Cleveland Runners Discover 93-Mile Canal Trail and Lakefront Routes

Cleveland offers a genuine mix of lakefront running and a historic canal towpath brought back from 70 years of abandonment. Here are the best running routes in Cleveland for 2026.

Edgewater Park and the Lakefront Bikeway

Edgewater Park offers a paved loop of about 2.55 miles from the main parking lot off Upper Edgewater Drive, part of Cleveland Metroparks' Lakefront Reservation, a 147 acre park with 9,000 feet of shoreline. The wider Cleveland Lakefront Bikeway extends this to 17 miles of off-road and on-street paths along the entire Lake Erie shoreline, from Euclid to Lakewood, passing through Collinwood and Bratenahl.

The Emerald Necklace

Cleveland Metroparks' all-purpose paved trail network totals roughly 70 miles within a park system spanning about 325 miles of trails and 20,000 acres. The Brecksville Reservation segment runs 9.3 miles past Chippewa Creek Gorge and Deer Lick Cave with genuine hill climbs, while Big Creek Reservation's gentler Lake to Lake Trail connects Lake Abram and Lake Isaac over 2.4 miles.

The Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath Trail

The Towpath Trail, now more than 93 miles of crushed limestone and paved multi-use path, follows the actual towpath where mules once pulled canal boats along the 1827 to 1913 Ohio and Erie Canal. Cleveland's segment runs about 5 miles from the future Canal Basin Park downtown through Tremont and Scranton Flats to Harvard Avenue, linking to Cuyahoga Valley National Park. After the catastrophic 1913 flood destroyed the canal, the route sat abandoned for 70 years before restoration began in the 1980s, and now hosts an annual Towpath Marathon drawing more than 1,000 runners.

University Circle and Rockefeller Park

University Circle offers a loop of 3 to 4 miles around Wade Oval, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Botanical Gardens, connecting into Rockefeller Park, a 7 mile linear park along Martin Luther King Jr Drive linking north to the lakefront and south to Shaker Lakes.

Running the Cleveland Marathon Route

The University Hospitals Cleveland Marathon, held 17 May 2026, redesigned its course this year to bring back a Lake Avenue stretch through Lakewood, trimming the Shoreway segment from 6 miles to 2.

Practical Guide to Running in Cleveland

Edgewater Park and the Lakefront Bikeway are the most reliable choices for a flat run at any time of day; the Towpath Trail is worth the trip for anyone wanting genuine historic distance.

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