Frequently Asked Questions

TrailQuest is a community project that aims to help South African trail runners find local events and races. We aim to make this as easy as possible, so you can just focus on the training!

TrailQuest was started for two main reasons. Firstly, to make finding awesome trail running events and races much easier! Secondly, as a learning experience in web development for the creators. While we will continue to make TrailQuest as accessible as possible, there are obviously some running costs involved. The ads are there to cover those costs. Feel free to use your favourite ad-blocker to get rid of them!

The easiest way to support TrailQuest is to simply donate using the big yellow "buy me a coffee" button at the top right. This will allow us to keep the site running (pun intended) and up to date.

Simply put, an event is a collection of at least one race. An event's races could be on the same day or on different days, and they could be in completely different areas. For example, Ultra-Trail Cape Town (UTCT) is an event that has multiple races on different days (e.g. UT100, PT55, TM35).

While you don't have to create an account, we recommend you do. When you create an account with TrailQuest, you can:

• Save your favorite races and events, and get emails about your upcoming favourites
• Get notifications about upcoming races
• In the future, you will be able to sign up for emails about races we think you'll like

Registering is secure and can be done either with an email/password combination, or via Google sign-in. Once you register, you'll have to confirm your email address quickly and then you're good to go!

Your details will never be given out to any third party. We will only use them to make your experience finding epic adventures better for you.

On your profile page, you will find some checkboxes to customise the notifications you get. Simply select/unselect them appropriately, and then press save.

While we obviously try to have all the events and races here, this is just a community project and it's entirely possible we missed one. If that's the case, we'd really appreciate if you could let us know. In the navigation bar at the top of the site, you'll find a link to a Google Form where you can let us know what we're missing. We actively monitor those responses and will add your event/race ASAP!

It's worth noting that if we can't find the details anywhere online, or we're not sure about the details we do manage to find, we might choose to simply add a placeholder of the event/race until we can verify the details - so you'll still be able to search for it, but it might not have all the detail you're used to.

Are you maybe using a browser like Safari or Firefox? Unfortunately, there are known compatibility issues with none-Chromium browsers. Since this is not our day job, fixing the whole site for every browser is a bit beyond our skill level! We suggest trying a browser like Chrome or Brave :)

Community Runs are recurring group runs organised by local running clubs, groups, or individuals. Unlike one-off races, these are regular meetups that happen weekly or on specific days.

TrailQuest helps promote your community run by listing it on our site and, more importantly, by sending weekly email digests to runners who have subscribed to your run. This means your runners get a reminder every week with the latest meeting details!

We offer a free weekly email digest service for community runs. Here's how it works:

• Automatic weekly reminders — Every Sunday evening, subscribed runners receive an email with your run's details for the upcoming week
• Customisable updates — Each week, you can update the meeting point, time, distance options, route notes, or add special announcements
• No more WhatsApp fatigue — Runners don't need to check multiple group chats; they get one consolidated email with all their subscribed runs
• Reach new runners — Your run is listed on TrailQuest, helping new runners in your area discover you

Best of all, this service is completely free!

Each weekly update can include:

• Meeting point — Where runners should meet (e.g., "Newlands Forest parking lot")
• Meeting time — When the run starts
• Distances — What distance options are available (e.g., "5km, 10km, 15km")
• Route notes — Brief description of the route or terrain
• Special notice — Important announcements like cancellations, route changes, or events

If you don't submit an update for a particular week, we'll use your default information so runners still get reminded.

Getting your community run on TrailQuest is easy:

1. Use the "Submit Event" form in the navigation bar
2. Let us know it's a recurring community run (not a once-off race)
3. Provide the basic details: name, location, day/time, distances, and your contact info
4. We'll add your run and can set you up with organizer access to submit weekly updates

Once you're set up, you'll be able to log in and manage your run's weekly updates directly through our admin panel.

Runners can subscribe in two ways:

• On the Community Runs page, click the bell icon on your run's card
• Visit your community run's detail page and click the "Subscribe for Weekly Updates" button

Once subscribed, they'll automatically receive the weekly digest email every Sunday evening with updates for all their subscribed runs.

Encourage your existing runners to subscribe so they never miss an update!