America’s Best Trail Running Cities Contest!

iRunFar is looking for info on 32 of the best trail running cities in the US and we making it worth your while. How? By giving away 32 pairs of Salomon XR Crossmax, the company’s brand new door-to-trail running shoe. That got your attention didn’t it?!

While we talk in terms of “cities,” we’re actually looking for the scoop on each city and an area within roughly 50 miles of the city. For each city/area we’d love to know:

What are the best trail running areas? Think on the scale of a park/trail system rather than a single trail.
What are the best trail races or trail race series, whatever the distance?
Who are the top trail runners regardless of their specialty distance?
What trail running groups are in the area?
What are the best specialty running stores with trail running selections?

If you can, let us know what’s great about each running area, trail race, etc. that you provide. Share whatever else you think would be useful to know as a trail runner in each of these areas. The more info the better! (Ps. We’d love to know your connection to the area, too!)

We’ve set up 32 topics, one for each city, in a separate forum. One lucky commenter on each of the city-specific forum topics linked below will win a pair of a Salomon XR Crossmax. (That’s one pair of shoes for each city.) To be eligible to win, you must leave a substantive comment (i.e., provide some bit of useful knowledge about trail running in one of these areas) in the forum [removed link to forum] before 11:59 pm MST on Monday, February 14. We’ll announce the winner both in each thread and on iRunFar.com by Friday, February 18. While you can leave comments on this article, only comments left in the forum will result in contest eligibility. Note: You do not have to answer all of the above questions to enter the contest! Share what you have the time to do – we and the rest of iRunFar’s readers will appreciate it! Hopefully, you’ll learn something by reading the comments of others regarding the areas where you run.

APPEAL: Please spread word of this info gathering contest! Let your friends know via blog posts, Twitter, Facebook, or email. We very rarely make such pleas, but could really use your help pulling together great trail running information.

Reassurance and ADDED CONTEST!: Folks, please don’t take offense at your city not making the list. This is not an absolute list. It’s 32 OF the best trail running cities in America, and it was put together with the needs of a specific project in mind.

Think that your city or town deserves recognition as a Best Trail Running City or Town in America? Well, we’d love to have you help populate the iRunFar Forum with information from cities and towns not on the list below. As a little encouragement, we’re now offering 10 $10 Backcountry.com gift certificates to be drawn from among those who comment (or start a topic with a substantive comment) in the forum on a city or town specific trail running area with the above questions in mind. To be eligible, you must comment before 11:59 pm MST on Monday, February 14. All the other rules outlined above apply here, as well. As with the shoe giveaway, each city or town on which you comment results in a separate entry.

Cities East of the Mississippi

Cities West of the Mississippi

Albuquerque, New Mexico
Anchorage, Alaska
Austin, Texas
Bellingham, Washington
Bend, Oregon
Boise, Idaho
Bozeman, Montana
Colorado Springs, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
Flagstaff, Arizona
Los Angeles, California
Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota (Yes, we know the Twin Cities sit on both banks of the Mississippi.)
Moab, Utah
Portland, Oregon
Reno, Nevada
Sacramento, California
Saint Louis, Missouri (Another east/west metro area… that falls into the west. Sorry, East St. Louis!)
Salt Lake City, Utah
San Diego, California
San Francisco, California
Seattle, Washington
Tucson, Arizona

[Disclosure: Just in case you didn’t guess, Salomon is providing the XR Crossmax for contest.]