Few of us neighbors run as a running group here at Great Park – and we call ourselves Great Park Roadrunners (If you live here at Great Park check out our club page on Dwellinglive), and Roadrunners we were- running our neighborhood, used to be 3 times a week – before this pandemic. We ran as a group well into the pandemic around last weeks of March, and the last run I recall was prior to the LA Marathon. We still run, run our neighborhoods, at times text and check on each other, but group runs have been a thing of past! Running with masks isnt quite comfortable.

Now that I brought the mood down with our pre pandemic memories, I do want to acknowledge, how much I love living at Great Park Neighborhoods. I had always known I liked it here at GPN, but something about quarantining and pandemic times that made me realize how much I appreciate our open spaces, both Bosque Trail and Great Park Sports Park. Some of the major streets like Beacon and Ridge Valley are pretty wide enough to accommodate social distance running with generous walkways. With all our different parks (Pavilion, Beacon, Parasol, Cadence, Novel and -rise which i dont run thru yet-) with different themes, there is an easy way to talk yourself into checking each park part of the run to get the miles in easily! I live close to Parasol park, so Parasol Tree next to the Parasol Park is my start point of the run. But regardless of where you live at our neighborhood here, you aren’t that far from Bosque Trail which I think is pretty much our central nervous system to connect all of us with its wide open generous space! I am hoping I could help you run better in our streets, parks and trails with few key tips as I do believe with my strava stats I might probably have more number of miles on our street than most average runner here. Or not!

Know your Streets

1. Ridge Valley from Great Park Blvd to Irvine Blvd is about one Mile!
2. Beacon from Carmine all the way upto Irvine Blvd is about one mile!
3. Bosque trail is about 1.25 mile start to finish which is Irvine Blvd to Parasol Park!
4. If you start at the Parasol Tree, and run the Great Park Sports Park around (Great Park Blvd, Skyhawk, Marine way , Ridge Valley and back to the tree) – that is about a 5k – 3.1 mile.
5. Running north is hard as its uphill! and running down south is bit easier and you already knew that as you struggled your way riding back from Sports park to your houses!
6. On Irvine Blvd, from Ridge Valley, I usually run upto pusan and turn around. which adds well over 2 miles. and its a nice long flat stretch so if you need an easy run make sure to add this part of your route.

With this steps I will share my favorite 2 mile, 3 mile, 4 mile , 5 mile , 6 mile and a half marathon route all within our neighborhood so you can run local!

2 mile Route

This is one of my favorite Dog running route, as my dog who is getting older by the minute cant do longer runs.

Start at parasol tree. Head out to great park sports park, and run through great park blvd, and as you turn on skyhawk look for the right turn by the fields. It may not seem that way but this path way connects you all the way back to the Bosque trail path nice and clean! Adds up to 2 brisk jogging miles! On the days you feel like conquering the world, just keeping going on bosque to add more miles!

3 mile Route

I work from home mostly these days and if I feel like I have a 30minute break in between calls, this is one of my favorite route. Head out on Beacon upto Irvine Blvd, and turn around on bosque to come back home. Adds upto 3 mile. Beacon isnt as streneously uphill as Ridge Valley so the run goes by easy and Irvine Blvd is pretty flat, with Bosque path is all down hill! So Opt for this for an easy run!

4 mile Route

This is mostly my mid week route when I dont feel like I want to run but still need to get miles in. Its not hard except for the first mile on Ridge Valley that goes up hill but once you get past that the long stretch of Irvine Blvd mile and a half and all down hill kind of makes it easier of a run than usual. For this route, I run the stretch of Magnet, head up ridge valley, to turn right at Irvine Blvd, run all the way thrug Cadence park, and turn Right by Pusan(WHen you see Alitair) and run back to bosque trail to finish. IF you have more energy throw in few miles at Great Park Sports Park to finish strong!

5 mile Route

This 5 mile route is one of my fav routes of all time. Its equally hard and equally easy at the same time! I start at the Parasol Tree, and run around Great Park Sports park which goes by pretty fast as its flat and downhill, and 2 mile up hill stretch on Ridge Valley which at times feels like goes on for ever. Turn right on Irvine Blvd, and finish the final mile on bosque – the easy part! If you track your time on Strava, this is one of our routes that we track for PRs! (https://www.strava.com/segments/20490492?filter=overall) Nephi from our neighborhood had the course record for Bosque mile up until recently with a 5:38min per mile!

10k Route

This is the most confusing route that I have had hard time explaning to people but its one of my fav. route. The entire run which is a beautiful 10k is all run within Great Park Sports Park, and around. Its bit cooler there at the park even on hot days, as the grass makes it bit more bearable. The route will give you a nice tour of Sports Park, and selfie opportunity by Sports Park Baloon! and did I say its an easiest run all flat mostly!

Half Marathon Route

Before this COVID, we used to run atleast one half marathon each month (Last Saturday of the month was our Half Marathon Weekend). But I haven’t run this distance in a while and few weeks ago I set out to run the 13.1 mile all within our neighborhood. I still wanted the run to make sense in the sense no awkward turns and such. WIth long runs, my goal is to run past water fountains enough time to hydrate myself, and have few bathrooms and this route allows for all that and more! And its almost a good neighborhood tour! if you can do this in a bicycle it might be much nicer, but running all of the 13.1 m miles of our neighborhood wasnt that bad!

I started at parsol park which is usually the common theme this being close to my house. I ran the Great Park sports park and ran all of Beacon, IRvine Blvd, Pusan back to Ridge Valley, ridge valley and even the little stretch around Novel park for utility vehicles with the final stretch to Cadence park and back on Bosque! seems confusing and spaghetti loop but it flows easily for a longer run and the good thing is you can stop anytime you want as you wont be too far from your house any time of the run which is a luxury !

Closing Notes

I just wanted to share different routes I run to show you the streets and way to run our neighborhood without getting bored, or having to loop around same street multiple times. wherever you are living, you could rework these routes to suite your run /distance goal! Hopefully this blog post convinced you to run more or run often or even to want to run our neighborhoods! I find our neighborhood streets and sports park/bosque trail to be very accommodating to social distance needs. When we are all allowed to run as group , hopefully you all can come join me for a group run, until then keep running and sharing your runs with hash tag #gprr!

Lets go run Great Park Neighborhoods one mile at a time!