Visiting Detroit Area: Looking for a good spot to run/bike

How long are you in town?  If you're here for the weekend, you are more than welcome to join the MI BT Rawk Squad (an unofficial tri team) for our Unofficial Triathlon on Sunday at Island Lake. 

Check out the othe threads here on the Michigan forum for details...but there is a flat-repair clinic at 9am, the "tri" starts at 10am (whatever distance you want) and a pot-luck lunch will follow. 

We'd love to have you out!

Lower huron bike path  connects to three parks for about a 30 mile loop. Nice quiet place to ride, not a lot of traffic. The roads are in decent shape.  Very nice place to run, bathrooms thru out.   Nice distance between the two locations.  Monreo has Sterling state park, which has a nice running area. Just pm if you have any questions about loweer huron, thats my local ride.

We ride in Lower Huron, the connector Willow and Oakwoods Metroparks quite a bit.  No speed bumps.  We usually stick to the paved walkway since it's in much nicer shape then the roads and provided it's during the weekdays there's not to many folks on the trails.  We have bells on our tri bikes to give folks a heads up, not to mention slowing down a bit.  I don't normally ride down there on weekends.  From the south end of Willow Metropark is Willow Rd, you can ride that west towards Milan and I think it's around 14 miles from the MP to US 23 just north of Milan.  The road is decent enough and usually not to bad with traffic.  Sumpter Rd also runs north and south off of Willow and that can be rode south towards Monroe, thou some of the roads down near Monroe will rattle your teeth loose, I still need to find a good route down that way.

Another nice place to run coming from Canton and not that bad if US 23 is an option from Monroe, is in Ann Arbor.  There's a paved trail along the Huron River with some restrooms and occasional maps.  We normally drive west on Geddes and you have to options to park.  The first you'll hit is the old mill, kinda of a historic site along a small river, parking will be on your left after crossing the bridge for the river, can't miss it.  If we don't park there, we turn left or south on Dixboro and turn down a street on the right just south of the intersection.  There's parking along the river there.  At last check Geddes is closed going over US 23, so the options of parking at other parks is kinda of a pain now.

Depending on weather and if you don't mind dirt roads.  Park in Cherry Hill Village, plenty of parking around Cherry Hill and Ridge, and you can run out on Cherry Hill, which turns to dirt and turn up Napier, Gotfredson or Berry and head north to make a lot of different loops with Warren or Joy as other dirt east/west options.  Not sure how far your looking to go.  Some nice hills and it's rather peaceful.  I ride my hybrid and run out that way often and see other runners out there especially on weekends.

Otherwise if I'm not on the hybrid, I drive out to Island Lake or Kensington which you can connect to easy enough, or I drive out to Dexter or Chelsea and ride out into the sticks from there, not the most convenient option.  I'm not a fan of being buzzed by cars.