Innsbruck Alpine Trailrun Festival’s Creative Race Formats

One of them the ‘Trail Hunt‘ is kind of a fun format I hadn’t seen in our trail world:

… a unique elite race in pursuit format with limited starting spots and total prize money of EUR 30,000.

The best athletes will compete against each other over two days of action. Only the fastest runners in the vertical race will qualify for the pursuit start in the trail race. A format for power, precision, speed, and fearlessness — for those who thrive when the pressure rises. Not just a starting line. 

An elite only event with a prize purse, stretched over two days, where on the first day folks run a Vertical Race. The results of that race determines their start time for the following day’s trail race over 24km.

I’m excited we’re not done experimenting in our sport. Both on the spear end of it – finding competitions that attract elite athletes and spectators alike and on the amateur level where Innsbruck is offering a ‘Businesstrail’ event – for folks who work in Innsbruck and want to participate in a short ‘after work’ trail race. The organizer ‘Laufwerkstatt’ also offers a Team registration with the largest team receiving a special prize.

Yes, for the media all these special events and classifications are hard to evaluate beyond the novelty status, but I do appreciate the creativity for an event with thousands of participants. Innsbrucks Trailrun Festival bills itself as the largest trail running event in the German speaking region, bigger than the ‘now’ UTMB-owned Zugspitz Ultra.