Where to run
Running in Paris
Paris is small, dense and mostly flat, with two forests bolted onto opposite ends of it. Almost every good run in the city is a river, a canal, a former railway or a park, because those are the only places without traffic lights.
The ground
What running in Paris is actually like
The centre is flat enough that pace means what it says. The exceptions are worth knowing: the butte of Montmartre reaches about 130 metres and is the high point of the city proper, and Belleville and the Buttes-Chaumont carry the other real gradient in the east.
The Seine splits the city and the quays on both banks have long pedestrianised stretches, which turns the river into the most useful running corridor inside the périphérique. North-east, the Canal Saint-Martin and the Canal de l'Ourcq do the same job on a straight line out of the city.
The two bois, Boulogne in the west and Vincennes in the east, are where the long runs happen. Both are large, both have lakes, and both have enough unpaved path to save your legs.
Routes
Runs worth knowing in Paris
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Bois de Boulogne
Eight hundred and forty-six hectares on the western edge, with the Lac Inférieur, the Longchamp racecourse and a web of paths that can absorb anything from forty minutes to three hours. Soft ground where you want it, and the closest thing to countryside a Métro ticket can reach.
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Bois de Vincennes
The eastern counterpart, slightly bigger, built around the Lac Daumesnil and the Lac des Minimes. A mix of car-free paths and quiet park roads, and the natural destination for anyone living east of the Bastille.
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The Seine quays
The pedestrianised right bank between the Louvre and the Bastille, and the long car-free stretch on the left bank by the Musée d'Orsay. Cobbles and stone in places, tourists in others, and the best skyline in the city for the price of a slightly slower kilometre.
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The Coulée verte René-Dumont
The planted walkway on a former railway viaduct that starts behind the Opéra Bastille and runs east, dropping to ground level and continuing to the edge of the Bois de Vincennes. Beautiful and narrow, so it is an early morning route rather than a lunchtime one.
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The Canal de l'Ourcq
From the Bassin de la Villette the towpath runs north-east out of the city past the Parc de la Villette and keeps going into the suburbs. Flat, largely car-free and uninterrupted, which makes it the honest choice for a long tempo effort.
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Parc des Buttes-Chaumont
The one central park with real climbing: a former gypsum quarry turned into cliffs, bridges and a temple on a rock. Repeats of the main climb are the standard hill session for the north-east of the city.
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Montmartre and the stairs
The staircases below the Sacré-Cœur are a stair session with a view at the top. Go early, before the butte fills up.
Season
Mild winters, hard summers, and the Wallace fountains
The climate is mild and oceanic. Winter rarely holds a hard freeze, but it is grey and wet and the daylight is the real constraint, not the cold. The bois are muddy from November to March and the better for it.
Summer is the problem. Heatwaves push the city into the mid thirties and the stone holds the heat overnight, so training moves to before eight in the morning or after nine at night. The green cast-iron Wallace fountains are drinking water and are a genuine part of route planning in July.
The calendar is built around two fixed points: the Marathon de Paris in April and the 20 km de Paris in October. Both fill the streets and both are good reasons to be somewhere else on the day if you are not running them.
The app
How Waypath fits a Paris week
French trails, already mapped
The trail catalogue is built from OpenStreetMap and covers France in depth, from the Fontainebleau forest paths to the GR network, so a weekend outside the city starts in the same app.
Follow a route without stopping to check
Draw a route on the map, save it, then follow it live while you record, on the phone or on the Watch, with a pacer that budgets effort rather than distance.
Watch someone finish, from a café
A shared live link opens in any browser. Useful when the person you came to support is somewhere between kilometre 25 and kilometre 30 and you cannot see the course.
Keep reading
More places, and how the app works
Run it, then share the link.
Unlimited free recording, a trail catalogue that covers France, and a live link that costs nothing to share.
Requires iPhone. Recording activities is free, with no limit on how many.