Runner’s World Ranked the 50 Best Running Cities — Here’s Where Philly Lands
Runner’s World just released a ranking of the 50 best running cities, and yes, my friends, Philly did land on the list (DUH) — but not quite as high as we would’ve liked. Our fair city came in at 22nd place, sandwiched between Oakland, California at 21st place and Sacramento, California at 23rd place.
So, who came in first place, you ask? That would be San Francisco, California — a very hilly but also apparently very runner-friendly city complete with tons of public park access, mild weather and healthy food access. Other cities in the top 10 include our neighbors to the north and south, New York and D.C.
If you’re wondering how exactly Runner’s World ranked the cities, it sounds pretty darn painstaking. Here’s the rundown: They started with the 250 U.S. cities with populations over 160,000 that had the highest count of households per capita involved in running in the past year. Then they ranked those cities from 1 to 150 based on five weighted indexes, looking at elements that are important runners: The run index, which had the highest weight at 40 percent, measured things like how often people ran, the number of races in a city per year, number of USA Track & Field Clubs and more; the parks index looked at walkable park access, recreation and fitness facilities, and more; the climate index looked at, well, climate; the food index look at the number of farmers’ markets along with a slew of other factors that contribute to a healthy food environment; and the safety index looked at violent crime rate, pedestrian fatality rates and the travel time index. You can see the full rundown of the rankings’ methodology here.
Philly came in at 11th place on the run index, 31st place for parks, 73rd place for climate (hey, we can’t control the weather), 56th for food and 142nd for safety (womp, womp). Interestingly, San Francisco actually came in behind us in safety, at 146th place, but first in the run category, which holds the most weight.
To quote a tweet from Run215’s Jon Lyons, “It’s fine. We da best.” You can see the full list here.
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