Trail running hits its stride

They’re running for the hills.

Google searches for “trail running shoes” hit an all-time high in June, according to Google Trends, which has tracked searches since 2004. Trail running participation grew to 17.2 million in 2025, up 6.6% year over year and 57% from 2019, according to the Outdoor Industry Association’s 2026 Running Report.

At REI, “trail run is the fastest-growing category within footwear year-to-date,” Emily Frugé, divisional merchandise manager, told Retail Brew. Sales are up about 12% to 19% year to date, depending on gender and merchandise type, she said.

When running boomed during the Covid pandemic, the outdoor retailer increased the portion of its road-running models to about 60%, Frugé said. But today, growth in the road-running shoe category is “flat” at REI, she said, adding that “we may start to return to our roots a little bit more and grow the trail run assortment…and maybe be more of a 50/50 road versus trail.”

Frugé said trail-running hydration vests have “some of the highest attachment rates to trail run footwear,” retail parlance for being purchased concurrently, and sales have increased “in the same range” as shoes over last year.

REI’s Swiftland product line, which was introduced in 2021, is designed specifically for trail running and includes clothing, socks, packs, gaiters, and trekking poles.

“In-store, we’re definitely being really, really strategic on how we’re outfitting the mannequins and really showing the full kit for the activity,” Frugé said.

And through the woods: Brooks’s trail styles grew 71% YoY in Q2.

Nikhil Jain, footwear product line manager at Brooks Running, said that during the height of the pandemic, the company kept its eyes on the road.

“We had to really choose where to invest our resources [and] invest our innovation, and so unfortunately, trail had to take a little bit of a back seat during that time for Brooks,” Jain told Retail Brew.

But since the pandemic, the trail business has been a focus, and it has drawn on some of the equity of its legacy road-shoe business.

First introduced in 2008, Brooks Ghost gained a dedicated following, with GQ calling it “a go-to shoe many runners return to pair after pair” in 2024. Last November, the brand introduced Ghost Trail, which it describes as a road-and-trail hybrid.

From both a design and strategy vantage point, the shoe was a sort of trailhead come-hither to road runners.

“Think about the millions of consumers that are in a Ghost road-running shoe,” Jain said. “With the Ghost Trail, that step from road to off-road and off-road into the trail is something where we want to take our runners—existing road runners—on that journey with Brooks.”

“Brooks has actually come to market with some really exciting innovation in their Ghost Trail model,” REI’s Frugé said. It “has turned out to be a really strong model that the customer is responding to.”

Blazing a trail: Marathon Sports, a running specialty retailer with 32 stores throughout New England, just made a big bet on trail running.

Its newest location, which opened in August in North Conway, New Hampshire, spotlights the activity unlike any of the retailer’s locations. Trail-running shoes represent about 4% of the selection in the Boston location of Marathon Sports; in North Conway it’s about half.

“Trail running is undeniably hot,” Ben Cooke, president of Marathon Sports, told Retail Brew.

The store, designed by Boulder, Colorado-based 3 Dots Design, is even more trail-oriented, and includes a shoe wall made of rocks.

It was a deliberate departure from the road-running orientation of the rest of the chain.

“There’s nothing about this store that’s remotely like our other stores,” said Cooke, who wondered aloud whether the company should have telegraphed this distinction in the location’s branding. “Maybe we could have put Marathon Sports Trail” in the name. “Maybe that was a miss.”

Cooke hopes more people take advantage of the country’s vast trail network.

“People are going to be like, ‘Why the hell did I not do outdoor stuff?’” Cooke asked. “‘Why did I spend my life on TikTok? Why did I spend my life looking at screens all the time when this is so freaking beautiful?’”

Next time: The trip to Chamonix, France, that sold Cooke on trail running, why his company now owns eight trail races, and the store designer who brought his trail-oriented store to life.