The New Jersey Ultra Festival 50K is part of the NJ Trail Series. The race took place on Saturday March 21st, 2015. The Course is a trail behind the County Fairgrounds in Sussex County, New Jersey. During the week leading up to the race day of the NJ Ultra Festival a lot of the snowfall in the area had melted. By Thursday conditions were looking like a fast run.

As September neared its end, I was preparing for my 3rd Mountain Madness 50k. I had mixed feelings about the race this year. Last year I had trained on the course often and had more miles in my legs but felt under trained this year. A busy schedule had kept me from but just 1 training run on the course. The course was also different this year due to pipeline construction. Never the less, I signed up and prepared to do my best.

I wasn’t sure what to expect racing the 7 mile Mountain Madness trail run, but my hunch was that the relatively short race would be fast from the gun. While I was operating under a number of assumptions, things started off as I had envisioned. I had a quality 15 minute warm up, and I was at the front on the starting line.