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Grand Trail des Templiers is one of Europe’s most famous trail races. An astounding 13,000 runners take part in one of 15 races over three days at the close of October. Based out of the city of Millau, in the south of France, the region is filled with ancient villages, castles, and plenty of great   Continue Reading →

Salut from Chamonix, France! Pssst…. Run the Alps is going on tour!  Okay, it’s just a two-stop mini-tour, but it’s still great to be back traveling in the US and meeting our friends, alumni and future guests. Here’s the scoop! Boulder, ColoradoDate: Thursday, November 11, 5:30 pm Tor des Geants show, 6:30 dinnerLocation: The Westend   Continue Reading →

Here in Chamonix, trail running is rapidly evolving. New races are added and the calendar grows both in depth and duration during the trail running season. No event is more active than the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc®, or UTMB®. And, today, the race announced that California’s Western States® 100-Mile Endurance Run will join the new UTMB®   Continue Reading →

Early yesterday morning, Chamonix-based trail runner Hillary Gerardi headed out for a run on the town’s famed Vertical Kilometer with photographer Dan Fitzgerald. Gerardi, a sponsored Black Diamond athlete, is also an Ambassador for Run the Alps. She and Fitzgerald were headed out to capture some photos for an upcoming Run the Alps project. The   Continue Reading →

At Run the Alps we have been curating our Race Finder database of trail races for a number of years. The database of hundreds of trail races, from the Dolomites to the Jura, and Chamonix to Grindelwald, represents all of the major trail races in the Alps and most if not all of the smaller   Continue Reading →

Here’s a truism about European and American trail runners: they don’t always dress the same. As a friend of mine once said, “Everyone in the US wants to look like Anton Krupicka.” What she meant was: shorts, no shirt, shoes, and– maybe if it’s cold outside– a pair of socks. Meanwhile, my first few years   Continue Reading →

One of the sure signs of fall in the Alps is the steady shift in color above treeline. The greenish hues of vegetation shift to brown and a deep red, as temperatures drop and early snows come and go. Another sign is liters of wild blueberries– no longer on the plants, but often picked and   Continue Reading →

A week ago, I finished running Tor des Geants, the epic endurance trail race in the Italian Alps. “Running” might not be the ideal word, since all of us 711 starters spent most of our 4-6 days fast hiking, shuffling, walking, and basically finding any way possible to keep moving forward. Only occasionally did most   Continue Reading →

The Tor des Geants– a 330 km trail race with an incomprehensible 33,000 meters of vertical– takes place around the high cols and mountains above the Aosta Valley, Italy, each September. The week-long event has just wrapped up, and one thing that you can say about Tor is that there are always a few stories   Continue Reading →

Run the Alps friend Emily Schmitz is an American trail runner living in Chamonix, France. In 2019, she finished 5th in UTMB‘s OCC race. This year, she finished 11th. I am not a natural mountain runner. I grew up in Milwaukee, a city that sits in the heart of the Midwestern US, known for breweries,   Continue Reading →