It wasn’t long ago that trail running was relegated to niche status, tossed in with ultrarunning and mountain running, when the three were essentially dismissed as odd-ball outgrowths from the more serious disciplines of road, track and cross-country. Fittingly, it even falls under the moniker “MUT” (mountain, ultra, trail) within USATF.

But times are changing and as a bright sign of that, Nike has joined the ranks of companies sponsoring elite trail teams. While pure trail companies have done so for decades, starting with Montrail in the mid-90s and expanding to other trail or multi-sport-focused companies like Salomon, The North Face, La Sportiva, Inov-8, Pearl Izumi, Vasque, Scott and Patagonia, Nike’s new team is a bellwether to a different and much larger flock.

The difference, you see, is that Nike doesn’t really mess around with niche markets. While it once dabbled in adventure racing and trail running through its rugged (red-headed step-child) subsidiary, ACG, the parent company has relied on mass market appeal to drive its more serious business decisions. So the creation of a trail team was surely researched and carefully thought-out by the Swoosh.

As a sign of Nike’s seriousness, the quality and depth of the team speaks volumes. There are more than ten speedy members on the team, most relatively young in the trail world, yet with outstanding credentials that include wins at some of the nation’s biggest trail races, including JFK50 and, just this past weekend, Way Too Cool 50K. All but one team member reside in western states, with Zach Miller of Pennsylvania being the exception. Otherwise they are from Oregon, California, Utah, Arizona and Colorado. Alicia Shay, of Flagstaff, Arizona, just signed with the team last week.

While adidas, Brooks, NB and Mizuno each have at least one sponsored off-road runner in the game, perhaps Nike’s move will prompt Asics, Saucony, Puma, Under Armour, Skechers, and other historically road shoe brands to step into the trail scene. Hoka, Altra and Merrell have recently joined the dance too, especially with Hoka’s 2014 signing of Magdalena Boulet and luring Sage Canaday from Scott and Julien Chorier from Salomon. And this is viewed by many as being good for the sport. Certainly it benefits competitive trail runners, those seeing the number of sponsored positions grow and, hopefully, a parallel increase in demand pushes companies to pay more than the minimal cash that off-road runners currently command. But will that change the nature of a sport that is about as grass roots (and muddy) as you get?

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