Running on the Eastside (Seattle, Bellevue: houses, neighborhoods, to buy)

[lizbusby]

My husband and I are moving to Seattle this summer to work for the big M$ and looking to buy a house on the Eastside. We spent last summer doing an internship in Redmond and loved the area, but found that the up-and-down roads we lived on were not at all conducive to running, which we love to do. Obviously there's a lot of variation even within a city, but are there any particular neighborhoods on the Eastside that would be more conducive to family life and marathon training (ie flatter and scenic)?

[jenlion]

Anywhere with access to the Sammamish River Trail. It runs along the Sammamish River from Marymoor Park all the way to Woodinville. It connects to the Burke-Gillman trail (don't know personally if that one is flat), and through Marymoor to a trail that rus along the east side of Lake Sammamish.

Depending on what you can afford, you may have to deal with a hill to GET you to the trail. Many homes are on hills rather than in the river valleys. That's a good thing for your property -- river valleys are bad in earthquakes and they flood (though the Sammamish doesn't anymore, as I understand it, since the locks were built, but sometimes it looks like it could!). But it's a harder thing for running!

When we were looking for homes, one of my requirements was that it have a relatively level neighborhood and sidewalks. That eliminated lots of affordable Bellevue -- I didn't want to be pushing a stroller uphill in the street. Sounds petty, but I was doing a LOT of stroller pushing, and that is followed by tricycle riding and bicycle learning, and it would have been hard for that for years. So, held out for flat neighborhood -- we live on Education Hill now, and it's good for walking. There are hills and dips, but nothing insane. The Power Line trail runs right through the neighborhood and I walk that all the time. The only bummer is that to get down to the Sammamish River trail down the Power Like trail, it is VERY steep -- too hard to do with a stroller, so we don't do it like I thought we would.

If budget is tight, you might seriously consider if you can pop in the car and drive a couple minutes to a place on a flat trail, if you can't handle the big hill. We'll drive down the hill if we want to push the stroller and go along the River trail -- crazy to drive to walk, but that hill is tooooo much.

There are lots of maps showing the Sammamish River trail, Burke-Gilman trail, Marymoor Connector, and East Lake Sammamish trails and their access points. I'd use those as a guide and look at houses in general proximity to them -- and become familiar with local paths like power line trails or old rail trails that might deliver you to the main trail without dealing with traffic. Hopefully something nearby will fit the bill. :-)

[texastrigirl]

Of course if you are ever going to run the Seattle Marathon, you will want to train on hills, hills and more hills because most of the blasted race is on hills!!

[obsidian97]

Having trained for a marathon in Dallas (in which we had to go looking for hills to run in so our running group wouldn't DIE the first time we hit a hill on the race in San Diego [another area not known for it's hills])... I'd say you can find plenty of places that are reasonably flat to run on. You could run down different sections of the Sammamish River Trail into Marymoor Park and then off over to the East Lake Sammamish area around the lake without too much trouble. I'm not sure if the trail that runs along the east side of Lake Sammamish connects to Marymoor or not, but you could verify that on a map relatively easily.

What will probably cause you more issue is running in the dark/mizzle in the fall and winter months.

There are a LOT of people that run around the M$ campus itself. It's not flat as a pancake, but it's reasonable. There's one good hill on NE 40th Ave to get down to the sidewalk on Bel-Red that can take you into Marymoor, but beyond that you should be fine if you get sick and tired of running between buildings.

Oh, and there's free towels at work (lord help us if they ever try to do away with the towels again).

[BellevueGuy]

Originally Posted by obsidian97

Oh, and there's free towels at work (lord help us if they ever try to do away with the towels again).

A bit distraction here: I myself and a lot of colleagues never know what the big deal about the towers were. Yes it was stupid to remove them but I'd rather they give me free Starbucks or more bonuses.

[lizbusby]

Originally Posted by obsidian97

There are a LOT of people that run around the M$ campus itself. It's not flat as a pancake, but it's reasonable. There's one good hill on NE 40th Ave to get down to the sidewalk on Bel-Red that can take you into Marymoor, but beyond that you should be fine if you get sick and tired of running between buildings.

Which of course happened to be the hill we lived on during our internship up there. It was no good. Either you lost all your steam at the beginning running up it or you would die trying to push through the end. The only solution we found was to run an extra quarter mile out and then end early and walk home.

How about running areas in Bothell and Kirkland?

[obsidian97]

Don't know about Bothell and Kirkland, but skated the Samammish River Trail from 60 acres park (NE 116th) down into RTC without any difficulty last night. I'd be willing to bet that you could easily go from Redhook into Marymoor without encountering any serious hillage.