OnFootBlog.com

I’m going to stop posting on here for a long while. Possibly forever.

When I first started this site, my employer was the Annapolis Capital, a wonderful paper that (at the time) had no running or transportation blogs. Now, however, I work for the Baltimore Sun, which within the last year has launched both a wonderful transportation blog and, more recently, a very nice running section. Since these vastly outdo my blog in terms of quality and quantity, I’m happy to say that it’s now quite redundant.

That said, I’d still love to see you at a Friday meetup, as those will continue.

From a recent article on a running group for recovering addicts:

“It rejuvenates your body and your mind,” said Richard Smith, 23. The Massachusetts native used to play football as a child and joined the running group because he wanted to try something different while recovering from his alcohol addiction.

[Read more]

If I didn’t work at 5:30 in the morning anyway, I might try this. Interesting to read about either way.

The group’s site: backonmyfeet.org

Here are some choices for this week:

What I’ll be doing: Too early to say yet, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to resist a run that promises pi. Mmm … pi*.

Other options: There are at least five 5K races in the area this weekend, which means we must be getting into spring. Those include the KELLY Shamrock 5K here in Baltimore. I’m sure a lot of people will be making a day of it by swerving their way in and out of Fell’s Point bars afterward.

In the future: National marathon? Yeah, we have one of those.

As always, you can see a full list of upcoming road races, transit events, training rides, walks, and runs via the on-foot calendar of events. Quick reminder: We really do have bike events on our calendar as well, despite the relative lack of them in recent weeks. I encourage you to e-mail me any upcoming events that I may have missed. We’ll usually be happy to link to them.

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*I know I’m probably the 8,000th person to make that joke this year. I don’t regret it in the slightest. The world can always use more middle school math puns.

One of the things that I like most about walking and running in Baltimore is the varied terrain. Baltimore is full of both large and small hills. Few places are those hills more appreciated than on the campus of Morgan State University, where they form a good chunk of the school’s identity.

The Morgan Park/MSU/Hillen route I chose goes down and up and down and up again, but never to any extreme measure. While Morgan State’s campus includes two pedestrian bridges — one over Herring Run and one over Cold Spring Lane — skipping the Cold Spring bridge lets one truly appreciate how much the hills add to the campus.

This 5K route goes through a couple of areas that could be described as rough, but I doubt that they’ll stay that way for long. A case in point: The largest building adjacent to the now-infamous Northwood shopping center, where City Councilman Ken Harris was shot, is slated to become a new building for part of Morgan State’s business school, according to a 2007 newspaper article.

While it’s true that the D.R. article linked above is now a year and a half old, I think it’s still quite likely that the project has some legs: Morgan State is growing so fast that three of the largest buildings on my route were shown on Google Maps as mere construction sites. Two of those sites overlook Morgan State’s distinctive red and blue track, which I was unfortunately unable to access directly.

This route might be a challenge on a bike, but for walking or running, it is recommendable.

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View map

Since a large part of Saturday’s event involves closing roads for runners, it only makes sense that you wouldn’t want to drive to the Baltimore Marath — er, Foot Festivus.

With that in mind, here’s a page on the MTA site that can help you find a transit option. Transit lines

I know that Google Transit Baltimore is handy for this as well, but they’re still working out a few bugs. While I still encourage people to use that service, it’s good to cross-check it on the MTA page.

Anyhow, these tools should be a good start for anyone going to the Baltimore Marath — er, Podiatric Parade — this weekend at Camden Yards. It’s also not a bad start for getting to Orioles games, since the apparent source for public transit info on the Orioles’ site is fairly sparse, as of early October 2008.

Labels: Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Maps, Running, Transit

posted by Patrick  # 2:28 PM

I’ve been doing a lot of interval workouts lately, but mapping individual track runs is pointless. Imagine: “I went around. And then I went around again! And then I went around a third time!! Guess what happened next!!!”

That said, there’s at least some relevant information I can provide after track runs: The collected locations and conditions of the tracks themselves. See below:
View Larger Map

It’s just an iframe, so it’s not as web-special as my Baltimore food retailers map at baltimoregroceries.org — but it will have to do for now.

One of the main goals of this blog is to build community.

Specifically, I want a community of happy, well-adjusted people who like to discuss walking, biking, running and related topics. Maybe sometimes they’ll even walk and run together. Maybe they’ll even spontaneously break into song once in awhile. You never know.

Starting on the very modest level of my blog, I would like to invite you into that community. If you would like to write about walking and/or running in the Baltimore area, please e-mail my gmail account, which is named “patrickmaynard” (minus the qoutes, of course). I’m not posting it with the little twirly “at” symbol because evil robots will pick it up and send me spam, but I’m sure you can figure it out.

I look forward to hearing from you.