Being the only(?) guided trail running specific business in Norfolk can be both a blessing, but also a bit of a curse.
One of the questions I ask before most of our runs is “does anyone know what they’ve signed up for?”, most often than not there is at least one person that replies with a “not really”. Understandably for many people when they run with us for the first time it is their first guided trail run.
So if you haven’t run with us and have no idea what to expect from a guided run, below I have listed some of the main differences between our events and a race.
- No time limits – Unlike a race we don’t time our runs, all our runs are at a sociable pace and take as long as they take. We want our runs to be about exploring rather than the times, and due to the lovely scenery we run in this means that we quite often stop to take in the nature or to take photos.
- Group sizes – We don’t have large numbers of runners, we could, but we feel large groups take away from the atmosphere, and everyone gets to know each other better with smaller groups (quite often people make new friends on our runs then start running together outside of our events).
- Guided – the clue is in the name, but this is the one that most people are surprised by. One of our Run Leaders runs with you for the duration of the event. We don’t mark out the route, it’s all stored away in our heads. Being guided means that you don’t need to worry about getting lost, and you can turn up and just run, without having to keep an eye out for route markers.
- Learn something – Our Run Leaders take care in where they run, and not only learn the route, but also the local area. So if you come on one of our runs hopefully you will go home having learnt something, if you’ve been to High Lodge you are almost certain to have had Neil’s story which massively undersells the gun flint mine……
The main thing is that our events are relaxed and friendly and missing the pressure that a race situation can bring.
Fancy trying your first guided trail run? You can find all of our upcoming guided runs on our events page.
