Northside Beltline parkrun
Atlanta, Georgia
Northside Beltline parkrun is to the North of Atlanta, accessible by public transport but also close enough to the city that a taxi isn’t ruinous. I walked to the Olympic park in town afterwards, which is under 5 miles away.
I chose to use public transport ($2.50 one trip=4 changes/3 hour, $9 all day) to get to the Bitsy Grant Tennis Center (named for Bryan M Grant). With maintenance work scheduled for the weekend, there was only 1 train every 20 minutes, so it needed a little more planning. I needed the 7:24 train from West Lake, and chose to take the 7:04 for a bit more leeway in connecting to the no. 12 bus at Midtown station. In the end, delays were reported on the bus and although I would probably have just hopped on a bus, albeit it would have a delayed bus from earlier, I had plenty of time so walked. I stayed on the train till Arts Center, one North of Midtown, from where it’s a 4.5km walk. Even better, following directions from Maps.me took me onto the trail for the last mile or so of the walk (Google maps doesn’t do this at the mo, keeping you alongside the roads for longer - head along 26th St NW and take the right turn past ‘Peach Home Service’ to get onto the trail).
I took the picture above about 7:45 am, and I urge you to check the sky colour and compare it with that at the end, from about 9:30. This was a very cold morning, 4° and with a freeze warning in place in Atlanta, but it warmed to over 20 degrees later in the day, with clear skies. Go on, have a scroll down now and look at it.
The start is at the Bitsy Grant Tennis Center, meeting on the trail (what3words: writers.fatter.gums). The course page says the toilets in the tennis centre are available, though the ones on the putting green of the next-door golf club are more obvious, and are where I ended up. If there was disapproval from any golfers, I was oblivious to it.
The route looks mildly complicated, but really isn’t. Just remember to turn right (one of them described as a straight on, perhaps more of a ‘bear right’). It’s an out-and-back course, perhaps a twin out-and-back to be more specific, as you do the bottom section first, come back, then bear right (much less of a right turn than the map makes it look - just follow the trail) to go round the golf course to do the backward-C shape bit, then all the way back to the start. Which involves a right turn at what you might have surmised is a much-used junction.
The trail is a lovely area of calm and exercising people. I probably felt that in particular because US cities are so often so edgy - the US has developed so firmly around the car, that walking around and carrying out a life on foot in a city centre is mostly what the dispossessed do (outside of business areas in working hours). Not that I had any trouble walking from Arts Center station, but I could still feel the change in atmosphere as I moved out of the urban areas into the suburban, and I’m sure I felt tension leave my shoulders once I realised I was on the trail. In general, on foot you are not as insulated from other people’s realities as you can be in a car, but there was no sense of that here, just people running, walking and cycling along a trail in early morning sun, with parkrun just a part.
The start is downhill, so the finish is uphill (with one longish drag, then a shorter, more manageable one to the actual line). Other than that, though, there’s very little undulation, and the terrain is so consistent that this is a pretty quick course. Even that slightly exaggerated down then up under the bridge is short, and makes for a swooping turn.
If you’re looking for blue, here it is - this is about 9:30, as I’m chasing these two in to the finish:
Afterwards, it was still cold enough that I put on the clothes I’d left in a bag at the start, but it was warming up nicely. As I walked into town an hour or so later, I started shedding those clothes, which made the morning one of contrasts. That sky, for one, the temperature another obvious one.
The finish line is just off to the left of the trail (the right, above), but a few people missed it, finishing at the flag, and the volunteers were quick to time them and give them a finish token, so nothing to worry about.
Results from Northside Beltline parkrun #149, 4/11/23; 27 finishers
Nice to see the world is spinning on it's axis again and you were at parkrun :)
To save me ranting about what 3 words, here's somebody who does a better job of it than I: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2019/03/why-bother-with-what-three-words/