i'm going to michigan

[dartman]

hey, i'm gonna be visiting my brother in ann arbor in a couple weeks and i was wondering if anyone from around there knew of any cool or good places to run close by. i'm sure my brother will take me around and stuff but if any of you guys had any suggestions of good places to run, i'd appreciate it

[Sulus]

Read Sub 4 or something.

[michiganXC13]

last time i ran by there i just ran around the michigan campus... i cant really help

[Agent Orange]

Ann Arbor (A2) is chock full of great runs. Where are you going to be staying? I'm going to assume on campus and write about these runs from that point of view. If you can tell me what neighborhood you'll be in, I can give you even more runs than the ones I provide here.

If you're just starting out, especially if you live on campus, and have read Sub 4:00, you'll want to check out the Arb (Nichols Arboretum), and I can't blame you. There are a several entrances, try the one by Mary Markley or on Geddes Rd. There are many trails in there that range from barely one man wide to old gravel roads, and incredibly varied terrain. In the formentioned book, Lear details some of the runs that the UM guys do in the Arb, particularly up this one hill that begins at the river and climbs for about half a mile to Geddes road, with an elevation gain of a few hundred feet. It's a ballbuster. The Arb is filled with hills to run, but my favorite spot is Dow Prarie. It's a huge field with grass that grows way over your head by the fall, with trails cut all the way through it. My favorite workout in high school was a fartlek we did in the Arb where we did several of our fast sections in the grass on Dow Prarie. You had to go like ruddy hell to keep from losing sight of the leaders, but it was great.

There are some other great spots for hill work in A2. Two of the best are right by the Arb. One is the Medical Center Hill. If you start from the corner of Fuller and Med. Center Dr, you run up the hill, around the University Hospital, past the backside of Mary Markley dorm, and finish at the University Observatory. The Observatory was placed on one of the highest hills in A2, and the hill starts right at the Huron River, A2's lowest point, so that's a rough one too.

In Sub-4:00, you'll also read about the guys doing Harvard hills. Those are run up and down Harvard Dr, which is a little cul-de-sac right off Geddes, near where the ball-breaker hill in the Arb ends. 6 or 8 of those will f up your legs for a weekend.

For non-hill runs, my favorite run is the Barton Hills Nature Area. It's a couple miles from campus though, so a car or a bike helps. To get there from Central Campus, take Hill St. (on the south edge), William St. (just North of Angell Hall), or Packard (just West of South Quad) West to Main St, and take Main St. North. Right before you have to get on M-14, turn left onto Huron River Dr. Go down Huron River, and very soon, you'll see a parking area to your left. You park there, cross the footbridge over the Huron River, and have a nice, low-lying field/forest area with tons of paths cut through it. If you take either the woodchipped path or the smaller trails North for a while, you wind up at Barton Dam. You can cross the bridge back over the Huron and run up alongside Barton Pond for a while, or cross the railroad tracks before you cross the river, and cut further North into Barton Hills. Barton Hills is a very nice suburb of A2 (average annual income is something around $112,000), so the main road that is closest to Barton Pond is well maintained, easy to run on, and policed by private security. Look rich when you run there.

If you're going North on Main St, you can also stop at Bandermere Park for a great run. Turn right on the little street right before you get to the Lotus plant (it's green, says has the Lotus logo on the side and the occasional $75,000 sports car parked out front, can't miss it) and go the paved trail. Turn left, run past the U of M Men's Crew boathouse (where I gave up my mornings every spring and some of the fall), run along the paved trail until you can duck right on a dirt path, and take the path around Argo Pond. Then cross the pedestrian bridge just North of the M-14 bridge, go south down the other side of the river, run onto the boardwalk, take the steps down, and then run back along the other side of Argo Pond. When you get to Argo Park, keep going South until you reach Argo Dam, cross over the dam, turn North again, and head back to Bandermere.

That's a start. I have way too many "favorite Ann Arbor runs," but these are some of the ones to try. If all else fails, go to the CCRB, NCRB or the IMSB, and check the list they have posted there of running routes. They're actually not bad for something mass-produced, and offer a variety of distances to try.

[Dyenimator]

In Sub-4:00, you'll also read about the guys doing Harvard hills. Those are run up and down Harvard Dr, which is a little cul-de-sac right off Geddes, near where the ball-breaker hill in the Arb ends. 6 or 8 of those will f up your legs for a weekend.

I did 8 of these today and they're still torture.

[Otto Mann]

I did 8 of these today and they're still torture.

I always feel like I'm gonna **** myself when I finish them.

[longview]

Holy old thread, Batman!

[madhatt]

to the north/west of downtown? You run along the river then go up and up and down and so forth? That was always one of my favorite runs. I think it might have been 8-10 miles by the time we were home.