The Milford Run Fest route is based off the Milford Bike Fest, a popular 100(ish)-mile mountain bike event which starts and finishes in downtown Milford. The route is about 70% unpaved and 30% paved. The various trail segments can be completed in any order, but the order below is recommended by Adrian Fear, who submitted the route.
The route starts with the hardest trail, Highland Rec and ends with the easiest Island Lake.
Highland Rec. Fast? No. Flowy? Not much. Instead it is a challenging 16-17 miles of climbing, rocks and roots. The complete loop gets you roughly 4,000 feet of elevation gain. There is no water access at this site or anywhere in the loop.
Milford Trail. It is technical, but not tiring like Highland Rec. There are switchbacks which are fun, but just enough rocks, roots and tight trees to keep you on your toes. It crosses the main paved bike path 4 times on its trek around the park. During late fall, the Pipeline is filled with daisies and other native wildflowers. Once again, there is no water access at the trail. It would be wise to refuel in downtown Milford before starting the Milford Trail
Proud Lake is a more redesigned trail system in our area. This trail runs along the train tracks and does share parts with the equestrian community. Proud Lake is a easy flowy trail to run. Water access can be found in the parking lot in the horse staging area on Garden Road. Note that there are a couple segments of trail that need to be run twice to close two of the loops in this section.
Hickory Glen. Getting out to this trail system does take a little bit of time. Once into Hickory it is a tight and twisty hand-cut singletrack which is fun to run.
Island Lake is an easy, fast trail system to run. This trail can get very busy at times. To get out to Island Lake you will run through Kensington Metro Park. While running pavement can be boring, Kensington is a go-to place in the area for winter-time running as they salt/plow frequently. Water access is located at the main trailhead parking lot and other spots on the loop in Island Lake. Kensington also has many water access points.
