Golden Gate Park

Conservatory Of Flowers on the eastern end of Golden Gate Park.

 

 

One of this running bloggers favorite places to run and walk happens to be in Golden Gate Park.  Hundreds of times, I've trained there and have probably raced there close to 100 times (will check that!).

 

The first time running from the east to west end of the park was in May 1972 when participating in the Bay To Breakers cross city race.  There were a lot of people running that day with roughly over 2200 finishers.  Today, the number of finishers are over 20,000!

 

Several other races run through a part of the park such as the San Francisco Marathon in July and the Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon in February.  One of the local area running clubs, the Dolphin South End Runners, put on several low key races in the park.  The Windmill 10K and the Rainbow Falls 5K are among several races run.

 

The park itself is 155 years old as of this post.  It is the largest urban park in America (1017 acres) and third most visited park with an estimated 24 million visiting each year.

 

There are at least 16 notable attractions including Spreckels Lake where this runner just finished a workout.  Other highlights include the de Young Museum, Japanese Tea Garden, Dutch Windmill, Aids Memorial Grove and the California Academy Of Sciences.