I remember when I heard that American distance runner Jim Walmsley was moving to France to train for trail running. I couldn’t understand why the mountains in the United States weren’t good enough for him. After all, the fitness is fitness, and surely getting in the volume and intensity is the most important, regardless of where in the world that training occurs. All of those thoughts were quickly washed away once I trained on European trails for the first time. In both Italy and France, I have found the trails to be vastly different from the US in both grade, consistency, and technicality.
The trails in Europe generally have more variation in the grade, so a trail might be 15% average grade, but it has portions of 5% grade and portions of 30% grade. In the US, I find that most trails are a pretty steady grade. European trails are slightly less groomed, and I don’t mean that as a bad thing. The trails are still clearly defined and amazing to run on, but the rocks and roots that are naturally part of the landscape are still there, making it slightly less “smooth sailing.” In addition, technical portions of the trail which require ropes, ladders, and steps are way more common in Europe. In the US, a trail with a ladder would be preceded by a caution sign; in France, it’s just preceded by a trail sign.
I think in general most of the differences in trails come down to one factor: which is closer to the natural form of the land. The US makes the trails what we want them to be; Europe lets the trails be what they were meant to be. Watch the video below to see me experiencing some of these trails for the first time.
