Hempstead Turnpike at 8 a.m.
Jericho Turnpike at 5:30 p.m.
The LIE anytime.
There you have it - a partial list of the worst places to run on Long Island.
The good news is that there are many safe, traffic-free and scenic places for runners and walkers to put their best feet forward. Whatever the popular depiction of Nassau-Suffolk as an unending succession of crowded streets and strip malls, the members of Long Island's large and robust running community know that the reality is much different.
"There are so many fabulous places to run on Long Island," says Northport's Kathy Martin, 56, one of the Island's most accomplished runners, having set many national age-group records. During her 20-year career, she has trained and raced all over Nassau and Suffolk. "It accommodates everyone," she says. "You've got the high school tracks if you want, neighborhood roads, and then you've got all those great parks and beaches."
Not to mention the trails, including the 200 miles of Long Island's Greenbelt Trail network, which somehow still seems to be a mystery to many - even people who live here.
"Every year, on our race instructions to the Greenbelt 25K and 50K races, we include a line that says, 'Please give lions and bears the right of way on the trails,'" says Mike Polansky of Plainview, president of the Greater Long Island Running Club. "We get very few comments on that. I don't know if it means they don't read the letter, or that they really believe there are lions and bears on the trails of Long Island."
For the record, there aren't.
But between the trails, the parks, the preserves, the beaches and the bike paths, there are many places to see, explore and safely enjoy on foot. Follow along as some of Long Island's veteran runners show you their favorites.
Mike Baard, Norman J. Levy Nature Preserve, Merrick
"I went over the first day it opened, in 2000," recalls Mike Baard, a longtime top competitive runner on Long Island who lives across the street from the preserve. "I had heard they were capping the dump and creating a nature preserve out of it, and wanted to see what the hullabaloo was about."
He found a stunning transformation. Where once stood mountains of trash, there were now carefully groomed trails, abundant wildlife and beautiful vistas. From a runner's point of view, the park's 115-foot-high plateau was particularly important. "If you're on the South Shore, there are hardly any hills, so this is great," said Baard, who started running there soon after it opened and hasn't stopped since.
The only downside of the 50-acre preserve: "It's not like a Connetquot or Sunken Meadow, where you can go meandering for miles," he said. That said, the main loop is 1.6 miles. Do that a few times, throw in a couple of hill repeats, as Baard regularly does during his twice-weekly runs in the preserve, and you can easily get in a 5- to 8-mile run, and never know you're in the former Merrick Landfill.
Kathy Martin: Gov. Alfred E. Smith/Sunken Meadow State Park
"I love it there!" says Martin, three-time USA Track & Field masters athlete of the year. "You can do any kind of workout there ... hill repeats, speed, tempo, long runs."
Martin, who lives in Northport, runs at Sunken Meadow at least once a week with the elite Northport Nitro team, coached by her husband, Chuck Gross. They warm up on the three-quarter-mile-long boardwalk and then head off onto the six miles of trails. In the course of their hourlong run, they'll also hit a couple of Sunken Meadow's famous hills, known to generations of Long Island high school cross-country runners, who compete here in the fall. "I think a lot of people are intimidated by those hills," Martin says. "I tell them to just get out and try it. Once you get out there, it's so restorative for your body to be on those trails."
There's a 5K loop that many of the high schools use in the fall and a 10K course, used for the state parks' Summer Run Series (see box).
Patty Zebersky: Bethpage Bike Path
"The very first time I ran was on that path," Patty Zebersky says. It was the fall of 1974, and Zebersky (then Patty DiFalco) was in her first year at the college now known as Farmingdale State College. "The guy I was dating at the time was a wrestler, and he was out there running to lose weight," she recalls. "So I joined him, and probably made it around a half mile and had to stop."
