Trail Running: Trail Running Terms

“Vert”, “BKT”, “Pain Cave”… All these intimidating, foreign words that don’t mean what I think they mean, if I have any clue at all to what they are even supposed to mean.

Like any sport, trail running has its own jargon.

I read a hillarious article in the South African Runners World Issue 6/2022 and I thought I would compile a list for people like me, who didn’t know I didn’t know until I didn’t know what the fudge people were talking about.

Click this link to go to the online version of the article that inspired me.

In my short 15 months on the running trails, I have never heard anyone actually use any of these words, but the guy from Runners’ World seems to think they are a ‘thing’ and dedicated an entire 2 pages to them.

I have done my ‘own research’ aka ‘GOOGLED’ trail running terms and while some of the words in the Runners’ World article appear common, some of them are not. Seff Efricanisms more likely?

So I decided to do a comparison of the South African trail terms and what their (mostly American/English) versions may be.

I’m not reinventing the wheel here, hey. Just putting spokes in them.