Zurich City Running - round the lake and up the hill!

I have ended up in Zurich today with work.  Full day tomorrow so have had to fly in this evening so that we can start at 930am tomorrow.  I thought I might have some spare time this evening so decided to bring my running shoes on the off chance that I might be able to run around a bit of the lake...

The weather forecast was for heavy rain all day and all evening, but mid-afternoon it changed.  A nice evening with a sunset was great for running in, even though I had the wrong clothes (as usual!)  Something amazing happened today though - after running around the lake for around 3.5km I saw a group of runners congregating around a lakeside snack hut and so I stopped to ask who they were. They told me that they were the Zurich City Running club about to set off on an hour long run around the city and I was welcome to join in! 

[Zurich City Running meet at various points around the city through the week.  On Wednesday's they meet at  Hafen Enge kiosk by the lake at 1900 and go for a hour long run with 2 groups - 1 group does around 6 min/km and the second group does around 7min/km - I have found the Zurich City Running website now, it's here: http://www.cityrunning.ch/lauftreffs/]

Our running guide Martina led a group of around 12 of us through Zurich, retracing some of my previous steps, then off up one of the hills of Zurich and back again.  I used my Adidas Micoach running app on my phone and this is what it showed afterwards:

Zurich micoach running route map

We started at Hafen Enge (kiosk) by the lake and then headed into the city centre and up through the Zurich university district before coming back.  The bit around the lake was obviously flat, but one of the hills in the Zurich university district was crazy - following the path next to the hill train, going up past stops at Rigiblick, Goldauerstrasse and Hadlaubstrasse!

Zurich Running - path by the hill train

Zurich City running - under bridge lakeside path

Zurich lakeside running

Zurich lakeside running - view from next to Hafen Enge (kiosk)

So Zurich was a nice place to run and I really appreciated the Zurich City Running club allowing me to join them for their Wednesday evening running - vielen dank!