1 April 2008
My favorite route
Posted by Nick Katsarelas under: Nick Katsarelas .
Bob’s recent blog about running through old, familiar haunts got me thinking about different courses I’ve run over the years.
My hometown is Dearborn Heights, and Grand Rapids is fairly new to me. Much of my adult life was spent on the East Coast, and so when I’m running here, I often reminisce about running there.
When you run a certain route enough times, it’s easy to visualize. None is as clearly etched in my mind as my route through the campus of Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.
Easton’s an old mill town on the Delaware River, 90 minutes from Neew York City, and is perhaps best known as home to Binney and Smith, the makers of Crayola Crayons, as well as the hometown of former heavyweight boxing champ Larry Holmes, the “Easton Assassin.”
The college – founded in the 1830s — sits high on a hill near the river. With elegantly designed turn-of-the-century buildings, beautiful landscaping, historic statues, and dozens of different tree species — hemlocks, hickories, dogwoods, box elders, gingkos – it was a great place to run. It was so wooded, in fact, that mottled sunlight was about the only summer sun you’d get.
I was fresh out of college, and it was great to be among a lot of young people again. In the summer, the campus was all but deserted, and I could run in the middle of the day and not see a soul.
I mapped out a one-mile route (it’s a small college), and repeat it a couple of times. It was a very hilly course — Manhattan Park hill has nothing on the hills of Pennsylvania — and three or four miles was about all I could take.
When I lived in Elizabeth, New Jersey, I lived in and ran through an ethnic neighborhood populated by Poles, Italians, Koreans, and Orthodox Jews. It was delightful to hear different languages as I ran from one block to the next.
In Frenchtown (also in New Jersey), my path was along a deserted railroad track that was bordered by high grasses and weeds. (You never know how fast you can run when big, hairy, buzzing insects are after you.)
In Plainsboro, N.J., my huge garden-apartment complex had a one-mile walking path. Bikes were strictly forbidden. The problem? Too many kids on bikes.
I run the three miles around the lake at our small cottage in South Branch. (You never know how fast you can run when the deer flies are after you.)
But nothing quite compares to my Lafayette College running days.
One Comment so far...
Shelly Says:
2 April 2008 at 8:46 pm.
Holy cats–do you visualize all these moving trucks, too? 
Sounds like you’ve experienced some great running spots through the good ol’ US of A! I miss some of my old college running routes, too!