Forbidden drive through valley green is the best (along with exploration of any of the billion trails on either of the valley), or a loop of the river from the art museum up kelly drive, around falls bridge, and back west river drive.

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http://www.usatf.org/.../view.asp?rID=526933

Because, y'know

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NubH5BDOaD8

http://www.phillymag.com/...aining-run-rocky-ii/

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

Pools to lookup that have drop-in masters/fees:

Downtown Philly - Philadelphia Fins at Friends Select
North Philly - Salvation Army Kroc Center
Suburbs: Upper Merion YMCA, Villanova Masters

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@adamwfurlong

I could not find a pool at downtown that would let me in as guest... the people at YMCA are dicks, saying I need to buy year round membership, but other ymcas let me in as guest.

The run path along the sykhul (sp?) river is nice, basically the philly half marathon course.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/603179640

Schuylkill Trail looks awesome! Anyone have any insight on the type of terrain it is?

The SRT is very flat. Multi use trail.

 

It's paved. Also, there's an LA Fitness downtown, if you're not a member just get their "try it for 2 weeks" free pass.

Pretty much paved multi-use trail, except for one packed gravel towpath section through Roxborough (west of Manayunk). Follows the line of the Schuylkill River from Manayunk through some industrial/urban residential areas all the way out to Valley Forge park. You can also run from the Art Museum up Kelly Drive to the lower end of Manayunk, then jump onto the SRT for as far as you want to run. I think it's ~22 miles from the Art Museum to VF.

To echo the poster above, Forbidden Drive is a beautiful dirt/gravel trail along the Wissahickon Creek - it doesn't feel like you're in the city.

If you do run the Art Museum>Kelly Drive>Falls Bridge>MLK Drive loop (8.5 miles) mentioned above, you get to run up the Rocky steps at the end. Just don't take the last set two steps at a time trying to race your running partner and strain your achilles tendon. Yeah, fun...

I'm only going have time to do one of these runs:

Rocky Steps:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=6498626

or Forbidden Trail:
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=6498629

If it were up to you, which would you do? Also, would you suggest I use trail shoes for the forbidden trail or would sneakers be suffice?

presuming you are staying downtown, your best bet is Philadelphia Fins masters program. They swim at night at a high school. Google/FB them to get info.

also presuming you are downtown, the fastest way to get the Schuylkill River Trail is to run west until you get to the river, unless you are staying south of South street, which is unlikely. The trail/path runs from South street to Boathouse Row into East Falls and then into Manyunk. As others have said, it's very flat, and paved, and you can do a loop that takes you on both the east and west side of the river.

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@adamwfurlong

Personally I'd do Forbidden Drive, but you could actually combine parts of both runs by continuing up Kelly Drive (i.e. not crossing over the Falls Bridge) to Ridge Ave, making a left there, then joining what is basically the bottom portion of Forbidden Drive across the street from the Wissahickon Transportation Center on Ridge Ave (it's marked as "Wissahickon Bike Trail" on that map).

Regular running shoes should be fine for either one.

The river from the Museum is great BUT there is also a lot of very cool old historical running on the east side in the old towne. You can run on cobblestone roads more than 100 years old, see Ben F's house, the Liberty Bell, etc. I started in downtown. Ran toward the NJ river (I think that's what it was), then headed toward the main government center/courthouse then down the main stretch to the museum and then to the river.

Forbidden Drive is easily the winner in my book, I miss running on that trail the most since moving out of town.

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"What was the secret, they wanted to know; in a thousand different ways they wanted to know The Secret. And not one of them was prepared, truly prepared to believe... The Trial of Miles, Miles of Trials. How could they be expected to understand that?"

That would be the Delaware River, although it does separate PA and NJ.

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"Honestly, triathlon is a pussified version of duathlon on that final run."- Desert Dude

The only other thing to note is that if you don't have a car it's a lot more out of the way for you to get to the start of Forbidden Drive as you have it mapped. Getting a cab there won't be a problem, but getting back will be more difficult.

I run Forbidden drive with road shoes - it's basically hard packed gravel and is gently rolling. If you intend to take some of the side trails up the sides of the ravine, they can be very steep and you would want trail shoes to deal with what will be more raw trails (rocks and roots).

As for which to choose, I can't help, I like both. Forbidden drive is a run in the woods with some beautiful old bridges and structures. The river loop is great for the bridges, river and city views. If you did combine both, it's about 2 miles to go from the Falls Bridge to the start of forbidden drive, also on a paved trail as described by another.

Normal running shoes are fine for forbidden drive. Even if you went onto the single track trails on either side of the valley you'd be fine.

Forbidden drive itself is a wide, cinder/dirt road that rolls for 5.75 miles through the woods, along a creek. It's one of my favorite places to run. There are semi accurate markers every 1/2 mile, so I did a lot of workouts, tempos, fartleks, progressions etc there when I lived in Philly.

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