Trail running is becoming cool.
The streetwear-inspired kits. The run clubs where everyone radiates a different shade of confident swag. The hype-beast footwear, the wraparound shades, the TikTok follower counts, the omnipresent sleeve tattoos. The people who look like they should be tending bar at Berghain, inexplicably, also extremely fast.
While I am objectively not old (Don’t Google it.), I sometimes can’t fight the feeling that I am getting too old for this particular kind of cool. I am officially at the age where I have recently asked ChatGPT which cut of jeans is acceptable in public. Bootcut? Straight leg? Mom jeans? I now learn Gen Z slang from NPR, which is, I’m told, extremely no cap. Am I doing this right?
And yet: I’m genuinely happy for the sport. I’m glad it’s become something that zoomers who could be clubbing in Ibiza (That’s still a thing? Someone please confirm.) are choosing instead. The tent is getting larger, and honestly, we could use the shade.
But here’s the thing nobody tells you when the cool kids show up: the chronically uncool don’t have to leave. We built this place. We’re the ones who ran 50Ks in cotton t-shirts and shoes that looked more military surplus than speed. Trail running has always been a safe haven for people who were a little too weird for the road and a little too dirty for the track.
And honestly? Welcome, zoomers who look like Euphoria extras. Welcome, TikTok athletes. Welcome, everyone whose first trail shoe cost more than my first car. You don’t lose a safe haven just because more people need one.
Gen Next is Here
Most subcultures develop a velvet rope when they go mainstream: the OGs start gatekeeping, the newcomers feel unwelcome, the whole thing curdles into a vibe-based hierarchy. But Club Trail doesn’t have a bouncer, just good vibes and a bunch of people in extremely short shorts.
The numbers are not subtle: trail run uploads on Strava have doubled in three years, Gen Z women alone increased their trail uploads 6.5 times over that same period, and of the 800,000-plus runners who lined up for trail events in just the first half of 2025, 42 percent were competing in their very first trail race. The kids are not just alright. They are here, they brought friends, and we should make sure we have enough six-packs to go around.
The thing that actually moves me: they’re not showing up for the splits. According to Strava, 55 percent of Gen Z users say social connection is their top reason for joining a fitness club, community, not competition. They want to be outside and together and off their phones, which is, I think, the most correct thing a generation has ever decided (besides the bootcut jean resurgence).
I may have complicated feelings about kits pulled off the set of The Matrix, and I remain unconvinced by the wraparound shades. But I will always, enthusiastically, make room for anyone who shows up wanting to hang out in the woods with other people.
Everything Evolves
Trend cycles change fast. I’ve been here long enough to remember when minimalist shoes were the gospel truth, then maximalist shoes were the revelation, and now we have carbon plates, and I’m already bracing for whatever comes next (AI-enhanced shoes that are also an NFT?).
Colorways come and go. The packaging our sport comes wrapped in will shift and evolve, and probably get more expensive.
When I first started running, I was deep in the Kyle Skaggs school of minimalism (as little shoe as physically permissible), which has since been fully overwritten by the present moment of: what if the shoe weighed more than your car and had as much tech as Artemis II?
And yet no matter your aesthetic, we’re all united by getting passed by the 65-year-old in head-to-toe cotton and road shoes from the first Bush administration. That person has been here the whole time. That person will outlast all of us.
Not Cool is OK
I am not the coolest person at any given group run or start line. I do not have a matching sponsor kit or a race vest that wasn’t purchased secondhand. My favorite shorts are, at this point, as much Noso patch as they are shorts. My cultural relevance sits somewhere comfortably between Tamagotchi and the aunt who just found out about Olivia Rodrigo.
Here is the thing I don’t say out loud very often: I am genuinely afraid this sport is going to outgrow me. Not just culturally, though watching a 23-year-old with 400,000 followers explain trail running to the internet while I write longform pieces that twelve people read does something to a person; there is almost certainly a German word for this specific anxiety, and I definitely read about it in a magazine piece from 2019.
The athletes are getting faster in ways that make my PRs feel increasingly geological. The content creators are more prolific, the voices smarter and funnier and more eloquent, and sometimes it feels like the sharp end of this sport is receding into the horizon while I wave from the shore, not drowning, just watching something beautiful move away from me at a pace I can’t quite match. I am holding on by my fingernails some days, to both the culture and the competition.
And then I think: Good! What a thing it would be. What a genuinely beautiful, weird outcome. If this scruffy little corner of the world blossomed into something so alive and so loved that people couldn’t help but leave their own marks on it. Faster runners. Cooler kits. Kids who found the trails because they saw something on TikTok and stayed because the mountains got into them the way the mountains get into everyone eventually. The sport doesn’t need me to be its coolest or fastest ambassador.
It just needs people to show up.
I can still do that.
About the Author
Zoë Rom is a journalist, writer, and podcast host based in Carbondale, Colorado. She’s the co-host and producer of The Trailhead Podcast and Your Diet Sucks Podcast, and co-author of the book “Becoming a Sustainable Runner” (2023).
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10 comments
mike
fantastic article. made me chuckle repeatedly. mostly because while I’m also not old (at least I don’t think I am) I have definitely been around long enough to completely relate to many of the references made. and I agree about making our collective tent larger. a rising tide floats all boats!
Scott Rubinstein
1 down, 11 more to go 😉
Awesome piece, it absolutely resonated.
Pam
Longtime reader of yours, Zoe, though first time commenter. Your writing deeply moves me, not just as a runner, but as a whole human. I often forward your pieces to my non-runner friends who are deep thinkers. Your views, outlook, and insights into life and motivation and why things are worth putting effort into is not something that could be captured by an average writer. And surely there are of many, many more than a dozen of us who feel similarly.
Doug K
speaking as a 65 year old 😉 the weirdly fast odd looking denizens of the trails have always been here.. cf Eric Clifton, etc.
https://ultrarunninghistory.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/clifton-early-90s.jpg
What is new, is people trying to be cool on the trails. It feels like we were just a odd lot of eccentrics, many long and muddy dusty miles from cool.. part of what made me happy out there.
Hilary
Love this.
big babiii
Long live longform. Long live the rite of passage of being passed by that 65-year-old runner you perfectly described. And long live dedication to a sport, for some a newfangled revelation and for others a way of life, that has infinite potential to grow and envelop in its embrace anyone willing to step into its way and see what this absurd, passionate, gritty little corner of reality has to offer. <3
Brad
This one made me laugh. Thank you!!
Suresh
The trails I run on are almost always void of people. Therefore, it’s immaterial to me whether I’m cool or not! The only concession is that I do an obligatory booger check (iPhone selfie, or car mirror) before entering the cafe for an apre-run coffee. But even that I sometimes I forgets.
Greg Schopp
I’m fairly new to this sport. 5 years, I’m now 65, but I agree. Just get out there in the woods and off the phone. We all need that, no matter what age you are.
Susan J Nachtigal
I love your pieces and sometimes they are the only ones I read from ultra and believe me, I’m a dinosaur compared to you, but I totally relate to everything you say. One of the oldies, but not less passionate.