visiting Boston area - run route suggestions, part of marathon course? (Read 484 times)

Hi all, Will be visiting my son in the Boston area next weekend and am thinking about where to run (hopefully without too much vehicle traffic). Son doesn't run, but will ask him too. I think it would be fun to run part of the marathon course, maybe including heartbreak hill. Any thoughts on that or just suggested areas to consider would be greatly apreciated. I plan to run about 5 miles Friday and 10 on Saturday and would probably start around 7 am (whatever that means about traffic). We will stay at the Somerville La Quinta Inn on Cummings St. Thanks! Chuck

When I lived in Boston I wasn't much of a runner, but the Esplanade bridge loops are probably the nicest running routes in town. See http://www.soundkeepers.com/running/boston.html. You could do BU/Longfellow (4.6) or BU/Science Museum (5.6) for your shorter run, and Eliot/Science Museum for your longer run. Watch for the pedestrian overpass if you're crossing the BU Bridge from south to north. Otherwise you'll arrive underneath the bridge and have no way to get onto it! You can see what I mean by closely inspecting a Google Maps satellite view of the area. Also, the Harvard Bridge is completely misnamed. It should be called the MIT Bridge. I can't comment on the marathon course, having never run it.

There's a running path not too far from the door of your hotel, along the Mystic. Or if you want to run some of the marathon course, as Bucci said, take the Green Line to Woodland and run the Newton Hills.