Is Portland, Maine a good place to run?

Good road running outside of Portland in any of the towns. Downtown has 6+ miles of nice (though flat) urban trail (stone dust + blacktop + concrete). City itself has 25+ miles of wooded trail. Snowmobile and moutainbike/running trails are everywhere outside of town. Good road racing community. Active but smaller trail community scene. Very small mountain running community. Good running store. Excellent groomed xc skiing to if you're interested.

If you don't mind cold weather this time of year, it's great running. There are lots of runs that incorporate trails, although there aren't many places where you can do a long run off pavement without repeating unless you leave the city. Unlike major cities though, it's easy to drive somewhere quickly to run. There are several active running groups and many people to run with as well as races.

What Wendell said. You might see something about the number of miles of trails in Portland, but there's no one big place where you can run long without lots of repeating.

I live in South Portland, right near the Cape Elizabeth line, and I think the running is better here than it would be living in Portland--lots of decent roads with not much traffic.

The other thing to keep in mind if trails are really important to you is that they can be inaccessible for up to six months of the year. The ones I run on get tricky because of fallen leaves covering roots and rocks long before they're covered in snow.

If you have more specific questions you can write to me: scott AT runningtimes DOT com.

Portland is a great little city. I considered moving there for a while. And as for running, while she was around the South Portland/Cape Elizabeth area, it serves Joan Benoit well!

Portland Trails continues to do a great job developing new trails on the North and West side of the city as well. The potential for a trail from Sebago Lake to the ocean is pretty cool.