Wayne County Runs Run Gamut
George Cofield of Brighton sent an e-mail in the waning days of summer. He was about to be transferred to the new Compuware headquarters in downtown Detroit and, being a runner who enjoyed going out for a few miles on his lunch hour, wanted to know if Detroit was as bleak and dangerous as he'd heard.

Relax, George, it's a fine place to run, and safe too. Come to think of it, Wayne County in general offers a little bit of everything when it comes to scenic or interesting running, from one of the best examples of urban renewal in the world, to the odd juxtaposition of millionaires' sprawling homes just blocks from acres of urban prairie and desolation, to thick forests, to river trails, to long and winding bike paths, to islands offering some of the most beautiful blue waters this side of the Caribbean.

I exaggerate, surely. No, surely, I do not.

Come take a trip, starting in Detroit: George, on your lunch hour head east from downtown through Lafayette Park, an amazing collection of townhouses, apartments and high-rises that in the 1950s replaced the old Black Bottom neighborhood known generations ago for its after- hours joints, numbers runners, hard men and easy women. Many of the buildings were designed by fabled German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and students come here from around the world to study his work.

At the far east of Lafayette Park is historic Elmwood Cemetery, a resting place for the dead and an exercise sanctuary for the living. It was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape architecture who also designed Central Park in New York and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and who, in a moment of insanity (my view), invented the front lawn, a virulent pest that started in Chicago and spread nationwide.

The cemetery's perimeter road is a mile and a half around, with numerous roads, some dirt, meandering through the middle. It's the only place downtown you'll find hills. The place is filled with towering trees and towering monuments to the old blue bloods who tried to outdo themselves in death. Red-tailed hawks and pheasants live here, runners and bladers are welcome by those who run the place, and there's even a water faucet inside the front gate.

Belle Isle's another couple of miles east, and it's another of Olmsted's projects. It provides two glorious views, one at each end, and many merely-beautiful ones. The island is about six miles around. At the eastern tip, past the lighthouse, the Detroit River opens up into Lake St. Clair, the Grosse Pointes to the left, Windsor to the right. Freighters seem to be steaming straight toward you, impossibly big against the horizon as they approach.

The island's eastern half is mostly deep forest and swamp, laced with roads, asphalt paths and dirt trails and filled with nearly-tame European deer, many of them a creamy-white color. You can run right past grazing herds in the winter or dozing herds in the summer, chilling out in shade. They'll barely be concerned with you and you can get within yards. Carry a carrot and they'll come eat out of your hand.

From the western tip of Belle Isle, you get a gorgeous view of downtown Windsor and Detroit. On a sunny day, the river is a sort of turquoise blue that seems impossible for a big-city body of water. In 1980, when Republicans gathered downtown for their national convention, one of them asked me if the city had dyed the river for the convention, that surely such a color couldn't be natural.

Just east of Detroit are the Grosse Pointes. Lake Shore Drive runs for three miles along Lake St. Clair, and you can run on grass at the edge of the water the entire way. Veterans of the original Free Press marathon course will still tell you this was the stretch of the race they enjoyed best, and the view they miss most.

Want some surreal yin and yang? The blocks immediately east of the Grosse Pointes' boundary with Detroit are filled with stately, old, well- maintained houses. Those streets end at Windmill Point, lined with millionaires' mansions and a favorite road for bikers, bladers and runners.

Run some of those streets, then head back west a few blocks into Detroit, where you'll find urban prairie at its finest, or worst, depending on your point of view. Most of the houses have been abandoned and either torched on various Devil's Nights or torn down. By the end of summer, acres and acres of wild flowers and wild grasses grown chest- high blow in the wind. Wildlife abounds. There are more pheasants, raccoons, possums and rabbits in these prairies than there were when the white man arrived.

A similar eerie juxtaposition exists north of the New Center Area, the city's second downtown out past Wayne State University on Woodward Avenue. This area is home to the Fisher Building and another of Albert Kahn's historic buildings, the former GM headquarters. A couple of miles past the New Center is the Boston-Edison Historic District, where movers and shakers of the last turn of the century - when Detroit was on the cusp of becoming one of the most vibrant, important cities in the world and the engine that drove the real industrial revolution - built their palaces.

Between Boston-Edison and the New Center Area is the tiny city of Highland Park, fully surrounded by Detroit and one of the most- dysfunctional places in western civilization: ugly, bombed out, boarded up, littered with shards of brown glass, trash, plastic and broken hopes. Running from the New Center area along one of the streets that parallel Woodward through Highland Park to Boston-Edison is nothing if not surreal.

Where else to run in Wayne County? Some favorite spots:

* Elizabeth Park in downtown Trenton, or across the nearby bridge to Grosse Ile, where you'll see those same impossible blues you saw on Belle Isle.

* Middle Rouge Parkway, a thin, ribboning park that winds along the Middle Rouge River for some 30 miles from Dearborn north and west to Northville. A bike trail runs along most of its length. My favorite stretch is at the far west, where there is a 3.5-mile dirt loop through pastures and deep woods known as the Bridle Trail.

* Maybury State Park, at the far northwest corner of the county, has miles of dirt running trails, asphalt bike paths and bridle trails (keep an eye out for roots and road apples). A favorite long run of mine is to do a loop of the Bridle Trail in Middle Rouge, then run through pretty (and pretty hilly) Northville to Maybury, do a loop and catch some water there, then head back.

* Lower Huron Metro Park can be accessed off I-94, heading south on Haggerty, or off I-275, heading west on Sibley. A bike path runs the entire distance of the park along the Lower Huron River, with several dirt trails that branch off. For a long run, you can connect to the adjacent Willow Metro Park, and for a really long run, the Oakwood Metro Park.

The to-go-withs in Wayne County will serve all a runner's needs - by that I mean that there are a variety of running specialty stores and running clubs and a year-long calendar of races, with something nearly every weekend.

The Downtown Runners (www.downtownrunners.net, phone 313-336- 3942) meet every Tuesday after work at a different bar or restaurant in downtown Detroit or Windsor. The club is a blend of old and young, suburban and city, black and white, blue and white collar, fast and slow, runners and walkers. Members have well-deserved reputations for a friendly welcome to strangers, partying hard and running harder.

The Grosse Ile Island Runners (www.islandrunners.net) meet each Saturday at 8:30 a.m. at Grosse Ile Middle School on East River Road, Monday nights at 5:30 in spring and summer at Trenton's Elizabeth Park Pavilion and in fall and winter at the Riverview Public Library.

The Downriver Runners meet Wednesdays at 6:15 p.m. behind the Allen Park Theater. Call (734) 282-1101 for information, or e-mail tonymifsud150@aol.com.

And the Redford Roadrunners (wingedserpent.com/carol/rrr.html), despite their name, meet in Plymouth Township's St. John's Conference Center, at Five Mile and Sheldon roads, each Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. For more information, e-mail randlykl@runningfit.com.

For specialty stores, there are the Hansons Brothers Running Shop in Grosse Pointe Woods (www.hansons-running.com, 313-882-1325), the Total Runner store in Southgate (www.totalrunner.com, 734-282-1101) and the Running Fit store in Northville (www.runningfit.com, 248-380- 3338). All three hold training clinics and group runs.

As for races, these are just a few:

February: Winterfest 4-miler in Riverview.

June: Zanglin Downriver 8K.

August: Allen Park Street Fair 8K.

September: Motor City Shakedown 8K on Belle Isle, Tommy Titan 5K cross-country open on the Bridle Path in Northville's Hines Park, and the Grosse Pointer 5K and 10K along Lakeshore Drive.

October: Free Press/Flagstar Int'l Marathon.

November: Downtown Detroit's big Turkey Trot.

December: Belle Isle New Year's Eve. MR