New here? 👋 Angie Lake writing: communications consultant for outdoor brands, co-director of Wild Woman Trail Runs which was the first all-women’s 50k + marathon in the USA, and creator of the Trail Running Sisterhood scholarship through The Cairn Project. Applications for 2027 are open now!
IMO, in a discussion called “Building a More Inclusive Race Community,” the most important anchor is the intersectionality of it all.
Although I was on this panel at the 2026 US Trail Running Conference to represent a community of women runners, much of how we’d truly support women is how we’d support all underserved communities. We can’t support women runners without supporting queer, Black, plus-sized para-athlete women runners. To paraphrase Fannie Lou Hamer, we’re not free until we’re all free.
Oh, how I wish I had all the answers here! I don’t, and this discussion of intersectionality is a practice I’m still building myself. But this USTRC panel hopefully sparked hundreds of conversations to make trail running actually a more welcoming culture. The panel included:
Moderator Renee Janssen (founder of Trail Mix Fund and race director for Go Beyond Racing)
Yolanda Lopez Haugabook (co-founder of Sin Miedo, a BIPOC-led and centered trail running community in Nashville)
Ryan Montgomery (pro runner who competes in the non-binary division when available)
Ryan Jolley (legally blind runner who covers the disability perspective)
Jordan Whetstone (founder of Rising Hearts, an Indigenous-led organization that builds community through kinship, movement, advocacy, and storytelling)
For my part, Renee read aloud this myth: “We have tampons at aid stations, so our race is inclusive to women.” TBH, it’s not entirely wrong, but it’s incomplete (and probably the bare minimum 😉). Here’s what I’d put in the quick crash course:
Body talk: Anticipate needs and share policies in advance.
This past June at Wild Woman, a runner came up to the registration table flustered because Southwest Airlines had lost all of her luggage en route to the race. She was at the base of Mt. Adams, trained to run a half marathon in 2 days, and without any of her race gear or apparel.
She’d walked around the campsites, gathering borrowed gear from other women, and was able to put together a full kit (even shoes!) except for one thing: a sports bra. (Y’all, I couldn’t even run a MILE without a sports bra.) My co-director asked for her size, ran indoors, and came back out with the missing piece, a sports bra for her to wear for the weekend. This woman literally got the sports bra off the director’s back.
Contrast that with my third ultramarathon when TWO separate women on course asked me if I had a tampon in my vest that they could have. I don’t know whether or not the aid stations had menstrual supplies, but even if they did, these women may not have been comfortable in this coed environment to ask for them.
When it comes to bodily needs, the #1 action race leadership can take is to anticipate needs (by asking their community, of course) and sharing in advance the policies and procedures to take care of them.
A handful of ideas to start (not just for races – for group events and adventures in general!):
Yes, provide menstrual supplies at aid stations and headquarters, but make them self-serve so people don’t have to ask for them aloud (the stigma can keep folks from asking).
Offer pregnancy/postpartum deferrals at no cost, for a minimum of 2 years.
Protect space for breastfeeding (shout out the Standhope Ultra Challenge race for providing transportation of breastmilk from aid stations to their babies at HQ!).
The dream: Childcare at races would make a race stand out HARD. Just putting it out there…
Race design: Safety is a part of equity.
In a survey to the Wild Woman community last year, we asked: “What frustrates you most about being a woman in trail running?”
37% named fear as it relates to safety: they wrote about being watched, being followed, the need to carry a weapon, risks of running solo, hypervigilance near men on trail, having to tell a partner about their daily run plans, etc. Safety was the #1 response by a wide margin. Many women wrote sentences like, “I feel safe until another person makes me feel unsafe.”
At a conference discussion, I briefly met Abby Lokits of Free to Move, whose sister-in-law was murdered by a man while running in Nashville. She asked the table what we as race directors were doing outside of our races to promote safety in the sport. DAMN, I struggled to answer (and came to the conclusion that we should create resources and content around women’s running safety to share through the Wild Woman community).
Another major barrier for women? Race cutoffs! Countless women have now told me that they are less likely to sign up for a race because of the fear of not making cutoffs. (Even though I’m typically around the front third of racers in a given pack, I still feel this pressure myself. It reminds me of the phenomenon of applying to jobs where men will apply even if they only have experience in one bullet point but women won’t apply if they’re missing experience in just one bullet point. BLEH.) In fact, when women DNF (do not finish), it’s typically because of not making cut-offs rather than dropping out due to something voluntary or body-related.
68% of women are more likely to engage in races actively promoting female inclusion (2025 stat from International Trail Running Association). A few ideas to start:
Minimize cutoffs, eliminate cutoffs, create more generous cutoffs, and communicate them before registration.
Offer equal prize money or prizes to all genders (including non-binary division).
Have a clearly stated and shared harassment policy.
Snagged this great idea from Trail Sisters: at the starting line, use the mic to invite women to stand up front (they’re more likely to go to the back of the pack even if they’re fast).
Brand messaging: Representation in races can change the whole sport.
32% of women feel trail running’s intimidating messaging is a barrier (from the same ITRA report). And when I opened applications to the Sisterhood in December 2025 for women who had never before run an ultra, 2/3 of applicants told us trail running industry representation was a barrier for them.
Of the selected runners of the inaugural Sisterhood, post-race, a whopping 100% said they would not have confidently attempted a 50k on their own this year without this program. After the program, 82% plan to run another ultramarathon in the next two years (zero said they wouldn’t). Giving opportunities and creating representation in media will dramatically shift the demographics of trail running.
I’m a 34 year old, white, middle class, cis-het woman who wears standard sized clothing and has no known disabilities. In many ways, I’m the everyday runner that media caters to. It is boring. It is exclusive. It is in no way going to grow our sport if we only focus on people who look like me.
We’ve all seen brands slap a photo of a runner of color on their website and call it inclusion. We’ve seen that when a woman turns 50, she disappears from brand marketing images so they can show someone younger. We’ve seen brands say they create “plus size apparel” but it’s only a size 14.
If races want to attract more women (or BIPOC runners or para-athletes or older runners or plus-sized runners or queer runners or trans runners or or or or…), they need to both consume, and more importantly create more representative media. Ideas for races to start:
Make sure the people in the decision-making are representative of the people pictured in your advertisements.
Hire media pros — photographers, videographers, journalists, commentators — who come from underrecognized populations.
Spotlight runners beyond the frontrunners and elites (non-pro stories are more relatable to the masses anyway).
Partner with running groups and nonprofits who protect spaces for underserved communities (Rising Hearts and Sin Miedo on this panel, for example!).
Saying the word “inclusion” is free. Practicing it costs money and control, and those are two resources most brands guard hardest.
For a race director or leader, inclusion is not a one-time checkbox. It’s a practice of reevaluating your policies and procedures and messaging and outreach. It’s a reminder to sit in the discomfort of knowing the industry has a long way to go but putting in the work anyway. It’s learning to be okay with facing some risk and spending some resources to help more people access your product or services or experiences.
Women face plenty of mental barriers to trail running, not just physical. But calling it a “mindset” problem is inaccurate. Women can’t mindset themselves out of the patriarchy. We need systemic change to welcome a diverse community of runners. The problem is structural, not personal.
More than anything, if I could’ve only shared ONE thing with the audience at USTRC, it would be this:
We need more women in race and trail running leadership, and specifically with overlapping identities who have been undercelebrated and: women of color, women with disabilities, queer women, women of ALL ages. We need them on the start line and at the finish. But we also need them on the announcer microphone, behind the magazine article, wearing the doctor’s name tag, with the word “coach” next to their name. Find them, talk to them, pay them, ask them what they need from your race.
The 2027 Trail Running Sisterhood scholarship program is now open for applications!
The Cairn Project is selecting 36 women across two cohorts, racing one weekend at Wild Woman Trail Runs in Trout Lake, WA: 18 running their first half marathon, and 18 running their first 50k ultra. We encourage all women who are trail-curious to apply. Apps open now through 12/28.
(FWIW, I only got to attend this conference because of the Better Together Scholarship that I applied for through the American Trail Running Association. I am SO grateful for scholarships that have helped me expand my education and skills over the years. As a co-director of a niche, bootstrapped women’s trail race, opportunities like this make a massive difference. Thinking about writing a post this fall about both applying for outdoor sports scholarships AND creating scholarships… If that’s intriguing to you, leave me a comment or message so I do it!)