Running through the City

These are my trails.

To quote the great Lee Ving, “I love living in the city.” I love my one mile commute to work. I love that it takes me just as long to drive to work and find a parking spot as it does to ride my bike there. And I love running through the city.

Monday night, my wife and I ran 7 x 1000 meter intervals. As we ran past cars and construction and tall buildings and vacant lots, we could see trees budding, smell lilac, hear dogs playfully barking, and best of all, we can smell Boulevard brewing up some great beers.

Our typical run starts outside our loft, crosses a bridge over railroad tracks that connect to one of the busiest rail yards in the country, then we run through a park and around the Liberty Memorial, a giant monument to World War I. From the memorial, we get a great vantage point of the city and the rest of our run. Then we wind back down through the park and head through Crown Center, the outside of which contains a large fountain that children play in, an outdoor ice skating rink, and thousands of twinkling lights. Then we head up to the downtown Power & Light District and loop back down to our loft.

It’s a mini tour of some of the most beautiful parts of the city. And now that my wife has a GPS watch, we change it up whenever we feel like it. Sometimes we head downtown, sometimes we head south in search of more parks.

One night we were out running and saw a bunch of police cars gathering down the block,

This actually happened.

we ran to the intersection and saw they were blocking traffic so a herd of a dozen circus elephants could walk from the event center back to their rail cars. We  followed the elephants the rest of the way, it like our own private parade. Had we stayed in and used the treadmill, we never would have known what we were missing.

I’m sure running through parks along dirt trails is nice, but honestly, I wouldn’t know. I know I love seeing what people are up to as their exploring downtown while we’re running by. And I love watching the progress as workers build new buildings and renovate old ones. There’s always something new going on, sometimes there are even elephants.