Running the Patriot's Path (or, at least, trying)

Where the Lenape Trail ends in Roseland, Essex County, the Patriots Path in East Hanover, Morris County, begins.  So I continued on...

Unfortunately, after the first mile or two, the trail is extremely overgrown with wild vegetation.  It seems to have been completely ignored for maintenance and path-clearing. At first, I tried to power through it, but as my legs got bloodied from thorn bushes, I could not take it anymore and turned back to the nearest road crossing (through the same bushes).  

Having lived in Morris County in the past, I have a general knowledge of the main roads, so I worked my way through some of the familiar streets and managed to keep meeting up with the path entrances off of the streets.  Each time I ventured back onto the trail, I was faced with the same problem.  Finally, somewhere in Hanover (or perhaps Parsippany-Troy Hills), I turned around and took the main roads back to my starting point, completing my 19-mile run, but not thrilled about the Patriots Path.

Today, I happened to speak with someone who told me that the western parts are much better maintained and easier to navigate.  With that knowledge, I hope to explore more of the trails the Patriots Path in the near future.

Running the Lenape Trail

After five years of running the short West Essex Trail (2.5 miles of former railroad from Little Falls through Cedar Grove and Verona), I finally began wondering about the yellow blazes on the trees in its southwestern portion. Some online research led me to find that the section is part of a larger entity called the Lenape Trail.

Named after a Native American tribe that once lived in the area, the Lenape Trail is not always, in fact, a trail. Rather, it starts in Newark and winds through Essex County, passing through several parks - sometimes on the roads, sometimes on paths, and sometimes through the woods.

Breaking it up into four separate runs, I tackled the first 13 miles by parking at Brookdale Park in Bloomfield/Montclair and taking a bus to Newark. Starting at Riverfront Park, I worked my way through city streets to beautiful Branch Brook Park. It was there I started following the yellow blazes.

Once out of the north end of the park, the blazes followed some more streets and a few small strips of land between properties in Belleville and Glen Ridge. It was not always easy to navigate - when you run, you can miss the blazes. But eventually, I worked my way into Bloomfield and to Brookdale Park. 

The second leg was from Brookdale Park to Fairview Avenue in Verona. This run took me straight up the little mountain in Montclair, through lots of steep, wooded areas with rough footing, and down around the reservoir in Cedar Grove before hooking up with the West Essex Trail into Verona. At that point, I took a more direct route back to Brookdale via the roads. If you follow one of the online maps of the trail, you can see that this section makes a lot of turns, so following a straight line back to Brookdale made the most sense in order to maximize the forward movement on the trail.
For the third leg, I did an out-and-back from Verona to West Orange, including another difficult stretch. After winding through several Verona side streets, I was faced with another heavily wooded, steep incline with difficult footing through Eagle Rock Reservation. Coming down from the mountain and into West Orange, the trail follows along power lines off of 280 along unkempt terrain - tall, weedy grass with lots of bugs - before landing back on the road in Roseland.

The final stretch is tricky right now because the trail continues to follow the power lines, but the sections are closed due to work by the power company. So I had to find the nearest roads and follow as best as I could until finally meeting up with the official trail again through Becker Park and crossing Eisenhower Parkway, finally ending along Eagle Rock Avenue at the Essex County Environmental Center and the Morris County line (where the Patriots Path begins). Then, of course, I had to turn around and get back, too.

Supposedly, there is a section of the trail that breaks off near Route 280. I was going to cover that in a separate run, but I couldn't find it.

If you run the trail, keep your eyes well peeled for the yellow blazes, but also have a good general idea of where the route is supposed to take you, just in case you miss a turn. Also, be prepared to run around the closed-off section - keep the power lines in sight and know where you need to end up. It is a fun adventure and well worth it the multiple trips if you live in northern New Jersey.

Marathon XII

After nailing four PRs in a row in as many short distance races (5K, four-mile, five-mile and 15K), I had grown weary of speed. It was time to switch gears and get back to longer, slower distance running. That means I needed to select a marathon. 

Looking for a late September race to coincide with my 40th birthday, I found the Clarence DeMar Marathon in Keene, N.H. It is a relatively small race, capped at 600, but it seems well known. When I mentioned it to a fellow runner, he recognized it immediately.

With a race date of Sept. 28, two days after I become a "Masters" runner (the only qualification for which, it seems, is to turn 40), it put me in week five of the 18-week Hal Higdon Advanced training program. I have jumped into training in the middle before, so it should not be too bad, but the past two long runs (19 and 20 miles) were pretty rough.

Nonetheless, I am determined to rock this race in my new age group. A PR is not necessary, a Boston qualifier would be preferred (especially since my qualifying time is pushed back to 3:15), but a solid race like the one I ran in March is all I truly want.

Spring 1994, 2004, and 2014

This year, I am determined to listen to every Phish show from the years ending in "4". Having completed all of the spring shows, I have found that the contrast between each of these three eras could not be greater.

1994 was a huge year for Phish and it started with a bang in the spring. First, they released a new album, 'Hoist', that featured big production and soundscapes inside compact songs. The tour kicked off accentuating those sounds by including a horn section in the first show. "Julius" became an instant classic as a result.

Throughout the tour, they hammered the new songs hard - "Sample in a Jar" was played at least once every two shows, "Down With Disease" only took days to become a scorcher, stretching out more through the weeks. Though "Wolfman's Brother" still had yet to find its footing (and its key change to "B"), the rest of the 'Hoist' songs easily slid into the repertoire as the band crossed the country, starting in their home state of Vermont, working its way through New York and New England, down the Atlantic Coast, swinging through the South, and barn-burning its way westward with a notable stop in Dallas on May 7 for what is widely considered to be one of the best sets ever.

This was a band on fire, tearing its way through the Southwest, then up the Pacific Coast, ending its massive run of 45 shows in 56 days with two nights at a multi-band festival in Monterey.

The benefits were incredible. The musicianship got sharper and more refined, the band members eventually seeming to be able to read each others' minds. Yet, as the playing got tighter, the players got looser, trying new things and challenging the audience to play along. What other band could play a major mid-sized concert hall and get the audience quiet enough to hear them play with zero amplification?

Speaking of the audience, we were really starting to get in tune with the program, too, becoming a bigger part of this thing that was itself becoming bigger than the four guys onstage. Want to hear the evolution of the clapping in "Stash" and the "Wilson" chant? They both started right there. (Little known fact - before the clapping took hold, some audiences tried to fill the spaces with a "woo!", almost two decades before the Tahoe "Tweezer"!)

If Spring 1994 showed a band breaking out, conquering the country while still continuing to discover its powers, Spring 2004 - which consisted of three shows - showed a band seemingly past its creative peak, drunk on itself, and showing up shitfaced to its own party. Though the improvisations were wilder and more adventurous than ever, the precision required to play the heavily composed parts had gone, especially in the case of Trey Anastasio. One month after those three fateful April shows in Las Vegas, Anastasio sent shockwaves through the community by announcing that at the end of the upcoming summer tour, Phish was done. Listen to those shows and try not to cringe.

A decade later, Phish played one single spring show. The 2009 reunion had run its course by the fall of 2013. After five years re-establishing its members as rock music's preeminent musicians, one thing was missing - new music. After the initial burst of songs from 2009's 'Joy', audiences were treated to myriad new cover songs (many of them only once each), but only a handful of new songs, and only a precious few of them had any staying power.

That all changed on Halloween, with its complete set of new songs. Good songs. The concept was pushed further for the four nights leading to New Year's - not one cover song was played. With that as the lead-in, the single spring show, at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, held a lot of weight. They played one cover that night, but more importantly, played with a renewed focus. And though nothing in particular stands out from that show, we now know they were merely winding up, getting ready to sock us hard. 20 years after taking the country by storm, they were getting ready to do it all over again as a more mature band that knows exactly what to do and how to do it.