LET YOUR RUNNING LOOSE
BLACK TO THE TRAILS
The inaugural Black to the Trails event is a watershed moment in trail running and a platform to build on, says David Smyth
THE LAST TIME I visited a National Trust property, it definitely wasn’t this noisy. Generally speaking, if you want to see some lush scenery, admire some bedding plants, nibble a scone or buy a new tea towel, they’re a safe bet. Thumping house music and honking vuvuzelas tend to be in shorter supply.
As are Black and brown faces, though the conservation charity has been trying to change that recently, publishing a document in 2022 about its work to increase inclusivity under the banner ‘Everyone Welcome’. The right-wing press harrumphed about ‘wokeism’ when the National Trust released a report in 2020 exploring the links between 93 of its historic houses and the slave trade, and offered diversity training to its volunteers. But looking around Dunstable Downs at all the smiling faces, many of them belonging to people of colour who are taking part in their first trail race, I can’t see a downside.
Black to the Trails is a set of three shortish races – 1K, 5K and 10K – organised by the people behind Black Trail Runners. That’s the running community founded in the socially distanced summer of 2020, when many Black people were heading for the great outdoors and finding that not everyone in the countryside made them feel welcome. It became a registered charity in 2021, with the aim of promoting diversity in the overwhelmingly white world of trail running. This debut event would have taken place in September last year but was postponed owing to the death of
Queen Elizabeth II. You can sense the joy and relief that it’s finally here, because running has gone too long without a day like this.
Entries today are 70% people of colour compared with what BTR have surveyed as 0.7% in UK trail events generally. In addition, close to 70% of the 250 or so participants across the distances are female – another contrast to the usual picture, showing that if a race is inclusive in one way, it naturally becomes inclusive in others, too. Dunstable Downs, with its vast views, red kites and white gliders swooping past from the airfield below, feels remote but is deliberately chosen as an easy hop from London – most of the UK’s people of colour live in cities. Entry fees are cheap and there’s a free bus put on from Luton train station. Meanwhile, in the virtual world, over 265,000 people are doing a 5K to show support on Strava.
BTR have a supportive relationship with Adidas, which makes their stylish monochrome T-shirts and could have allowed the brand’s regular event partners, Maverick,
