Baby, We Were Born to Slog: Highlands Trail Fest 50-Mile

When I think of northern New Jersey three things come to mind—Springsteen, Sopranos, and a handful of mediocre sports franchises. After sliding and stumbling my way through a couple of state forests, I can confidently double the size of that listicle with three more items—rocks, rocks, and rocks. 

The inaugural Highlands Trail Festival follows the scenic Stonetown Circular Trail loop and then snakes its way through Norvin Green State Forest. Oh, and did I mention that it starts and ends at an old zoo that's been abandoned for almost 50 years? The Jungle Habitat — the race's staging area — is the site of a former Warner Brothers animal theme park that operated from 1972-76. The cracked asphalt roads and dirt paths that once formed the route for the park's safari tour now function as hiking and biking trails. The race's start/finish line sits next to the park's old entrance tunnel and follows the dilapidated safari path for the first and last mile. Sadly, the dude in the Bugs Bunny suit was not there to hand out water and food or, better yet, run the race in-costume and in-character.

2022 marked the inaugural year for Ian Golden's Red Newt Racing event. The concept is derived from Ian's Iron Mines 25k/50k — a one-off in 2019 due to permitting restrictions — and uses some of the same trails. The Highlands Trail Festival offers 25k, 50k, 50-mile, and 100k distances. Each race comprises the 16-mile Stonetown Circular Trail

Wawayanda

Of the four 100-milers I've run the Wawayanda Wonderful Wonhundred was by far the easiest. On paper. In reality, I had to work harder for this belt buckle than for any of the previous three. I wasn't able to find much info on this low-key race aside from the event website, so I'll describe the course and the race in more detail than I normally would for anyone who's interested in running it in the future.

Now in it's third year, the Wawayanda Wonderful Wonhundred is put on by NJ Trail Series annually in mid-October. NJTS is an event production company owned by husband and wife Rick and Jennifer McNaulty. They organize trail and ultra races year round, the best known of which is Three Days at the Fair. The WW100 uses the singletrack and logging roads in Wawayanda State Park in Hewitt, New Jersey, with the race HQ located at a boat launch area on the edge of Wawayanda Lake.

The WW100 course is a looped format in which runners complete three separate loops — marked blue, orange, and purple — totaling 25 miles, then repeat three more times for a total of 100. 50-mile and 50k races are held concurrently on the same loops. This year, parts of the course were altered due to flooding on the trails; as a result each loop was shortened slightly and we had to run more of them. We started off with a truncated 1.8-mile loop run twice, then began the