NEW CLASSIFICATION OF TRAIL-RUNNING

A new classification of trail races has been developed to ever closer match the course to the effort demanded. These classifications are now connected with ITRA points.
Discover the new classification of trail-Running

Why change categories ? 

Since 2014, ITRA has built a reliable database of more than one million trail runners and several tens of thousands of races and their results. By analysing this enormous amount of data, ITRA has been able to ever more closely match points awarded the race with the effort required of the runner to complete its course.

The original classification of trails, based on their distance, did not allow for a consistent classification corresponding exactly to the effort required by the runners.

For example, two races of the same distance may require an extremely different amounts of effort depending on their altitudes and thus be in the same category while the race times could be completely different. Equally two races with identical race times could be classified into two different categories simply because they are two different distances.

What are the changes ? 

In the context of rewriting of Article 252 of the IAAF's Rules of Competition defining trail-running, the ITRA Steering Committee has approved a new redefined trail classification with the aim of grouping races in a more consistent way.

The new classification has 7 different categories of trail-running races (from XXS to XXL) all associated with the new ITRA points according to the following table:

Races are classified using the method of km-effort which allows to assign them a number of points.

Reminder: km-effort measure is the sum of the distance expressed in kilometers and a hundredth of the vertical gain expressed in meters, rounded to the nearest whole number (for example, the km-effort of a race of 65 km and 3500 m ascent is: 65 + 3500/100 = 100).

Furthermore, the limits between the categories have been refined in order to regroup races together in a more consistent way with respect to the race time. In that way it would be easier to anticipate the effort to produce by runners during a race.

When it will take place ? 

> The new points, defined according to the new limits, will apply from now on to all races in 2019.
NB: 2018 races keep the points assigned according to the old limits.

> The ITRA performance index calculated according to the new classification will be effective from March 2018.