(This ran April 24 in West Newsmagazine online and print. All photos are by Elaine Collins.)
Shalini Bhajjan is blending passion, experience and skill into a unique local direction. The Delhi, India, native moved to the U.S. in the 1990’s and pursued a professional career in design and merchandising. After working in that field for more than a decade in New York, then two years in Florida, Bhajjan settled into the Ballwin area.
Since then, Bhajjan’s path took an interesting turn. After being a stay-at-home mom to three children for a handful of years, Bhajjan started running, and has kept on running.
But unlike Forrest Gump’s adventures along America’s roads, Bhajjan casually ran the trails of nearby Castlewood State Park around 2011-2012. Shortly thereafter, she connected with a group in Wisconsin and ran her first 50k ultra trail run.
“Getting back to St. Louis, I was just looking for people to run with,” Bhajjan said. “I was throwing out weekly runs, and a bunch of us would connect and do long Sunday runs at Greensfelder County Park and elsewhere. That kind of initiated a question, ‘Why aren’t there any races here?’ It snowballed from there.”
Race Director Shalini Bhajjan and speaker Traci Falbo.
Bhajjan connected with United States of America Track & Field (USATF). That led to the creation of Terrain Trail Runners-STL which combines her talents of not only coordinating runs and races, and helping work on actual trails plus merchandising products for the organization and specific races. From there, she directed the Ozark Foothills event.
Bhajjan has been race directing full-time for 10 years and currently has 11 events in St. Louis. Ten of those events offer races ranging from 5k up to 100 miles, and are held at different state and county parks. Every race showcases different terrain and different kinds of trail systems.
“The eleventh event is actually a women’s summit, a free community event I host in October,” Bhajjan said. “It’s open to all female athletes, whether they’re running, hiking, cycling or just want to learn more about the outdoors and connect with other women in the area. I started that with the goal to engage women in the outdoors and create that safe place for other female athletes.”
Terrain Trail Runners-STL has brought new races to Greensfelder, Rockwood Reservations and Al Foster, to name a few local parks. She also has a first-ever foot race this year at Babler State Park on May 4. It’s a 15k run known as Babler Bongo.
“I run in a lot of races in the United States and internationally,” Bhajjan said. “I always get the question of where I’m from. Everyone has the misconception that St. Louis is all just Katy Trail – like crushed flat gravel. I wanted to prove that’s false. Our trails are not all flat because we are at the Ozark foothills. We don’t have 2,000 and 3,000 feet climbs, but our trails are equally challenging. Also, I take pride in the accessibility of all our trails, and don’t want people to keep saying that just because we live in St. Louis, we won’t be able to run some of the out-of-town trails. My top priority has been showcasing what we have and creating routes and events that bring in people.”
To maintain sustainability, Bhajjan also limits race participant numbers to 100-125. Ozark Hills is one of the biggest races, pulling in 200-250 runners. Bhajjan said some 40% of the participants traveled here from outside the Greater St. Louis and Metro East area for their recent April 5-7 Ozark Foothills Terrain Trails runs. She added, “That’s an introduction into, ‘Hey! This is happening in St. Louis!’”
“Outside of that, I’m heavily involved in a lot of trail building and volunteer events,” Bhajan said. “One of the initiatives we have in place is with Forest ReLeaf. Sustainability is a component in a lot of what I do in race directing. It’s not just throwing out races. It’s a lot of mindfulness of giving back to the community and showcasing what St. Louis has in our trail systems.”
The Forest ReLeaf initiative has helped plant 44 trees at Route 66 State Park.
Event registrations for Terrain Trail Runners-STL runs offer a question where participants can opt out for shirts and other items. As Bhajjan notes, if you run in several events, getting such merchandise is a redundant thing. So, runners can choose to plant a tree instead of getting additional apparel.
“What will happen this year, unless I can find an initiative of planting a certain number of trees at Greensfelder County Park or wherever, I will look at how many people opted out of the t-shirt for all of my races, and basically take all that money and donate to Forest ReLeaf,” Bhajjan said.
Regarding trail work and maintenance, Bhajjan partners with St. Louis County Parks and state parks with volunteer projects to help maintain trails. She also works closely with Gateway Off-Road Cyclists (GORC), a non-profit that also helps maintain area trails.
“It’s not just offering a lot of events, but also giving back,” Bhajjan said. “For the event I have in February, I donate all the funds to GORC for all they do. After all, trails don’t maintain themselves, and a lot of the parks departments are understaffed. So, I’m side-by-side helping them clean the trails and do whatever is needed.”
Terrain Trail Runners-STL is a free group, and anyone can join. It’s very active on Facebook where the group started and where all group runs are posted. The only payment is for specific race registration.
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