Boston is an exceptional place to run. Arnold Arboretum, Charles River, Emerald Necklace are all in town and the close suburbs include some great running. Blue Hills Reservation, Cutler Park, Middlesex Fells. Give the Newton Hills a try, Dude. The Boston Marathon is actually named after Boston.
There are countless running clubs in the Greater Boston area and you should look one up next time you are around. Join a group run.
Bill Rodgers says come on out and experience our running paradise.
Boston is fine so long as you live near the Charles, one of the ponds, etc. If you don’t, it can really suck (streets are narrow and full of cars). The winters in Boston suck (cloudy all the time, snow sticks around for months, and what isn’t covered in snow has a layer of black ice).
The running is great for a vacation but living there and training there is rough. 0 variation. You’re not close to anything. 45 mins to find a hill. 7500 is hard to live at for 4 years or 15 in most our alumni’s cases.
I used to live in Houston. Agree not bad, with some good options. But it highly depends on where you live. Unless you live right next to the bayou or rice or hermann, then a lot of the appeal is lost because you have to drive to use them. Driving to do a run is the worst unless it’s the occasional long run.
I went to Grenada in the Caribbean a few years ago. The roads are really narrow with 2 way traffic, cliffs on both sides, and no shoulder or sidewalk. It's mountainous with steep hills. I found a flat one mile loop around an IGA that was safe to run on but I usually had to stop twice for traffic each lap. Pair that with the fact that it's almost on the equator and you get some miserable 10 mile runs. The hotel had one peloton treadmill but there was almost always someone walking on it. One islander promised me if I return, they'll organize a marathon on my one mile loop.
Honorable mentions:
Santa Fe, NM (altitude + heat + dryness + hills)
Cork, Ireland (narrow roads + steep hills)
Las Vegas, NV (heat + drunk drivers all day + ugly scenery)
I used to live in Houston. Agree not bad, with some good options. But it highly depends on where you live. Unless you live right next to the bayou or rice or hermann, then a lot of the appeal is lost because you have to drive to use them. Driving to do a run is the worst unless it’s the occasional long run.
Most people have to drive to run if they're getting in any kind of high mileage. Does it suck? To me it's normal. Only the rich can live foot distance from the good places to run - that's doctor lawyer money.
Boston is an exceptional place to run. Arnold Arboretum, Charles River, Emerald Necklace are all in town and the close suburbs include some great running. Blue Hills Reservation, Cutler Park, Middlesex Fells. Give the Newton Hills a try, Dude. The Boston Marathon is actually named after Boston.
There are countless running clubs in the Greater Boston area and you should look one up next time you are around. Join a group run.
Bill Rodgers says come on out and experience our running paradise.
Boston is fine so long as you live near the Charles, one of the ponds, etc. If you don’t, it can really suck (streets are narrow and full of cars). The winters in Boston suck (cloudy all the time, snow sticks around for months, and what isn’t covered in snow has a layer of black ice).
There was one run in Boston that was on a pond trail loop, but it had tons of loud motor vehicle vibration and suffocating pipe exhaust. Could be true of any major city.
Washington DC. I was at a conference there about 12 years ago. This was in DC proper, not Alexandria. We were warned not to leave the confines of the university/hotel where the conference was held. People that took the walk from the Metro station to the venue would arrive shaking their heads saying "I won't take that walk again!" I ended up doing all my running on the treadmill in the fitness center.
When you guys mention lost vegas you're strictly talking about the strip. That's asinine. Of course that sucks. But LV is huge and has a ton of options just off strip. Y'all are just soft squares.
I used to live in Houston. Agree not bad, with some good options. But it highly depends on where you live. Unless you live right next to the bayou or rice or hermann, then a lot of the appeal is lost because you have to drive to use them. Driving to do a run is the worst unless it’s the occasional long run.
Most people have to drive to run if they're getting in any kind of high mileage. Does it suck? To me it's normal. Only the rich can live foot distance from the good places to run - that's doctor lawyer money.
I'm not sure I've particularly noticed this. Most of the cities or towns I've lived in have their best parks near the outskirts of town while the most expensive places to live tend to be in refurbished areas downtown or particularly nice historic districts which tend to have limited access to running spots. Prices seem to correspond way more to things like lot size, school district, and ease of commute to downtown jobs or trendy amenities, the last two of which typically correlate negatively with trail access.
Most people have to drive to run if they're getting in any kind of high mileage. Does it suck? To me it's normal. Only the rich can live foot distance from the good places to run - that's doctor lawyer money.
I'm not sure I've particularly noticed this. Most of the cities or towns I've lived in have their best parks near the outskirts of town while the most expensive places to live tend to be in refurbished areas downtown or particularly nice historic districts which tend to have limited access to running spots. Prices seem to correspond way more to things like lot size, school district, and ease of commute to downtown jobs or trendy amenities, the last two of which typically correlate negatively with trail access.
Everywhere I've lived the nice places to run are on the coast or on lakes. Whereas the affordable places are in land or far from any trailheads. The homes by the nice places to run are double, triple what land inland far from anywhere runnable costs.
There are exceptions out in the mountains - but the homes near trailheads are usually more expensive than any except downtown. Although sometimes, a rail trail or something goes through downtown, again proving my point.
Everywhere I've lived the nice places to run are on the coast or on lakes. Whereas the affordable places are in land or far from any trailheads. The homes by the nice places to run are double, triple what land inland far from anywhere runnable costs.
There are exceptions out in the mountains - but the homes near trailheads are usually more expensive than any except downtown. Although sometimes, a rail trail or something goes through downtown, again proving my point.
That's interesting. Is this in the Western US perhaps? I have pretty limited experience there, but what you describe doesn't really match my experience where I've lived on the east coast, rustbelt, and now the UK. In all of these places, parks tend to be in concentrated on hills or river valleys/small canyons, in usually hard to develop, hence cheap, land).
For example, in Philly, were I grew up, the best parks are in canyon systems along streams on the outskirts of town (for example., the wissahickon or pennypack). There are some exceptions (Chestnut Hill near the wissahickon has super expensive mansions, for example), but for the most part homes in the neighborhoods around them like Germantown, Roxborough, Fox Chase, etc. are around half the price of normal centralish neighborhoods, and dramatically cheaper than the most expensive downtown neighborhoods (all of which have pretty limited trail access).
Pittsburgh, my first home after college, is somewhat similar, but now with the desirable areas being mostly refurbished parts of town near the tech jobs that moved in a few decades ago. The entire city is cheap since it still hasn't regained its population from the 70s, but for the most part the neighborhoods near the Monongahela (where all of the best parks and river trails are) are a lot cheaper than the neighborhoods along the Alleghany, where most of the redevelopment has taken place.
The entire UK, where I currently live, is also like this. Downtown areas of big towns and cities are pretty expensive, but usually their cheaper outskirts have nice greenbelt systems, and once you're in the countryside you have pretty endless systems of public footpaths, tiny dirt roads and preserved nature areas in valleys or hills.
When you guys mention lost vegas you're strictly talking about the strip. That's asinine. Of course that sucks. But LV is huge and has a ton of options just off strip. Y'all are just soft squares.
Even the strip isn't bad if you're stuck there for work. Get up early and run. The only other people out are runners and people stumbling back to their hotel after a long night.
You literally have to just walk out the front of your hotel and you have a pretty decent stretch, few road crossings (especially with all the bridges now). Go up and down the strip, go run along the airport west/south perimeter...
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