I stumbled upon this series last year while looking for some races closer to home. Rick McNulty started this series with a goal in mind. “The goal of the NJ Trail Series is to make running FUN again”. The best part of it is that most of the events are within a two hour drive from most of us, give or take a little. It started with a couple of Fat Ass events and some races, to a year round series that has something for everyone. He has short trail races, an ultra running festival with distances up to 100 miles, and timed events. Well, the timed event is for the running masochist in us all. It is a 2 mile loop that starts at the bottom of a ski slope to the top of the mountain and then back down. It is done in late July and is called Running with the Devil. Each loop has 960′ of elevation gain and 960′ of elevation loss per loop. This year’s 12 hour winner did 18 loops for over 17,000 feet of elevation gain and 17,000 feet of elevation loss.
The Ultra Festival is being held in March and has distances of 26.2 miles, 50K, 50 mile, 100K and 100 miles. The course is a 25 mile T-shaped course on an old rail trail with practically no real hills. Not my cup of tea, but should prove very fast for people looking to PR or go under 24 hours for a 100 miler. The race I have signed up for is the Mountain Madness 50K. It is being held on October 16th and is a short 1 hour and 30 minutes from my house. It also has a 25k and 7.77 mile option plus a 9:00 AM start time for all you late risers. I have plenty of room in my car if anybody is interested.
To find out more about the whole series, click here.
To find out more about Mountain Madness 50K, click on the link at NJ Trail Series home page.
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