I’d like to do some trail running this fall and am searching for trails in or near NYC.
As for really close (i.e. public transportation), I know there are some in Central Park, but not really enough to get in a long run. I’ve heard there are trails in Van Cortlandt Park, but can’t find any good maps online. I could also run across the George Washington Bridge and do the Palisades, but again, I can’t find good maps. Any help or other ideas?
Also, what if I got in a car and drove a little bit?
It’s a bit of a drive for you, but when I spent a summer in Westchester County, I did quite a few long runs in Rockefeller State Park in Sleepy Hollow. Not true “trail” running if you’re looking for really hard-core trails, but nice off-street running and tons of different paths to take. Here’s a link to some info:
You can get trail maps from the New York New Jersey Trail conference. http://www.nynjtc.org/
Also if you can get out of the City Campmor in Paramus New Jersey (about 30 minutes by car) has a ton of trail maps.
I do a ton of trail running. My favorite spots in or near the city (all within about an hour car ride) are
Harriman State Park/Bear Mountain
Ramapo Reservation in Oakland/Mahwah New Jersey
Kakiat Mountain Park on Route 202 in Suffern
There are trail maps for all of these locations available at Campmor and the NY NJ Trail conference.
Bit of a drive, but Caumsett Park on the north shore of Long Island (on the coast right above Huntington) is about the nicest place I have ever run. Run through the woods, up and down small and massive hills, out along the beach with the ocean at your side - its just great. Enough trails to do a 2-2.5 hour run, also a paved loop if you want to mix it up. If all that’s not enough, the place is almost empty - you have it almost all to yourself!
You can always run about in Central Park… just be careful of the guys giving out hand jobs behind the Boat House…found out the hard way… fastest run split of my life getting out of there.
You can buy very detailed orienteering maps (even small trails are shown) of the Van Cortlandt Park and Central Park from Hudson Valley Orienteering Club:
http://hvo.us.orienteering.org/Content/pid=12.html
The above link has plenty of other maps. My favorite place for trail and off-trail runnng is the Harriman State Park.
We’re a bit further away, but try a weekend in the Hudson Valley. There are incredible trails everywhere. If it’s not sold out yet, on September 23 is the Pfalz Point 10 mile trail race. It’s awesome. http://www.mohonkpreserve.org/index.php?pfalzpoint
You can take metro-north hudson line up to tarrytown. (if you live on the west side or have reasonable access to the 1, take it to 225th and transfer to metro north - it’s the marble hill stop and because it’s just barely in the bronx, it’ll save you a fair bit of $. the transfer is about a block)
Someone else included the link for westchester trails. the site is pretty good, as I recall. In tarrytown, about a mile from the train station you can find rockefeller reservation (park?) which has some great trails. Also, look at the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail. It runs from deeper in westchester all the way through Van Cortland. I used to work in Tarrytown and would do my long runs back to manhattan along the OCA (~20 miles or so). Through yonkers sucks a bit, so if you’re looking for <15 miles, I’d say plan the run to end at yonkers and take the train back (it’s easy to plan with the trails site linked above).
For anything shorter than ~8 miles I can’t see how it’s worth the effort to get further away than Van Cortland, which has some great trails. It’s weird in spots because it’s totally secluded, canopy, single track, etc. and you can hear the highway nearby, but can’ts see it.
Thanks everyone for all the info - I’ve got a ton to work with now. Looking forward to getting away for some longer trail runs this fall.
Blakeski - I did the Central Park “trails” (bridle path, north woods, aqueduct) this morning, thankfully I didn’t run into any
extracurricular activities.