I love where I live for running. I have a lot of parks nearby with tracks or paved bike paths. I have one running route that is only about 7 miles, but traverses 7 parks (some of them are smaller, urban green spaces) with quiet streets in between. I love that route.

I also have the coastline just a mile away, but it's a very hilly trail! There are excellent sidewalks on every road and I can easily drive to flatter places if I get sick of the hills. I also appreciate the mild climate: 99% of the days year round are between 40 and 80. No snow in winter and the humidity is not bad in the summer either so there are very few days I can't run if I don't mind a bit of rain, well, quite a lot of rain, actually. For all that, tomorrow's 5k could see the late 30s at the start of the race. Brrr!

The other thing is that I'm in New Zealand where the seasons are opposite to what you guys are having. I read of D's dewpoints in horror! Honestly, I don't know how you guys survive with the extremes of weather that you suffer!

Yes. <-- That's the view from Chestnut Ridge, a huge county park that's a run/bike/hike mecca about 5 minutes from where I work.  There are miles of trails and paved roads inside the park (with infrequent cars limited to 15mph) and dozens of LR possibilities on the semi-rural surrounding roads (which are almost always well-cleared in winter).

Another 15 minutes up into ski country is where I live, and running near home is fantastic in good weather, brutal in bad.

Buffalo in general is great -- there are lots of races, a well-organized local website with a calendar and results, and all sorts of other cool routes, especially on the waterfront.

I haven't been running all that long, so I'm still learning about places to run in my area.  I live in a small subdivision a few miles out of town, so I can do very short runs in the nearby neighborhoods, but longer runs mean I end up on narrow winding rural roads with no shoulder.  The area is fairly hilly.  I'm still learning which roads have less traffic or better lines of sight and which require me to jump into the ditch every 5 minutes.  The highways have bike lanes, but lots of traffic.  There are no sidewalks at all in my area.  I can run into town and take advantage of sidewalks there, and the flatter land, but then I have stiff climb back to my neighborhood.  Drivers are generally considerate, and will usually move aside when we meet if there is no oncoming traffic. There is a state forest about 45 minutes away and I can either run the trails there (somewhat technical running on steep rocky trails) or I can run dirt roads through the forest.  There is a flat rail trail about 40 minutes north and the C&O canal is about 40 minutes south of me.

There are three running clubs within 45 minutes or so, so there are a fair number of races I can get to easily - mostly 5ks, but each also puts on a half marathon (very hilly) and there are a few 10k, 5 mile and 15k races each year.  Nearest marathon is probably Gettysburg, about 45 minutes away.

Just about ideal.  I live in western Oregon, where it doesn't get too cold in the winter or too hot in the summer, plus it has very low humidity in the summer.  I can be on a paved trail by the river just a few minutes' walk from my house, and from there can get a decent LR through several parks without having to cross many intersections at all.  There are also miles of trails in the forest that are a short drive away.

I also like the fact that there are a lot of runners around, so cars are used to watching out for them.  Plus there is a good history of running around here with Nike and the U of O.

Yes. I've got a couple small trails out my door (well, a 5- to 10-min run on residential streets), but we've got a greenbelt about 4 mi away with close to 3000 acres of land (depending how you count, since there's development along the edges) with 33 miles of trail - mix of ski trails, wide track, single track, and social.

And moving out to 5-10 miles away we start getting into some of the mountain trails, and about 20 miles for a state park with lots of trails and mountains.

There's some separated bike paths, which sometimes get plowed in winter, rather than having snow splashed or deposited on them. Streets themselves are just too dangerous - whether main highways or city streets. Residential aren't too bad. People are getting more cognizant of bike and pedestrian traffic, esp. since now more kids are biking or playing with bikes in the streets.

I'm about 40mi NE of Anchorage where they have some primo bike paths, ski trails, newer single track in the muni, and abuts a state park, which is one of the larger state parks in the country. And it abuts a national forest.

But most of my races are about 1-1.5 hrs away.

These are some pics from trails I run / hike on and views may include other trails.

Too add to what I've already said about the least pedestrian friendly cities (Top 3 is in florida, woohoo!), a runner got run over here, in my neighborhood, this week.  He was on the SIDEWALK.  Ugh.

No wonder you're always doing destination marathons.  They're safer.

Too add to what I've already said about the least pedestrian friendly cities (Top 3 is in florida, woohoo!), a runner got run over here, in my neighborhood, this week.  He was on the SIDEWALK.  Ugh.

That's awful. I have my closest calls running on sidewalks, where there are parking lot entrances. People pull out looking for cars and not people on sidewalks. This happens mostly at 1 apartment complex. 10 years ago I was hit by a pickup leaving a convenient store parking lot.