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It's not just a race... it's an Experience! The towpath will host its annual marathon, half marathon, 10k, 5k, and Family Adventure Hike and offers a massage tent, live music, free food for runners, beer garden, hot tubs, nutritional advice, childrens area, food vendors and more.

Go here for more infomation or call 215/ 520-182

The one-mile Segment One of the Towpath Trail—from Old Harvard Road to Steelyard Commons—stepped closer to reality as organizers presented their preferred alignment on Tuesday at the Zoo. The public has 30 days to weigh in before the Towpath Trail Partnership Committee finalizes the alignment and moves ahead with detailed designs.

Read more here.

The one-mile Segment One of the Towpath Trail—from Old Harvard Road to Steelyard Commons—stepped closer to reality as organizers presented their preferred alignment on June 17, 2008. The public has 30 days to weigh in before the Towpath Trail Partnership Committee finalizes the alignment and moves ahead with detailed designs.

Barriers and obstacles have raised the estimated cost of this segment from $7.9 million to $9 million, but, overall, $30 million of the $48 million to fund the final six miles of trail from Harvard Road into the Cleveland Flats have been secured, says Tim Donovan, Ohio Canal Corridor Director.

Figuring out how the trail will go over or under roads, rivers and rail lines in this area of the industrial Flats are impacting costs. While still open for debate, the committee proposes to build:

• An 8x50 foot tunnel under Harvard Avenue
• A 300-foot bike/ped bridge over the Cuyahoga River just below the Harvard-Denison Bridge.
• A bridge over the Norfolk-Southern rail line that would span from Mittal Steel’s property to Steelyard Commons.

Building a tunnel under Harvard is preferred to an on-road section of trail despite the higher cost because it achieves a project goal of keeping people close to the river, says project manager Vickie Wildeman, Director of Transportation for DLZ, the committee’s design consultants.

One of two bike/pedestrian bridges on the Towpath Trail built between the CanalWay Center and Rockside Road.

As the Towpath Trail inches its way from Old Harvard Road to the Flats, Cleveland’s south side and its neighbors aren’t waiting to get connected. Brooklyn Heights, Parma, Seven Hills and Independence are banding together to create the West Creek Greenway Trail, a 16-mile on-and off-road loop with linkages to the Towpath at Canal Road on the southern end and at the Cleveland Metroparks’ CanalWay Center on the northern end. Catalyzed by the West Creek Reservation, the group has already completed two sections of trail. Read more here.

The West Creek Greenway Trail will ultimately link with a new trail that the Metroparks plans to build from Old Harvard into Slavic Village, heading northeast to its Mill Creek Falls. From the falls, cyclists (and pedestrians) can head into the heart of Slavic Village on Morgana Run Trail, a 2-mile former train line that was converted to recreation path in a first for Cleveland. Read the story about this ‘rails-to-trails’ success here.

Beating West Creek to the punch: Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood recently dedicated the Treadway Creek restoration project, including a 2/3-mi. bike path connector. It’s the first ‘neighborhood connector’ to link up to the Towpath.

• The “Toad-ily Frogs” exhibit opening this Friday at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History is part of the “Year of the Frog” initiative devoted to helping save amphibians from extinction.
• The success of the Towpath Trail will be determined by how many tendrils it sends into Cleveland neighborhoods. Four Near West neighborhoods—Tremont, Ohio City, Clark-Metro and Stockyards—look to repeat the new Treadway connector at Train Avenue, site of a buried tributary to the Cuyahoga River known as Walworth Run.
• We all live in a watershed—the land area draining into a river or lake. This weekend, be a steward of your watershed by joining the year’s biggest volunteer clean up effort: the 19th annual RiverSweep. As part of the upcoming Cleveland Bicycle Week, participants are encouraged to bike to the event.

Busy, and exciting, times are just ahead for the Towpath Trail Partnership Committee, the group building out the northernmost five miles of the all-purpose trail which, one day, will connect Akron, Peninsula and downtown Cleveland.

After more than a year, Ohio Canal Corridor has figured out how to avoid the heavy metal barricades in the industrial Flats for Stage 1 of the Towpath Trail. The preferred route of this 1-mile section will wend from Harvard Road over the river and (practically) through the train tracks before rising 40 feet to meet the new trail at Steelyard Commons. The group unveils this engineering marvel at a June 17 public meeting.

"Besides the obvious environmental concerns, there are complicated engineering challenges led by a spiderweb of rail lines which must be crossed by going around, under or above," Ohio Canal Corridor (OCC) writes in its spring ’08 newsletter.

And, after missing its January deadline, the committee looks to hire a design consultant in April who will do it all over again—producing a preferred trail alignment for Stage 3, the 1-mile segment from Steelyard to Literary Avenue in Tremont. This time, they decided by extending the major trailhead a little further than below I-490 (at the intersection of W. 3rd and Quigley Avenue) to a small trailhead at Literary, a stage and an entire year will be shaved from the project.

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View the preferred Towpath Trail alignment for Harvard Avenue to Steelyard Commons at the Cleveland metroparks Zoo.

The consulting team will provide a short presentation and a number of working stations to allow visitors to understand the decision-making process behind the alignment; ask questions and offer comments.

For more information, visit www.ohiocanal.org or call 216-520-1825.

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The second meeting for the Train Avenue Greenway. Be a part of the discussion about how this historic roadway can better serve to connect five West Side Cleveland neighborhoods & the Towpath Trail.

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The destiny for the Towpath Trail is one that embraces a network of connecting trails that follow streams, creeks, and small rivers and provide a system that can one day place every Cleveland resident within a 10 minute bike ride. Once you find one of these trails, you can find your way to one of many authentic places that make Cleveland unique.

One such trail connector will follow the former Walworth Run now buried beneath Train Avenue. Plans for this new greenway will begin with a public meeting to be held on February 28 at Zion United Church of Christ in Tremont.