run | races
South Mountain Runners like to run races. Some of us are in it just for pleasure; others are there to run aggressively, for the pleasure of beating rivals and surpassing our own previous personal records. Either way, we show up for races in our trademark light-blue singlets to enjoy ourselves and support one another.
There is no shortage of local and regional races to choose from, especially outside of the winter months. Here are a few examples, in no particular order. (Note that most of the following links will point you to a search engine, because the relatively small races' website addresses may be moving targets from year to year.)
- The E. Murray Todd Half Marathon in early March in quite popular amoung South Mountain Runners
- The North Jersey Equality Pride 5K takes place at Grove Park in South Orange, NJ, in early June.
- The President's Cup 5K in Millburn NJ is also a Monday night in June, and draws a large crowd including many excellent runners.
- The Maplewood In Motion 5K is in October.
- The Ridgewood Run falls at the end of May and offers both 10K and 5K.
- The Maplewood 4th of July 5K takes place about when you would expect.
- The Newport Liberty Half Marathon is in Jersey City in September.
- The NJ Trail Series is comprised of (you guessed it) a series of trail races around New Jersey. These include the Febapple Frozen Fifty in our own South Mountain Reservation. You can choose your distance: 10M, 20M, 50K or 50M.
- The Mayapple Trail Runs are another happy occasion for trail runners, likewise conveniently located in the South Mountain Reservation and offering a menu of distances from 20 miles to 100K.
- The annual Cocoluxe Fun Run is not a race at all, but an event that we have been running (so to speak) for the past several years, always in February. At its 2016 iteration we had about 40 people. You have a choice of distances from half-marathon to marathon to 50K.
The accomplished marathoners in our group have experience running the major marathons in our region, such as Steamtown, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and more. They will be happy to share their experiences and give advice.