Best places to live for soft surface running

Let's say you live in downtown San Francisco, spending 2500 for an old 1 bedroom apartment. You can't run out your front door...might get hit by an uber driver or dude on a fixie. Way too much traffic. Sure you could drive 30 min to Marin, but then again, you don't have a car because parking it at your residence would cost 300/month. So actually, you can't really drive anywhere. Ok fine, you can take Muni 30 min to GG Park. And run the same boring loop you run every day. And have to take Muni park to your apartment drenched in sweat. San Francisco is a terrible place to live for the runner unless you have tons and I mean tons of money. OP is from Ohio asked for affordable places. Be realistic.

Ok fine you say, live in the Easy Bay. Still way too expensive, but cheaper than SF proper. I used to live in Berkeley and the running there was actually not that great. Yes, some trails in the hills, but getting up there usually meant getting in the car. Running in Berkeley itself was terrible. No flats, too much vehicle traffic, too many cross streets, overgrown sidewalks, aggressive crackheads. There is a reason the Cal track team does a lot of there running on the grass field at Edwards Stadium! Not the best option.

South Bay...again, criminally expensive. And again, if you live in downtown San Jose or anywhere near it, terrible terrible terrible traffic getting anywhere.

I'm not saying the Bay Area doesn't have good trials. Just saying that to live near them, you need tons of money. Sacramento overall is way more affordable (even the best areas) and the trails are just as good if not better. And in Sac you can afford to have a car, and drive to other close by trials on the weekends (even Tahoe) if you want no sweat. Sac traffic can be bad, but it's nowhere near as bad as the Bay Area's.

Ireland. Lots of rain=lots of very soft soft surfaces.

I always thought the trails around Baltimore were great with patapsco state park, lake roland, loch raven resivoir and various gunpowder state park trails. The ncr trail was nice too though not very soft.

You lived in Berkeley and never realized you could run on the shoreline trail which is 8 miles long and perfectly flat? Every place in berkeley is going to be close to either the hilly trails or the flat shoreline trail.I never recommended berkeley though, I was recommending places like Castro Valley, Oakland, Hayward, Livermore, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Walnut Creek, etc. that are all much cheaper than Berkeley and range from quiet suburbia to more city-like than Sacramento.Also nobody recommended San Jose. I'd hate to live there too. There are other nice areas in the south bay though. San Mateo gives you many miles of perfectly flat trails. Over in Los Gatos you'd have tons of rolling hill trails.I would agree with you about San Francisco lacking easy access to trails, except my friends who live there run everyday from their doorsteps and only have to go a few blocks to get to their running trails.I've never understood the us vs. them so many people in Sacramento have. People from the bay area don't knock Sacramento, we just quietly choose to live here instead of there because this is the place that fits us better.

The Berkeley shoreline trail is nothing special. Yes, it's flat, but it's a pain to get to from the campus area, and it gets old quickly.

Castro Valley, Oakland, Hayward, Livermore, Pleasanton, San Ramon, Walnut Creek are all nice places to live that are better than Berkeley for running. But from that list, only Oakland even compares to Sacramento in terms of urbanity and activity. I actually really like Oakland, but Sacramento is simply a better city overall. Cleaner, cheaper, prettier neighborhoods, nicer people, better food, better bars, better running out the front door. Oakland's proximity to SF is very nice though.

And people from the Bay Area most definitely do knock Sacramento. Bring up Sac at a bar in SF and you'll be given looks as if you were talking about some place east of the Mississippi. The SF Bay Area is the snobbiest, most self-centered region in the world. Sac is nothing more than a gas stop on the way to Tahoe for many Bay Areans..."a cowtown full of hick conservatives". Well, keep thinking that cause it keeps Sac wonderful and affordable.

Seriously you are all idiots. Sac town is like a million degrees hot in the summer and the bay area is too freaking expensive. Now if you had said something like Eureka maybe for California?

Now for a clue .. follow where the elite train. That is Flagstaff, Boulder, Tucson (for Kenyans who don't mind the heat), Albuquerque, Mammoth. All have a lot of soft surfaces as well collegiate tracks (or close for Mammoth) for speed work.

run with the wom wrote:

Seriously you are all idiots. Sac town is like a million degrees hot in the summer and the bay area is too freaking expensive. Now if you had said something like Eureka maybe for California?

Now for a clue .. follow where the elite train. That is Flagstaff, Boulder, Tucson (for Kenyans who don't mind the heat), Albuquerque, Mammoth. All have a lot of soft surfaces as well collegiate tracks (or close for Mammoth) for speed work.

Plenty of elites living and training in the Bay Area and Sacramento Area.