Bay Area Running Tips

For a beautiful run check out Sawyer Camp Trail (paved path) on the Crystal Springs Reservoir (not far from Stanford). Also near Stanford are Huddart and Wunderlicht parks in the Santa Cruz mountains- spectacular. Also, there are many fantastic trail runs through the parks in the Oakland/Berkeley hills. Try Joaquin Miller Park for one. The Lake Merrit Joggers and Striders of Oakland has a race series the 4th Sunday of each month. Also, Mt. Tamalpais north of San Francisco has great trails! There are truly more great places in the Bay Area to run than I could ever list- I realy miss living there (moved 4 years ago after 36 years)!

Golden Gate Park. It's beautiful and you can run as little as 4 miles or 20 miles and up. Park at 7th Ave. and Lincoln Way and enjoy the view.

It's really my favorite place in the world to do my long runs.

if u get out to stanford tomorrow night (Monday), make sure you head out to the golf course around 6:15-6:30 pm. we'll be doing a 5,4,3,2,1 (minute) workout or some mile reps. there was a golf tourney last monday night, so hopefully we'll be clear this week. anyhow, if you want a good workout, head out there.

if you venture further south into san jose, check out some of these spots (my favorites):

Almaden Quicksilver, Los Gatos Creek Trail (Lexington Dam), Kennedy Trail (Los Gatos), Rancho San Antonio ("Rancho"), Alum Rock Park, Rose Gardens (nice grass loops near downtown san jo), Castle Rock State Park (plenty of nice trails up above HWY 17), etc. etc.

the possibilities are endless. hopefully some east bay dudes and dudettes will add some of their favorite routes.

have a good trip!

- GHOST

I suggest driving up to "Skyline Gate" in the Oakland hills (Redwood Park). This is just above Montclair in Oakland. Find "Snake Rd." on the map, then take a right on "Shepards Canyon" to Skyline. Take another right at "Skyline", and look for the "Skyline Gate" Parking lot on your left following 1/3 miles.

You can go a few different ways from Skyline gate. I would suggest heading out either the West/East Ridge trail, and looping back up the Stream trail, or Joaquin Miller.

You may want to pick up a trail map at the park sign. You can find as much in the way of trail running as you like.

Another suggestion from downtown Berkeley: You can get to the Berkeley Fire road w/o a car. Look for the Cal football "Memorial stadium"....run past the stadium, up through "Strawberry canyon"...you can catch a small dirt path on the right side. In another 1/2 mile or so, the trail ends at the Berkeley fire road. This fire road climbs for 2 miles, with one steep section before the mile. The trail then becomes flat for close to 2 more miles (so a bit less than 4 miles each way from the start of the fire road). Great views of the entire Bay Area at the 2 mile mark and beyond.

Enjoy the week.

Mike

Pretty funny about the Stanford Track (by the way, there are two - one in the stadium and one not). Used to be that anyone could enter the stadium as long as a team wasn't holding a practice and run on the track and do stairs, etc. Was in the late 80s and early 90s when I was there and did that.

If you're heading to Stanford though, run The Dish. Just ask and everyone will know how to get you there. It's a nice foothill run, and on a clear day you can see SanFrancisco from up top.

If you stay on the East Bay, find Mt. Diablo - there are some absolutely awesome runs up there - depending on how much of a trail runner you are, you can get some great views of the bay and SF on the other side.

I lived in the Bay Area for 4 years, and other than my hometown of Columbus, OH, it is the only placed I've lived that I miss. Hope you have a great time.

If you are in Berkely or SF though, be prepared for pan handlers. My personal stance is to not give any money at all, but to each his own.

Thanks for all the great suggestions, you all have me looking forward to a great trip and some great runs. Wish I could join Ghostwriter et al. for the golf course workout, but I won't get into town until Tuesday. Thanks again, everybody.

i hope this isn't too late. check out www.ebparks.org. you'll find lots of maps of parks in the east bay area. the skyline gate that mcmanus was talking about is part of Redwood Regional Park. certainly check that out if you are in berkeley. the south end of that park connects to Anthony Chabot/Lake Chabot park. you could spend a week in those two parks and never run the same trail twice.

McManus' Berkeley Fire road suggestion (actually named the Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail) is a good one. It starts one-half mile up Centennial Road, on the easern edge of Cal's Memorial football stadium. One aspect is the views up top, as well as the steady climbs. That steep section is about 300-meters straight up. Ronen Maoz and Dave Ottoway have the unofficial Cal school record for that bitch of a rise (47 seconds). We likened that to a 400 on the track.

Also in Berkeley is Tilden Park, featuring Jewell Lake trail, or further out Wildcat Rd. is Inspiration Point. It's 4.1 miles out to the end of the asphalt and you can roll on it pretty well. If you climb the 100+ yard grassy knoll at the end there (it does continue on dirt if you want to extend it), you are rewarded with a 360-degree view of the whole Bay Area. On the clearest of days, you can see all the way to the Sierra Nevada mountain range, almost 200 miles to the east, and Farallon Islands, 25-30 miles west of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Pacific coastline.

Call the East Bay Striders running club hotline (510)428-1200 for directions to a Thursday night track workout in Berkeley and a Sunday morning medium-long run in the East Bay at an unspecified location (changes each week). They used to be good, but their talent has dropped off the last 10 years. They're pretty good eggs though, and would probably go out for beers + dinner after their workout too.

Perhaps the Brothers Johnson should market this as a travel guide site! Thanks to the advice given here, I had several terrific runs in the Bay Area this past week and saw a lot of the area most vehicle-bound tourists don't get to see. Along with the usual suspects like a circuit through Golden Gate Park and the Presidio and the Golden Gate bridge, in Berkeley I ran in Tilden Park--down into and out of Wildcat Canyon, and especially Strawberry Canyon Fire Trail--one of the best routes I have ever run on. Thanks for the advice, everyone. Now if my flatland-trained legs can recover from trudging up all those hills . . .

Glad you had good runs! Now you know why Bay Area runners consider themselves to be so very lucky. Damn, I miss that place! Anyway, glad you liked the Berkeley hills- was one of my favorite places to run!

Ditto MAMD--glad you enjoyed the Bay Area and your quads will recover. Shows your middle distance running could benefit from an early season, hill work periodization phase once or twice a week if they got that thrashed. Good place to train, but my only complaint is when it rains, there is so much clay in the soil the shoes get really gunky.

RB, when were you in Berkeley? I was running/racing out there for a good number of years too, and I'm 40 this Sat. Shoot me an e-mail if you like.

People who use the boards to find good places to run in unfamiliar territories are idiots!!

How so?

Dear One Keg,

I hope you are slow. The last thing the Bay Area needs is another good masters runner.

CS

No worries. I'm in Boulder, another locale that doesn't need any more fast master's runners. And I'm in very mediocre running shape right now (2.5 years of more anaerobic martial arts training, less into running lately). Probably would be kinda nasty for me to go under 36:00 at Bolder Boulder next spring (= mid 34s sea-level), so the better 40+ guys wouldn't be too concerned about lil ol' moi unless I really managed to get after it for 20-25 weeks or so this winter. More of a middle-distance type anyway.