Micah Ling is a freelance writer specializing in outdoor adventure currently road trippng around America with bylines in Esquire, GQ, and Outside. You can follow her journey on Instagram @therealmicahling.
Today, Trail Sisters is a powerful movement advocating for gender equity in trail running and hiking with over 15,000 members. But its founder Gina Lucrezi initially set out to do something more modest. An elite runner with results on both the track and trail, Lucrezi started Trail Sisters in 2016 as a blog to encourage more women to join her in the male-dominated world of off-road races.
When the site started to get traction, she brought on more contributors to feature more women’s stories and to provide information to folks that wanted to start local communities of runners under the Trail Sisters umbrella.
In 2019, Lucrezi developed a standard to judging how well a race event supported female athletes, and compiled a calendar of Trail Sisters-approved events. Before long, Lucrezi started hosting her own races through the growing Trail Sisters organization—first one in Buena Vista, Colorado and another in Lake Sonoma, California. This year, Adidas Terrex announced it would be the title sponsor of both for the next three years.
As Trail Sisters approaches a decade in existence, I had the chance to speak with Lucrezi about the unique place she has found herself in within the world of trail running. Here, we explore the full story of her racing career, the blog’s humble beginnings and evolution into the invaluable resource it is today. Plus, how she created the Trail Sisters standard and why she believes empowering women in trail running empowers women everywhere.
Gina Lucrezi
The Trail Sisters Origin Story
Lucrezi has plenty of experience as an elite runner. She was a 10-time NCAA Division III All-American, and in 2005 won the 1500-meter indoor national championship while competing for DeSales University.
She found even more success on the trails over the past 15 years, at every distance from half marathon to 100 miler. She won the Northern Nipmuck 16-miler in 2010, the Mt. Tam 50K in 2013, and the Leadville Silver Rush 50 miler in 2017, among others.
Along the way, Lucrezi noticed that so many of the races, and the running community in general, was male-dominated. She knew there were women out there who could and would compete, but they weren’t there. While she worked to get to the bottom of why, she knew she wanted to do something about it.
Lucrezi launched the Trail Sisters blog in 2016, as a way to both encourage more women to participate and provide resources about what they would expect. She started publishing weekly articles on all things trail running and hiking for women. The site, perhaps thanks to Lucrezi’s experience in marketing, quickly found an audience. And soon after the launch, more women asked to help or contribute. “I invited seven other women to contribute, and we wrote educational, inspirational, and empowering content each week,” Lucrezi told me.