Stormin' Norvin

After a few inches of snow on Friday morning and a day of sleet and rain, Saturday was a lot more pleasant - not a cloud in the sky and the temperature was a few degrees above freezing.  I did some more exploration of the forests and trails in the north New Jersey area by heading out to Norvin Green State Forest for an 8 mile run.

It was brilliant.  Norvin Green State Forest is a hilly, rugged 6,000 plus acre area of forest with lots and lots of maintained trails.  The land was pretty much scoured clean by ice sheets during the last ice age and in many places the soil never came back so I was running on big slabs of granite a lot of the time - always fun. 

 

They were tough trails though, very rocky and either up or down - no flat, smooth, easy miles to be had, every one had to be worked for.  My feet were aching by the end of it - for most of the run the rocks were hidden under a few inches of soft snow and I was constantly jamming my feet between rocks or landing too hard on an unexpected rock.  The good thing about all the bare rock though is that there were more viewpoints than in most of the forests round here, including a few with the obligatory view of the Manhattan skyline 30 miles to the East.

I was running pretty slow and taking lots of photos but it was good just to be out on such a beautiful day in a very scenic bit of forest.  I think I need to enter a race to get myself motivated and have been looking into what's on offer round here.  There's a 30 mile race in September that looks good but it would be good to do something a little longer.

Miles run on New Jersey trails - 58.  Bears seen - 0.