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Each August, the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) becomes the epicenter of global trail running, with thousands of athletes racing more than 100 miles amid towering alpine peaks in France, Italy, and Switzerland. When Marathon Sports President Ben Cooke witnessed this spectacular event while visiting Chamonix, he had a revelation. “I was just blown away,” he says, explaining that the electric atmosphere and massive fan support reminded him of the Tour de France. He realized Marathon Sports—a 51-year-old specialty retailer known for road running—needed to make a serious effort to become a legitimate force in trail running.
When Cooke returned to the United States, he launched an ambitious, multi-pronged strategy, investing in races, opening a new retail store, and hosting excursions and training programs to make Marathon Sports a major player while helping advance the sport of trail running as a whole.
To build a solid foothold in the trail running scene, Cooke focused first on races. He began searching for a location to host high-profile events with the same energy as UTMB.
“I was thinking, what’s the closest thing to Chamonix, with mountains, trails, tourism, and hotels?” Cooke explains, adding that North Conway, NH, was “the closest thing I could come to with a sizable population.”
Cooke then hired Tom Hooper of SIX03 Endurance to serve as director of trail running and race sponsorship partnerships for Marathon Sports. Cooke also acquired three of Hooper’s well-established New Hampshire races, the Sunapee Scramble, Loon Mountain Race, and Cranmore Mountain Race. To draw elite athletes and large crowds, Cooke and Hooper aimed to offer prize purses of $20,000 to $30,000. However, Marathon Sports couldn’t fund these payouts on its own. So, Cooke and Hooper approached several key footwear and gear brands. By leveraging their 32-store retail footprint and inventory commitments, they convinced major brands like HOKA, Merrell, and La Sportiva to co-invest in the purses.
Building on this momentum, Marathon Sports opened its first store dedicated solely to trail running in North Conway in August 2026. Nestled against the White Mountains with the Appalachian Trail cutting through town, the location serves as an ideal launching pad for New England trail running.
One goal with the store was to demonstrate a clear commitment to the sport. “When you walk in, we want it to immediately signal that this isn’t just a shop with a trail section tucked in the corner—it’s a store built specifically for the trail runner,” says Cooke. Housed within a converted former airplane hangar, the 2,400-square-foot interior features custom rock structures built by Eldorado Climbing to reflect the local mountainous terrain. Footwear sits on hand-painted rock walls and hand-sculpted faux granite cairns that double as rolling shoe displays, while a custom rock ramp gives runners a realistic surface to test shoes.
Beyond the visual design, the space is engineered as a true gathering place for the trail community, featuring an open, airy layout and a lounge area that encourages people to linger. Visitors can hang out with their laptop, enjoy free Skratch Labs electrolyte drink mixes on tap, and grab a coffee at the in-store bar.
As Cooke points out, this storefront is more than a retail space—it’s serving as a third space for this community and is a cornerstone of the brand’s broader push into trail running. “We’re trying to build something beyond just selling products,” he says. “We needed to show we’re doing things differently.”
Beyond building stores and backing major races, Marathon Sports knew that growing the sport meant actually getting people onto the dirt and breaking down barriers to entry. To tackle this head-on, the company started running dedicated field trips, using luxury buses to shuttle urban runners straight from Boston out to trailheads in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire. For each outing, participants receive catered lunches, while brands such as Asics, Tracksmith, and Brooks provide demo gear.
Marathon Sports has also leaned into immersive experiences like Dirt Camp, a three-day, all-inclusive retreat set in the Berkshire Mountains along the shores of Ashmere Lake. The camp blends guided trail running across terrain like Mount Greylock with specialized clinics on running technique, nutrition, and sports psychology, alongside recovery amenities such as saunas, ice baths, yoga, and open-water swimming.
At the same time, Tom Hooper is setting his sights on the next generation by tapping into Marathon Sports’ massive scholastic network, leveraging decades of local high school and college team partnerships. The idea is to catch high school and college athletes while they’re still deep into traditional cross-country or track seasons and show them a path forward. “Now we can dabble with those individuals and be like, ‘Hey, when you get done with cross country, come run some trails,’ ” Hooper says, turning off-road running into a lifelong pursuit for young runners.
From Marathon Sports’ efforts to grow participation to its camps, a new retail store, and its high-profile races, this retailer is doing much more than dipping its toes into a new category. Cooke is broadening the brand’s scope to touch every sector of trail running and is also trying to elevate the entire off-road scene. His hope is to build an activity that energizes and attracts people the way the UTMB race inspired him. As Cooke puts it, “People keep asking me, ‘You think you’re going to sell that many more trail shoes?’ Well, I don’t know, but it’s not just about selling the trail shoes. I think it’s taking swings to say, ‘Can you change the world as it is?’ ”
For an in-depth look at the new Marathon Sports shop in North Conway, NH, check out our previous feature: A Creative Leap: How Design Drives Marathon Sports’ New Trail-Running Store.
