Trail Running: Easier on the legs... and more fun too!

Trail running is certainly nothing new. But it's gotten even more popular in recent years as more and more fitness enthusiasts attempt a "return" to nature...

From CNN Health:

Laura Clark hit the trail running years ago and never looked back.

She runs the woodsy trails near her upstate New York home, up Adirondack mountains and on rollercoaster courses up and down through the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

"It's much more fun to be out there in the woods, instead of breathing in exhaust fumes," she said.

Clark, 58, still runs on pavement but mostly does "trail running," a pursuit that might sound foolish to the uninitiated -- navigate trails full of ups, downs, dips and rocky bits at jogging speed. Oh, and watch out for slippery rocks and snakes.

But trail runners describe it as a sublime union of exercise and nature. It's gentler on the legs than pounding the pavement, they say, and more majestic: Imagine a runners' high at the summit of a mountain rather than on the shoulder of a road.

"More gentle, more beautiful, more fun," said Barb Ordell of Tallahassee, Florida. "I get a real thrill zipping by trees and jumping rocks on narrow single-track trails."

Trail running is nothing new. People were dashing through the wilderness well before there were sneakers. Consider the Dipsea, a scenic 7.1-mile race in the San Francisco area, which began in 1905. Other off-road runs are decades old.

But trail running, like so many outdoor activities, appears to be getting more popular. Nancy Hobbs, executive director of the All-American Trail Running Association, said the number of trail events has grown three to four times since the mid-1990s. The association's Web site now lists more than 1,000 runs a year, most of them in the United States.

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