FAQ’s

runher is designed as a gateway race for women who want to sign up for trail running events, or have their eye set on longer distances, but may feel uncertain or unready for any number of reasons. The idea is to welcome more people to our wonderful community, for the benefit of all trail runners, rather than to exclude men or to create any divide.

We’d love to see the guys out there in force; cheering, volunteering, or running with their kids in the family event.

Why?

Currently, women represent a significantly lower percentage of participants at trail running events across Australia and the world, particularly as the distance of the events increase.

On the flipside, the majority of volunteers at our events are women. They’re enthusiastic, active members of our community, but many don’t feel confident signing up for races, for a variety of reasons.

We’ve been working with a lot of fantastic partners, and listening to passionate advocates to identify ways we can encourage women to get started, in the hopes that higher participation in the sport overall will lead to more women feeling confident and welcome on start lines of every distance.

SheRACES is a great source of information if you’d like to find out more about the current experiences of women in races, and their ideas and suggestions.

“We believe that everyone deserves an equal opportunity to race, and an equal experience when they do. But women are still underrepresented on the start line, and 96% have experienced unequal treatment in a race (source: SheRACES survey of >1300 women).”

While runher isn’t going to bridge every gap that prevents women from registering for races, nor is it going to solve every inequality in our sport as a whole, this is us having a go.

All women are welcome, and anyone who identifies as such.

Yes! While the 21km and 10km races are only open to women, we encourage the incredible men in our trail running community to get involved at water stations, as marshals and in other volunteer roles.

All children are welcome to enter the 4.4km event, including boys up to 13 years of age, and may be accompanied by an adult support runner of any gender, where required.

Runher events welcome women of all running abilities. If you’re up for giving it a go, come along and join us for a fun day out.

Walkers are also welcome. If you plan to walk the full course, please enter the 10km or 4.4km events.

The minimum age for the 21km event is 15 years on the day of the event and for the 10km event, it is 12 years of age on the day of the event.

All children aged between 6 and 13 years of age are welcome to register for our family run. If they will be under 12 years of age on the day of the event they MUST BE DIRECTLY SUPERVISED for the duration of the run. That is, a parent or guardian must run with the child for the entire distance, and they too must be entered in the event. Adults who are entering solely for this purpose can opt for a free ‘SUPPORT RUNNER’ registration.

All participants who identify as a woman may enter in the runher races without any need for disclosure of information or other requirements.

Transgender women are eligible to win awards provided they have been undergoing continuous, medically supervised hormone treatment for gender transition for at least one year prior to the race.

Sorry dog-lovers, not this time. As part of our permits and insurance approvals, there are some things we can’t do, and having our furry friends along is one of them. Dogs are not permitted at Lake Manchester due to the potential impact on local flora and fauna. Other participants, particularly our younger ones, may also be uncomfortable around dogs, however lovely and on-leash they may be.

The short answer is no. With lots of other runners around, you’ll probably find that you don’t need the tunes to keep you pumped. Music or podcasts will limit your ability to hear instructions from marshals, as well as calls from other participants or members of the public.

This is of increased importance on the trails, where a wrong turn could get you lost very quickly.

We do know that people break this rule in just about every running race out there, so if you’ve decided you can’t survive one run without music, please limit use to one ear and turn it off altogether in all areas of high traffic or potential confusion.

But preferably, please respect our request and don’t use it at all. We’re pretty sure you’ll still have fun!

To limit potential waste, we will make an educated guess about medal requirements approximately 2 weeks before the event (the latest time we can order more to be produced). 

All finishers of every distance will receive a medal (excluding adults registered as a SUPPORT RUNNER in our family event). If we have more runners register than the number of medals available, late entrants may miss out so it is best to enter more than 2 weeks before the event to be certain of receiving one.

We will do our very best on the day to share any leftover medals out to later entrants as fairly as possible, but please understand that if you register within 2 weeks of the event date, this may not be possible.

The 21km event includes some hills where grip will be a benefit, however you may be able to complete the events in any running shoes. That said, a pair of trail shoes will offer you more traction and avoid you getting your shiny road shoes dirty. Plus, you’ll be hooked once you get a taste of the trails so they’ll get plenty of use!

The very best trail running store (of course we’re not biased!), The Trail Co., can hook you up and we’ll also have a tent at the event so pop by and say hello.

Head to our Event Price page for all the details.

Online entries close at 5pm on the Thurs prior to the event, unless sold out earlier.

Please note, you may miss out on a medal if you register within 2 weeks of the event date (see FAQ above: “Will I get a medal?”)

On-the-day entries will be available, unless the event has sold out prior. On-the-day entries will incur a $10 administration fee in addition to your Entry Fee, and must be performed no later than 7:00am on event morning.

Please note, you may miss out on a medal if you choose not to register more than 2 weeks before the event date (see FAQ above: “Will I get a medal?”)

All information about entry transfers can be found here. 

Partial refunds are available, subject to cut off dates. All details can be found here. 

There are two ways to find this out. You can check your email for a receipt (unless your SPAM filter got hold of us) or you can log back in to the event registration portal, by clicking any of the MANAGE ENTRY or ENTER NOW buttons on this website, to see which event you’ve signed up for.

If somebody else registered for you, and you can’t find your email, ask them to log in to their profile and check.

Hint: to log in you’ll need to remember which email address you used to register.

Absolutely not.

Trails can be risky and serious stuff does happen. We need to know exactly who is out there in case you become lost, ill, injured or we need to evacuate the course.

While it may seem harmless to you, running as somebody else will jeopardise not just your safety but also our permits, and those of all similar events.

For this reason, anyone found to be running under another person’s name may be banned from future events, as will the person you’re pretending to be.

Please see our transfers page for details on how to transfer. If you missed the deadline, we are very sorry and do sympathise but by that late stage we will be working hard on preparations for the weekend’s event and not on email.

If the event is not sold out, on-the-day entries will be available.

The Participant Guide will be published on the Event Details page on this website once available.

Participant Guides will give you most of the info you’ll need for a great, safe day out. These FAQs and the Event Details page will also be useful for answering lots of your questions.

Bibs are available for collection on the morning of the event. See the participant information guide for full details.

Water will be provided at the finish line and at the designated points shown on the event map. All runners in the 10km and 21km events are required to carry at least 500 mL of water with you. This is for your safety as it can get quite hot in Queensland all year-round, and a trail run can turn out to be a lot slower than your best time for the distance you are running. 

Here is a great selection of water carrying gear for trail running you could use, or any bottle or reservoir that you’re happy to carry will do the trick.

NOTE: All our events are ‘cup free’ so you must have your bottle or a reusable cup with you to make use of water on-course and at finish line.

We keep a close eye on environmental events leading up to and during our events and have direct lines to the authorities and land owners. We do our very best to plan for most eventualities and have contingency plans in place which will allow the event to go ahead if it is safe to do so.

If we do have to cancel, we will email you at the registered email address (if someone else has registered you or you have unsubscribed from our mailing list, you may not get emails from us), post on our social media channels and update the webpage.

So, if you haven’t heard otherwise, relax and turn up for your event and we’ll see you at the start line.

If we can’t host the event on its planned date, we will do our best to reschedule to a new date. Check out our Cancellation Policy for full details.