Running around the Central Park reservoir in the still of winter

Quick Hint: This map contains exactly TEN hot spots.
Find these famous Central Park Track Club landmarks !!!

P.S. There is at least one very obvious error on this page. Where is it?

This page serves to a basic guide to Central Park runners. Whilst it is true that you can just follow your teammates, you may occasionally end up where you don't want to be in the bushes, possibly even getting summons from your local park ranger.

For road runners, the basic course is the 6 mile loop that goes all the way around the park. By taking the 72nd Street transverse (cutoff) and skipping the southern end of the park, you can reduce it down to just under 5 miles. Similarly, by taking the 102nd Street transverse (cutoff) and skipping the northern end of the park, you can reduce it down to just over 5 miles. If you take both the 72nd and 102nd Street cutoffs, you would have the inner four mile loop.

Now I am sure that there are some of you who require precise measurements so that you don't shortchange yourself in your mileage logbook. So here are distances for the different sections, to four decimal precision.

• 1.7083 mile = Daniel Webster Statue (intersection of W72nd Street and West Drive) to W102 Street Cutoff
• 1.1503 mile = W102nd Street around the Northern Hills to E102nd Street
• 0.7678 mile = E102nd Street to E90th Street
• 0.9936 mile = E90th Street to E72nd Street
• 1.4073 mile = E72nd Street around the Southern end to the Daniel Webster Statue (intersection of W72nd Street and West Drive)
• 0.3080 mile = 72nd Street cutoff between East Drive and West Drive
• 0.2662 mile = 102nd Street cutoff between East Drive and West Drive

Using these building blocks, you can customize your own route á la carte. Here are some typical choices:

• 6.0273 miles = the 'big' (or so-called '6 mile') loop
• 5.1432 miles = lower 5mi loop (going through the southern part of the park but taking the 102nd Street cutoff in the north)
• 4.9280 miles = upper 5mi loop (going through the northern part of the park but taking the 72nd Street cutoff in the south)
• 4.0439 miles = the '4 mile' loop (taking both the 72nd Street and 102nd Street cutoffs)
• 1.7153 miles = southern lower loop (going through the southern part of the park and taking the 72nd Street cutoff)
• 1.4165 miles = northern hills loop (going through the northern part of the park and taking the 102nd Street cutoff)

For a change, you can try the famous reservoir (marked by the blue area in the map above) loop and watch for the celebrities. Here you have the choice between using the jogging path around the reservoir, or sharing the outer bridle path with the horseriders. The former is paved, but the latter is rocky and uneven.

• 1.577 mile = Reservoir loop (marked at 110 yard intervals)
• 1.66 mile = Bridle path loop around reservoir

A very popular hill sprint workout is to run from the bottom to the top of Harlem Hill in the northwest corner of the park.

• If you start from the bottom of the hill at 110th Street entrance (from Martin Luther King Boulevard) and run counter clockwise, you climb 84 vertical feet at a grade of 4.4% to cover 0.32 miles to the top of Harlem Hill.
• If you start from the bottom of the hill at the 102nd Street transverse and run clockwise, you climb 49 vertical feet at a grade of 3.7% to cover 0.25 miles.

You can order a 60" x 20" poster of an aerial view of Central Park at www.centralparkposters.com  
More information about Central Park itself can be found at www.centralpark.org or www.centralparknyc.org