The Best Races in New Jersey, Ranked — Where Two in Three Courses Are Certified

Editor’s note, September 23, 2026: New Jersey had 199 races in the index when this published, with 39 clearing the bar, out of 543 races on any state list nationally. The state now holds 248 races, 214 of them on the state list, and 41 clear the bar. On September 22 we found that RunSignup’s race search returns races in alphabetical order and stops at 5,000 results, so every race we had ever synced was named with a number or a letter from A to F. Searching state by state found 16,101 upcoming US races; the index now holds 7,000, the most our hosting can serve.

The live New Jersey rankings are updated every day. This piece looks at the list as it stood on September 22, 2026.

New Jersey has 199 races in our index, and 39 of them clear the bar for our state rankings. Only Florida, with 53, has more. Georgia also has 39. California, a state with more than four times New Jersey’s population, has 29.

The list is small-race territory (31 of the 39 are 5Ks), but it has one habit that sets it apart from Florida’s, and it explains who made the cut.

The New Jersey twelve

The other 27 are on the full New Jersey ranking.

If one of these is worth a trip, start with its race page. The Belmar page will email you the day registration opens and before the entry fee goes up, and it shows places to stay near the race and race-day weather for the last five years.

Four things the list tells you

New Jersey measures its courses. Twenty-six of the 39 are USATF certified, two in three. Nationally, 282 of the 543 races on any state list carry a certification, barely half, and Florida’s rate is 16 of 53. For fifteen New Jersey races the certificate is what put them on the list at all: we know their field size and their certification and nothing else, and our formula needs two measured signals before it will rank a race. The certificate does not flatter them. On its own it scores 40 of 100 on our credentials measure, below the neutral 50 we assume for a signal we haven’t measured. It gets them onto the list but does not raise their place on it.

Four races are more than half the field. The 36 races with a known field size start 20,177 runners between them. Four of them (Montclair, Ashenfelter, Flemington and Belmar) each start between 2,678 and 2,817, and together they account for 11,057, or 55%. The median field on the list is about 216.

The Jersey Shore has the history. Belmar is one of only three races on the list with a founding year on record, 1977, and it holds the top spot on the strength of that longevity plus a field of nearly 2,700. The No. 2 race is older still by its own count: the Asbury Park Polar Bear Races are in their 63rd edition, run two days after Christmas on a field of 306. Twenty other races carry their age the same way, as an edition number in the name, which is how 24 of the 39 earn a longevity score at all.

New Jersey races in the fall, and nobody here is chasing Boston. Twenty-four of the 39 run in October or November, four of them on Thanksgiving morning. None is a Boston qualifier. The only marathon on the list is a free course challenge in Jersey City with a field of 37; the only conventional half is April Fools in Atlantic City, at No. 8.

What is missing

The rest of the 199. Twenty-nine are past races, which sit out the rankings until their next edition is listed. Of the 131 upcoming races that don’t make the list, 78 have neither a field size nor a certification on record, and 53 have one of the two but no second signal to pair it with. One signal is not enough to score. A race that has posted results for decades but never told anyone when it started looks, to our formula, exactly like one that started last year.

Claiming a listing is free. It lets an organizer fill in a founding year or a certification number, and it cannot buy a better rank, only a more complete one.

Rich Shea runs BestRaces. Spot something wrong? Tell me and I'll fix it.