By Frank da Cruz - Lower Riverside Park and Downtown, 96th Street to 72nd Street. It includes the Mall that starts at 92nd Street (where there is a big community flower garden) and ends at 81st Street (where you can find usable water fountains and a bathroom in the playground). Did you know there were bats in Manhattan? If you run along the Lower Riverside Mall at nightfall, you can see them darting about just above your head (eat those bugs!). Normally you would extend a Middle Riverside Park run into the lower park. If you stay in the lower park (i.e. don't cross under the highway to the river) you end up at 72nd Street, where the park ends. From Columbia to 72nd Street and back through the Park is a nice 4-mile run (or slightly more, depending on where you start) with hardly any hills. If you exit from the Mall down the path that branches off towards the river at 86th Street, then under the highway, you can run along the river past the 79th Street Boat Basin (wave to Pete Seeger when the Clear Water is docked there), down to the new Donald Trump pier at 70th Street and, if you wish, you can keep going as far south as you want. First past the twisted rusty mangled burnt-out (i.e. picturesque) wreckage of the old West Side piers in the 60s, to the Sanitation piers in the upper 50s, then along the working piers in the mid-50s and 40s, where you will see big cruise ships docked and the Intrepid at 42nd Street, then past the Javits Center in the 30s, and so on, all the way to Battery Park. Once you reach the 50s, it is pretty surreal running in midtown Manhattan. (I've gone as far as 34th Street and back; presumably one could take the train down to Battery Park and run all the way back for the full effect...). The only bathrooms I know of on this route are just south of the Boat Basin, about 74th Street. There is also a fully realized paved, fenced, and landscaped path along the river from 59th Street all the way up to 145th Street, as the final section of the Greenway between 86th and 92nd has been completed. And the stretch from 72nd to 59th is much improved with landscaping, benches, boat ramps, free kayaking, tables, piers, sunbathing seats, a café, and new walking paths in addition to the running/biking/skating paths; it is very well done, as might be expected for this part of the Manhattan, at the foot of Trump City or whatever it is called... (I am not complaining about the part north of 145th Street; it is passable, picturesque, more rustic, and definitely more fun!). As of June 5, 2010, the new stretch has not made it into Google's aerial photos (for that matter, neither has the new 125th Street pier). I suppose I should not leave out the route along the Riverside Drive sidewalk south from 96th street. Although it is hilly with a poor running surface, you will see some very handsome row houses, not to mention the Joan of Arc statue at 94th Street (across Riverside Drive, easy to miss), the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial with big cannons at 89th Street, and the statue of Eleanor Roosevelt (no cannons) at 72nd Street.

Runners who live in the Columbia University area of Manhattan, New York City (Morningside Heights and West Harlem) are fortunate to have Riverside Park, Central Park, and Morningside Park nearby. The parks and the Hudson riverfront are in better condition now than at any time in the last one hundred years, especially since 2000 with the inauguration of the Greenway. The site Upper Manhattan Running describes some obvious and not-so-obvious runs that start in the Columbia area, but it is also useful for anybody who lives on the west side anywhere between midtown and Washington Heights or Inwood.

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