President's Report: July 2024

A big July hello to all of our members, and a big welcome to our new ones! Its so great to see our membership growing month on month as we continue to strive to deliver you more and more member benefits in the form of discounts, information, newsletter, podcasts, but most importantly by bringing on new races for you to all enjoy. Our event calendar continues to grow so we hope you are as excited by this as we are!

Our team has been working closely with our new Director of Events, Lisa Sherman, and our aim is to make the AUTRA calendar the ‘go to’ calendar in Australia for the running community. If any race directors out there need help or advice about listing or insurance, please reach out to Lisa.

This month we are excited to announce your National Championship events for 2025! So, lock them into your calendar and get training!

• Long Trail – Lonely Mountain Ultra 100km – Orange, NSW
• Short Trail – Five Peaks 58km– SA
• 100 mile Trail – Grampian Peaks Trail (GPT) miler - VIC
• 50km Road – Gold Coast 50 – QLD
• 100km Road – Sri Chinmoy 100km – ACT
• 48 Hour Track – Southern Sydney Ultra – NSW
• 24 Hour Track – Sri Chinmoy – ACT

Congratulations to all the successful applicants. We had an extraordinarily hard decision to make this year with so many great events applying. We tried to mix up the events so that many states were covered, as well as offer the opportunity to host to some newcomer events that have proven to be well run events over the last few years. We can‘t award them to everyone unfortunately, and we hope to see the events that were not successful this year reapply next year. There is a criteria we consider when selecting so as to offer a quality championship across all events.

On the Trail Running front, we have sent off our provisional team selections for the Asia Pacific Trail Running Championships and will announce the team once it is confirmed. But its exciting times to be able to officially send a trail team under the AUTRA banner.

We are in the process of designing our new AUTRA merchandise so watch this space! We are adding some cool new lines to the list such as hoodies, socks and new hats along with a newly designed AUTRA shirt, singlet and buff range.

Check out our growing list of partners offering members benefits on your members page on the website. New partners on board this month include Pace Athletic, Fractel, LSKD, Health+High Performance, and Mindset for Runners.

Upcoming AUTRA events in August are:

• Birdy’s Backyard Ultra – WA
• Red’s Backyard Ultra – NSW
• Tolosa Half, Quarter and Mini – TAS
• Rumble in the Jungle – NSW
• Sri Chinmoy Canberra Trail 100 – ACT
• Berry Long Run – NSW
• Backyard Ultra Trail Series – Echuca – VIC
• K2PD – QLD
• Unreasonable East 100 & 200 miler – QLD
• GBomb Trail Run – NSW
• Wild Earth ‘Coastal High’ Trail Runs – QLD
• Southern Sydney 24 Hour Ultra – NSW

So, if that’s not a good enough reason to lace up your shoes and get out there, I don’t know what is! Not to mention make sure you are a current financial AUTRA member to get all of your race entry discounts and make the most of our partner discounts - you can save a huge amount of cash on entries gear and more!

That’s it for July, I looking forward to giving you some more exciting news next month!

Simone Hayes, AUTRA President