Seeing wildlife in their natural habitat is a truly special experience and the majority of interactions with bears don’t involve any aggression on the bears part. In most cases, a bear will act curious, will completely ignore you, or will simply run away.

Actual attacks are surprisingly rare. But as trail runners, our speed puts us at an increased risk for sudden encounters with bears which can provoke a defensive reaction, and the large amount of time that many of us spend in the backcountry and particularly in grizzly habitat also puts us at an increased risk.

So in this post, I’ll discuss how we can avoid potentially dangerous conflicts with bears, how to tell the difference between black bears and grizzlies, a subspecies of the brown bear, and what to do in the rare case of an attack. Most of what I’ll be recommending is based on advice from Parks Canada as well as the authoritative book by Stephen Herrero which I’d highly recommend reading for yourself.

In the fall of 2018, I travelled to Italy to test myself against the world-famous Tor Des Geants – a 200 mile (330km) trail run with over 24,000m of ascent. I carried a camera to document my journey.

Join me for the premiere of my 45-minute documentary “Tor Des Geants, Among the Giants of the Alps”. After the screening there will be a Q&A with me, along with some great prizes from Salomon.

Race season is once again upon us! It’s time to finalize a racing schedule and put together a training plan, but don’t forget to set aside a day or two to give back a little to the community.

The relatively small fields that trail running races tend to allow for, given permitting restrictions in parks throughout North America, mean that race directors have to rely quite heavily on what can often be a small army of volunteers in order to keep the costs down for a race. It’s not uncommon for races to need over 200 volunteers!

Volunteering is a fun way to support and cheer for your friends who might be racing, and I’ve found it an especially great way to stay involved when I’m recovering from an injury or another race. Some race directors even provide discounts on future race entry fees in exchange for your service, or other great perks like swag and appreciation parties.

So if you’ve never volunteered then go ahead and email a race organizer about how you can help out this season with one of the positions below.

This article was originally written for a post on The Manual, ‘The Essential Guide for Men’ which appeared on Feb. 3rd. See that original post here.

For some runners, the arrival of snow will signal a transition to training on skis or perhaps running indoors on a treadmill. For others like myself, it’s simply a chance to play in the mountains in a less structured way.

Trail running in the winter can certainly bring with it its own challenges, but it can be a lot of fun provided you are adequately prepared with the right equipment and follow a couple of simple pieces of advice. Here are 5 tips for having fun while winter trail running this season.

Heart rate training can be very useful for runners hoping to train more effectively by helping us to avoid those dreaded junk miles. Heart rate monitors can be purchased as chest straps and some GPS watches now even have built-in optical sensors on the wrist.

Since I’ve been training with heart-rate for quite a few years myself, and as an ambassador for Suunto, I often get asked about training with heart-rate. I’ve also realized in talking with people that there’s quite a bit of confusion on how heart rate can and can’t be used.

Here are 5 common mistakes that runners make when training with heart rate.