Ann Arbor is genuinely good for running. The Huron River corridor stitches together a dozen parks on paved path, the west and north sides hold real climbs on dirt, and the Border-to-Border Trail gives you enough uninterrupted pavement to train for a marathon.
Most route lists tell you where the trails are. The two things that actually decide your run are how far you want to go and whether the park is open when you get there, so this guide is sorted that way: pick your distance, pick your surface, then check the gate hours before a pre-dawn or after-dark run. Every mileage and every set of hours below is sourced to the agency that manages the land, and verified in October 2026.
Pick your distance
Every distance here is built from measured segments, with the arithmetic shown so you can check it.
| Distance | Route | Surface |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 mi | Gallup Park pond loop, or the Furstenberg paved loop | Paved |
| 1 mi | Either of the above, twice | Paved |
| 1.4 mi | County Farm Park Fitness Trail, 18 exercise stations on it | Crushed stone |
| 1.7 mi | Gallup Park’s larger loop, or the Saginaw Forest loop (88 ft of gain) | Paved / dirt |
| 2.2 mi | Argo Pond loop, Argo Park around to Bandemer Park | Paved and unpaved |
| 2.5 mi | Nichols Arboretum main loop, or the Bird Hills outer loop | Groomed dirt |
| 3 mi | Gallup Park to Nichols Arboretum and back (1.5 mi each way) | Paved |
| 3.2 mi | Gallup Park to Parker Mill and back (1.6 mi each way) | Paved |
| 4.5 mi | County Farm Park’s loops stacked together | Crushed stone |
| 5 mi | Two laps of the Nichols Arboretum main loop | Groomed dirt |
| 5.5 mi | Bird Hills plus Barton and Kuebler-Langford, 437 ft of gain | Dirt |
| 6.2 mi | Parker Mill to Gallup to the Arb and back (3.1 mi each way) | Paved |
| 10 mi | Border-to-Border Trail, 5 mi out and back | Paved |
| 13.1 mi | Border-to-Border Trail, 6.5 mi out and back | Paved |
| 17.5 mi | Potawatomi Trail loop, Pinckney | Dirt singletrack |
If you came here looking for a five-mile loop, the Bird Hills answer is the one to take. It is a true loop rather than an out-and-back, it is all dirt, and the 437 feet of climbing makes it the best single hill workout inside the city.
Pick your surface
Paved. Gallup Park has over three miles of asphalt. The Border-to-Border Trail is ten feet wide and paved for its off-road sections. Furstenberg has a half-mile paved loop. This is the all-season answer: plowed, lit in places, and runnable in road shoes in February.
Crushed stone. County Farm Park is the one to know. Packed limestone drains well and stays runnable through three seasons, and it is softer than asphalt without the ankle risk of roots.
Dirt singletrack. Nichols Arboretum, Bird Hills, Barton, Cedar Bend, Bluffs and Saginaw Forest. Trail shoes, and expect slick clay for a day or two after rain and snowmelt.
Gravel track. Frog Island Park in Ypsilanti has a gravel track ringing its soccer field. See the track section below.
Before dawn and after dark: who is actually open
This is the question nobody answers, and in a Michigan winter it decides everything. Ann Arbor parks are not all on the same schedule, and the land here is managed by five different agencies with five different gate policies.
Open 6 a.m. to midnight. Gallup Park, Bandemer Park, Furstenberg Nature Area, Fuller Park, Island Park, Cedar Bend Nature Area and Bluffs Nature Area. These are the parks for a 5:45 a.m. start or a 9 p.m. finish.
Open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Bird Hills Nature Area, Barton Nature Area and Argo Park. Still fine before work, but they close earlier in the evening.
Sunrise to sunset. Nichols Arboretum. In late December that is roughly 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., which rules the Arb out for most commuters on both ends of the day. Plan it for a weekend in winter.
Open 8 a.m. to dusk. County Farm Park and Parker Mill County Park, both run by Washtenaw County. The 8 a.m. opening is the single most useful fact on this page: County Farm is a great early-morning surface and you cannot legally be on it at 6 a.m.
Metroparks, and they charge. Hudson Mills is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Dexter-Huron and Delhi are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. All three need a vehicle entry permit, $10 for the day or $40 annually for county residents. Every city and county park above is free.
The river chain: paved miles without a road crossing
The Huron River corridor is the backbone. Running west to east, the paved path threads Bandemer Park, Argo Park, Island Park, Fuller Park, Gallup Park and Parker Mill.
Gallup Park is the hub, 69 acres at 3000 Fuller Road with over three miles of asphalt, heated restrooms open year-round, drinking fountains and a large free lot. The loop around the pond is about half a mile and the larger loop is 1.7 miles, which makes it the best interval venue in town: you can run repeats without ever being more than a few minutes from your car. It is one of the flattest parks in the city.
Regular hours: 6 a.m. to midnight daily, per the City of Ann Arbor. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Westbound it is 1.5 miles of paved path from Gallup to the Arb. Eastbound it is 1.6 miles to Parker Mill County Park at 4650 Geddes Road, where the Hoyt G. Post Trail adds a 1.2-mile accessible boardwalk over wetland and a 0.75-mile paved connector back to Gallup.
Regular hours: Parker Mill, 8 a.m. to dusk year-round, per Washtenaw County Parks. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Furstenberg Nature Area, 38 acres at 2626 Fuller Road, sits immediately west of Gallup and is the quiet alternative. Half-mile paved loop, a granular trail through prairie and oak savanna, and a quarter mile of wetland boardwalk that connects to Gallup’s western edge. Bikes are not allowed on the boardwalks, which is exactly why runners like it.
Regular hours: 6 a.m. to midnight daily, per the City of Ann Arbor. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Fuller Park (60 acres, 1519 Fuller Road) and Island Park (5.6 acres, 1420 Island Drive) are the connectors most people run through without noticing. The B2B runs through Fuller, and a wooden footbridge built in 1964 links Island Park to Fuller on the south side, with two concrete bridges to the north riverside and a path onward to Cedar Bend.
Regular hours: both 6 a.m. to midnight daily, per the City of Ann Arbor. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Border-to-Border Trail: the long run
The Border-to-Border Trail is the long-run answer and the reason you can train for a half or a full here without driving anywhere. It is a planned 55 miles across Washtenaw County with roughly 43 miles built, paved and ten feet wide. The stretch that matters for a long run is the continuous off-road paved section of over nine miles, running from Eastern Michigan University west through Gallup Park, Nichols Arboretum, Riverside Park, Argo Park and Bandemer Park. Nine miles one way is an eighteen-mile out-and-back with very few road crossings.
Trailheads are frequent, so you can start anywhere and turn around on a time rather than a landmark.
One thing to check before you go. In July 2026 the city found a sinkhole above one of three submerged early-1900s culverts under the B2B in Gallup Park, and closed the segment between the fishing pond and Geddes Dam. Underwater inspection found severe corrosion, separated pipe joints and active soil loss. Crews poured a reinforced concrete pad across the culvert in early October, and the city’s project page announced on 10 October 2026 that the Gallup Park B2B had reopened. The city’s own Gallup Park page still described the segment as closed when we checked, and a 20 October 2026 WEMU report also referred to it as closed while covering the search for a permanent fix. A plan to replace the culverts is due before the end of the year. The honest answer is that it reopened on an interim repair and the sources have not caught up with each other, so check the city’s Gallup Park culvert project page the morning you go if your route depends on that quarter mile.
A newer and better-confirmed piece of news for the north side: a pedestrian tunnel under the railroad tracks opened in 2025 connecting Barton Nature Area with Bandemer Park. You no longer have to deal with the tracks to link the two.
Nichols Arboretum
The Arb is the run that converts people. About two and a half miles of groomed dirt loop through 123 acres of hills, ravines and old hardwoods at the edge of campus, free, with no gate and no lot. Enter from the Geddes Avenue gate near the river or from Washington Heights off Observatory. The peony garden section is flat and fast; the river bluff section is where the route earns its keep.
Spring is the best season, with trillium on the hillsides in April and the peony garden peaking in early June. Winter is runnable in trail shoes, though the clay gets slick after snow.
Regular hours: sunrise to sunset, seven days a week, free admission, per Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum. 1610 Washington Heights. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Bird Hills, and the five-mile loop
Bird Hills Nature Area is the largest natural area in the city at 146 acres, 1850 Newport Road, and it is where Ann Arbor runners go to climb. A loop of the outermost trails is about 2.5 miles through beech, sugar maple, oak and hickory, on dirt that is mostly smooth and well maintained but with constant elevation change. Five trailheads get you in; Newport Road has the easiest parking. Bicycles are not permitted inside the park, so the trails stay runnable.
Link Bird Hills to Barton Nature Area via Bird Road and to Kuebler-Langford via its trail, and you have a 5.5-mile loop with 437 feet of gain, entirely on dirt. That is the best five-mile route in the city and the best hill session short of driving.
Regular hours: Bird Hills and Barton, both 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily, per the City of Ann Arbor. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Barton itself is 98 acres at 1010 W. Huron River Drive, with the B2B connecting two bridges across the Barton oxbow and side trails branching off. Portable restrooms, free parking, and trail crossings to Bird Hills and Hilltop.
Hill repeats: Cedar Bend and Bluffs
Two small parks exist for one purpose.
Cedar Bend Nature Area is 19 acres at 1495 Cedar Bend Drive, on a steep riverbank where the Huron makes a sharp bend. The unpaved trails go straight up or straight down the slope, with one that runs the ridge. Park in the larger lot at 1425 Island Drive; the pull-offs on Cedar Bend Drive are unmarked and tight. Restrooms are at Island Park next door.
Bluffs Nature Area, about 40 acres at 1279 N. Main Street, is the other one. The city’s own description is the right warning: footpaths wind through with a lot of ups and downs, some quite steep, with many twists and turns. Streams cross the trails after heavy rain and during snowmelt, so pick your day.
Regular hours: Cedar Bend and Bluffs, both 6 a.m. to midnight daily, per the City of Ann Arbor. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Both being open until midnight is the useful detail: these are the two climbs you can legally run in the dark.
Argo and Bandemer: the 2.2-mile loop
Argo Park is 22 acres at 750 Longshore Drive, and the walking loop around Argo Pond connecting to Bandemer Park measures 2.2 miles. The B2B crosses from Bandemer at the Argo Dam. You pass Argo Cascades, nine small rapids and rock chutes completed in 2012 as a bypass channel from the pond to the river, which is the best scenery-per-mile on this list. The Allen Creek Berm Tunnel now gets you in on foot from Wheeler Park downtown.
Bandemer is 38 acres with entrances at 2001 Whitmore Lake Road and 1300 Lake Shore Drive, paved and unpaved paths, restrooms, and free parking at both ends.
Regular hours: Argo Park, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Bandemer Park, 6 a.m. to midnight; per the City of Ann Arbor. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
County Farm Park: run plus strength
County Farm Park at 2230 Platt Road is the utility knife, and the only route here that comes with equipment. The Fitness Trail runs 1.4 miles around the perimeter with 18 fitness stations on it, including pull-up bars, balance beams and step-ups. The trailhead is near the pavilion just past the lot off Platt Road, and the stations can also be picked up from the Medford Road entrance.
Add the 1.1-mile Outer Loop, the 0.6-mile Inner Loop, the 0.4-mile Britton Woods Nature Trail and the 0.4-mile paved path along Washtenaw Avenue toward Manchester Park, and you can assemble nearly 4.5 miles without leaving the park. The surface is crushed stone that drains well. Hit the stations on lap one, then run clean for laps two and three.
Regular hours: 8 a.m. to dusk, daily, year-round, per Washtenaw County Parks. Verified 24 Oct 2026. Sources differ on the evening cutoff, with some listing 9 p.m.; the 8 a.m. opening is consistent everywhere, so treat this as a daytime park.
Saginaw Forest
The University of Michigan’s Saginaw Forest is 80 acres of old pine plantation and hardwoods with over three miles of trail and Third Sister Lake in the middle. The main loop is 1.7 miles with 88 feet of gain, on soft pine needle and dirt, and it is quiet on a weekday morning. No permit and no entrance fee.
The trailhead is at 3900 W. Liberty Road, west of the stadium, and the easiest parking is the lot attached to the 242 Community Church off Wagner. No facilities and very little signage.
Regular hours: open to the public during daylight hours, no permit or fee required, per the University of Michigan. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Where to find a track
This comes up constantly and the honest answer has two parts.
The reliable public option is Frog Island Park in Ypsilanti, five acres at 699 Rice Street next to Depot Town, where a gravel track rings the soccer field in the middle of the park. It is free, it is open to anyone, and it is flat. Gravel rather than rubber, so it is better for easy laps and tempo than for spikes.
Regular hours: 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Sunday, per the City of Ypsilanti. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
The high school tracks at Pioneer, Huron and Skyline are a different matter. Access depends on the season, the team schedule and whether the gates happen to be open, and runners report being turned away as often as not. If you need a measured 400, call the school’s athletic office for that day rather than driving over on spec.
Going longer: the Potawatomi
When the city runs out of distance, the Potawatomi Trail in Pinckney State Recreation Area is where Ann Arbor’s ultra crowd goes. It is signed as a 17.5-mile loop, scenic, hilly and technical in places, inside a park with over 40 miles of trail. Recent reroutes have it measuring longer than the signed figure, so treat 17.5 as a floor rather than a promise.
Two practical notes: a Michigan Recreation Passport is required for entry, and mountain bikers are directed clockwise while hikers and runners go counter-clockwise, so stay counter-clockwise and you will see bikes coming at you rather than arriving behind your shoulder.
Regular hours: the trail is open while the park is, closing between dusk and dawn; Recreation Passport required. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Closer in, the three Huron-Clinton Metroparks on the river give you more paved miles: Delhi and Dexter-Huron are open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., and Hudson Mills is open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. All three need a vehicle permit, $10 daily or $40 a year for county residents.
Regular hours and fees per Huron-Clinton Metroparks. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
Group runs and shops
Four weekly group runs, all free and all open to any pace:
– Monday, 6 p.m. from Arbor Brewing Corner Brewery, 720 Norris Street in Ypsilanti, with a 5K route mapped
– Tuesday, 6 p.m. intervals, venue announced by email and Strava
– Thursday, 6 p.m. from HOMES Brewery, 2321 Jackson Avenue
– Saturday, 7 a.m. from AARC Traver Village, 2621 Plymouth Road
Those are run by Ann Arbor Running Company, which has the Traver Village store on Plymouth Road and the Colonnade store at 901 W. Eisenhower Parkway.
Group run schedule per Ann Arbor Running Company. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
For shoes downtown, Fleet Feet Ann Arbor Downtown is at 123 E. Liberty Street, and Fleet Feet Ann Arbor West is at 5700 Jackson Road.
Regular hours: both locations Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., per Fleet Feet. Verified 24 Oct 2026.
How to navigate the hours
Three rules that cover almost every situation:
1. Running before 7 a.m.? Stay on city land. Gallup, Bandemer, Furstenberg, Fuller, Island, Cedar Bend and Bluffs all open at 6 a.m. County Farm and Parker Mill do not open until 8 a.m., and the Arb waits for sunrise.
2. Running after dark? Gallup, Bandemer, Cedar Bend, Bluffs, Fuller and Island run until midnight. Bird Hills, Barton and Argo close at 10 p.m.
3. Driving to a Metropark? Bring $10 or buy the annual pass. Everything inside the city and county systems is free to enter.
Park hours are set by ordinance and change rarely, but trail conditions change constantly, and one segment on this page is actively under repair. For more time outdoors around town, see our guides to hiking trails, biking trails, dog parks and sunset spots.
