse Hout trailruns anymore. I guess that for me, trailrunning now should include (significant) elevation, which in the Netherlands is just very difficult to find.
My Austrian friends dared to go even further, they would only call it trailrunning if you also run uphill, because everyone can run downhill. But I couldn’t agree with that either because, as I wrote in my previous post, going uphill on the trails is very often closer to power hiking than to running. And sometimes a run even includes parts walking downhill when it gets really technical.

So what defines it then? Perhaps it would be better defined by the feeling than the actual activity. Because the beauty of trailrunning is the unpredictability. My main reason to go on the trails was to let go of the pressure of speed and to embrace the freedom of nature. The numbers of the route don’t give you any indication of how fast you can go, and often it becomes more of a mental challenge when you have to accept your own limitations because you were still expecting yourself to run the same times as on the road.

I think we would all agree that trailrunning involves (mostly) nature trails and that this is the appealing part of it. Indeed, being humbled by nature brings this mental challenge, but it also feels really rewarding when you overcome the challenges. 
One of the easiest ways to be humbled by nature is then to try to run up a mountain. Your pace is awfully slow, your heart rate awfully high, and that peak seems to stay awfully far away (even if it is only the Ikea heuvel). 
So yes, perhaps that is the best way to get to the essence of trailrunning. But don’t underestimate the other surprises that Mother Nature could give you. You really have to do your best to get some elevation in your route in the Netherlands, but we have wind and rain which brings other surprise elements that will easily humble you. If you have ever participated in the Oliebollencross in Pijnacker, you know that a flat 5k that seems so easy will absolutely destroy you when you get knee-deep into the mud, where people are literally losing their shoes! On top of that, you have to battle the mythical Ikea heuvel twice. On paper it might be one of the easiest trails I ever did, but I can tell you that I really deserved that oliebol and a very long power nap after that one.

Maybe we don’t need a clear definition and we should just all enjoy our own adventures.
Maybe my Dutch friends should come visit me more often to train their lower backs for something that’s called elevation.
Maybe my Austrian friends should visit the Netherlands to appreciate the gift of having mountains in your backyard and give themselves more credit for what they actually do. 
And maybe, just maybe, I just needed something to distract myself from the pain when I couldn’t keep on running uphill and I started to doubt if I even could call myself a trailrunner…

It was not my intention to insult anyone with this post. It was my full intention to make fun of the lack of mountains in the Netherlands.