Indianapolis

Indianapolis is kind of a hidden gem (at least in the midwest). Downtown and Broad Ripple are both great.

Downtown will be a little more nice, classy, and expensive.

Broad Ripple draws heavily from nearby Butler University.

Downtown is a short walk away from the track- plenty of shops, restaurants and bars. There is even some touristy things to do if you are interested in the area East of the track. (The NCAA hall of champions, IMAX theater, another museum or two in the same area)

Go to the Slippery noodle, its a fun bar and they always have good music playing, it's downtown. Also, I recomend the Cladough(sp?) for dinner one night. It's an irish resteraunt downtown that has the best fish and chips ever.

If you want to party it up, I would head out to broad ripple, thats where the younger crowd hangs out.

Also, downtown, if you really want one of the best steaks ever, hit up St. elmo's steak house, it blow your socks off .... pricey, but worth it.

indy is one of the greatest cities ive been to, downtown is amazing.

The stadium for the championships is on the IUPUI campus. If you want to get downtown, just go east 10-15 blocks and you are there. On the western edge of downtown, off Washington Street, is White River State Park, which has the NCAA headquarters, the Eiteljorg museum, the Indiana State Museum, the baseball park, etc. The zoo and white river gardens are also right there. This would all be within a short (10-15 mins) walk from the track and field stadium, so you could get away for a little bit and see these things.

If you have more specific questions, ask away...

I would also recommend the Ram Brewery downtown on Illinois street. Bucca de Beppo is also a must for Italian family style dining. Chumley's, the Rock Lobster, or any bar in Broad Ripple is going to be a blast.

Let me chime in with Acapulco Joe's if you like Mexican food. 4-5 blocks east of track on Illinois.

Shrimp Cocktail at St. Elmos will be the best part of your trip.

duuude. hit up 'have a nice day cafe'. you can get your freak nasty on with some trailer park hoes. classy.

^ hey, i met my fiance there :( needless to say we were both fish out of water at that place.

what about places to run within 15min drive of downtown.

any parks, trails, etc?

how far from the track is Bob Kennedy's running store?

The closest one from downtown is on broad ripple road. It's about a $20 cab ride from downtown, about 15 or 20 mintues.

It's a pretty nice store, I bought a pair of shoes there when i was working in Indy for like 6 months. I guess bob was there like 10 minutes before I showed up... grrrrr.

In broad ripple you have the canal trail and the monon. The canal trail is a 5 mile crushed limestone trail. The monon trail is a 15 mile pavement trail that stretches from carmel,IN (north of indy)to downtown indy I think around 10th street. However, the sides of the trail are crushed limestone and are wide enough for you to run on.

Eagle Creek Res. is a great area to run in and around. Indy also has a number of rails to trails and other parks and paths. Look em up.

Alan

To anyone going to Indy: look up Bazbeaux Pizza and get a slice...I would kill for some of that right now.

Whoever said that Indy is a gem or the greatest city they've been to hasn't travelled much. Indy isn't horrible, but really it's not that great of a place. It's running trails are mediocre at best (although Eagle Creek Park is great), no hills, it seems to have very few opportunities for outdoor recreation, it lacks any sort of decent public transit, and the city is really behind the times in terms of caring for the environment. I'm not sure anyone knows what recycling is there.

Of course this is just my opinion too. I've spent some time in Indy...enough to know it's not a place I desire to live in. Actually, that pretty much sums up the whole state of Indiana for me. Defend away...

i would recycle more if they ever emptied the recycle bin at the corner of madison and edgewood :/

indy running? wrote:

what about places to run within 15min drive of downtown.

any parks, trails, etc?

If you don't mind hard surface, just go about 100 yards west of the track to the river and start heading north along the east bank on the bicycle trail. You need to jog right at 10th St. about 200 yards, then cross Fall Creek on a pedestrian bridge... puts you bavk on the path. From there it's clear sailing up to 30th St. quick jog to the right there, then left again... still on it. Another 1/4 mile, cross the street over to the canal, and then it's crushed stone from there all the way to Broad Ripple.. it hits the paved Monon Trail there... north or south at your pleasure.

This is an excellent description, and I will simply follow it up with a link:

http://www.indygov.org/eGov/City/DPR/Greenways/White+River+Trail.htm

This map shows what trailrunner64 describes, and you can run basically from the stadium. Click on any of the other greenways to see where they go. You have a lot of options. My favorite is obviously the Monon, but I also run the canal paths a lot.

You could drive up to Bob Kennedy's store on Broad Ripple Ave and run from there, the Monon is right by his store, and intersects with the canal paths about .25 miles north.