The Adelaide Hills
South Aussies best running locations
I’ve been wanting to write an article about the magic of the running through the Adelaide hills for years now, but I think I’ve delayed it simply because I’m simply not done exploring!
I moved from my family farm in eastern South Australia (Christmas Valley - Taplan) to Adelaide in 2004 for study. The beautiful white/red unsealed roads between my family’s farm and the Victorian border were stunning, and I definitely took them for granted as a teenager.
After moving to Adelaide, and living in north Adelaide, I immediately felt the attraction to running in the city parklands over the roads or footpaths. It wasn’t long until I was introduced to running in the Belair National Park (BNP), a spot where most distance runners spent their Sunday’s in big groups on their long runs. It was definitely the running as a teenager on the farm that shaped my future to seek scenic running locations, on similar surfaces.
20 years have passed, and it’s given me countless weekends to explore the surrounding Adelaide Hills, especially the Mt Lofty ranges region. It’s no secret to those who do explore these regions on foot that perhaps the Adelaide Hills have some of the most underrated locations for long running in the country. No doubt cyclist have known this for decades and that’s why SA plays host to the Tour Down Under every Summer. It is the close proximity to the Adelaide CBD that makes our Adelaide hills running much more attractive than other big cities of Australia, with world class national parks located within 20 minutes of the CBD. You cannot find this variety so close to the city in any other Australian City.
With the athletes I coach (or have coached) I’ve have tried to incorporate these locations to their running schedule. I’ve done this for many reasons, like many other coaches/athletes have prior (and still do). My justification for running 90% of our runs through these regions include:
- Great variety of surface under foot to vary tissue stress of MSK structures and perhaps create increased durability
- Expose runners to the varied physiological stimulus by running over hills
- Reduce training monotony
- Learning to run to effort/feel and not get caught up in objective pace/power
- Increase the enjoyment of running by placing runners in some of the most beautiful locations we have in the state
- Post run café/bakery catch ups after the long run for social interaction.
- Memories. I have spoke to many retired/older distance runners who have great stories and shared moments with their running mates in some of the Adelaide hills best locations.
Consistent endurance running training can be quite monotonous, and the Sunday long run, which I value the most important session of the week, should be the most enjoyable experience of the training week! I’m grateful now, that many of my athletes have taken on the role of now mapping and/or creating new long run locations for our group and keeping this tradition going. I do like to think that we consistently do the most unique long runs in the state, and we always appreciate it when other groups/athletes join these runs! Each winter, we often will locate 1-2 new locations for our group to explore on a Sunday, and throw into our regular rotation.
Even with the current running boom, busier life schedules restrict people from venturing to the hills for long running due to travel time. It tends to only be those who are specifically training trail/ultra races who are regulars within the locations I will mention in this post. Many others don’t venture to these locations due to not knowing they exist (or what they can offer), others perhaps have a fear of getting a bit lost, or perhaps they do not realise how close these locations are.
It was a difficult task to take about 30-40 locations I really have enjoyed exploring and creating a ‘top 10’. I’ve done my best by merging a few locations together (that are in close vicinity), but of course this list is bias to my experiences and feedback from those around me! The true trail runners will notice that I haven’t selected many ‘true trails’ that involve large sections of single track and I have picked routes/locations with more variety of sealed/unsealed roads, fire tracks with only intermittent bouts of single trail. My own history, and the athletes I coach are predominantly track, cross-coutnry and road runners, thus we all tend to prefer ‘less technical’ trails for our longer runs. No doubt we also like our long run locations to handle tradtional mileage shoes, and more so recently, high stack super trainers (for the pleasure of that fun foam). Please note, I also live slightly south of the city, so it appears there may be a little bit of a southern bias in my top 10 – however after 20 years, I truly believe the beauty of the southern hills to be a little superior to the northern (always happy to be proven wrong of course).
This post aims to give a bit more insight to some of the running locations in the Adelaide hills, that are within 15-60 minutes of travel time from the CBD that may encourage a few more to enjoy some of the locations that I’ve enjoyed over the past 2 decades. These locations are built for human exploration, and with the running boom, I hope this attracts many of Adelaidean’s out of the city and into the stunning Adelaide hills regions for their weekend run.
So each week I’m going to add a new location of my top 10 running locations within the Adelaide hills and give a small synopsis of the location.
10th place: Kuitpo (Rocky creek/Jupiters creek)
9th place: Cleland National Park (Chambers Gully region)
7th place: Piccadilly/Carey Gully
5th place: Scott Creek/Dorset Vale
3rd place: Meadows/Prospect hill