San Francisco packs a genuinely unusual amount of running variety into 46.9 square miles — a car-free park bigger than Central Park, a waterfront promenade that runs from a historic swimming cove to the Golden Gate Bridge, a coastal trail carved into the cliffs at the city's northwest corner, and streets steep enough that some of them function as stair workouts by another name. This is what people actually run, drawn from named routes, real distances and the city's own infrastructure decisions rather than a generic "San Francisco has parks and hills" gesture.
Golden Gate Park — bigger than Central Park, and now car-free at its centre
Golden Gate Park covers 1,017 acres — roughly 20% larger than New York's Central Park (778 acres) — including 680 forested acres, 130 acres of meadow, 33 acres of lakes and 15 miles of drives. The single biggest recent change for runners: a 1.5-mile stretch of JFK Drive between Kezar and Transverse Drives, first closed to cars during the pandemic as a safe outdoor exercise space, was made permanently car-free by a San Francisco Board of Supervisors vote — now branded the JFK Promenade, a wide, traffic-free path running through the heart of the park.
- The JFK Promenade itself: roughly 1.5 miles one-way, fully car-free, the easiest and most popular single stretch to run.
- A common longer loop combines JFK Drive with Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and connecting roads for a route in the 5.5-7.5 mile range, depending on exactly which paths you link — routes published by other runners vary in this range rather than agreeing on one fixed number, so treat any single figure as one runner's version rather than an official park loop.
- Stow Lake and the Polo Fields sit inside the park and are common turnaround points or add-on loops for a shorter run.
The Wiggle — the low-gradient route into the park
The Wiggle is a roughly 1-mile zig-zagging route from lower Market Street to the Panhandle at the eastern edge of Golden Gate Park, conceived in 1993 by bike advocate and water historian Joel Pomerantz. It follows the buried course of a historic stream, the Sans Souci Valley watercourse, which lets it climb only about 120 feet over its length at an average grade of roughly 3%, never exceeding 6% — a genuinely flat way through a part of the city that's steep in every other direction. The turn sequence runs Oak to Scott to Haight to Pierce to Waller to Steiner to Duboce.
It was designed for cyclists, and that's still its primary audience, but the same logic applies to runners: if you're heading from downtown or the Lower Haight to Golden Gate Park and want to avoid unnecessary hill climbing, The Wiggle is the route locals actually use, complete with dedicated bike signals and a bike-only left-turn lane along the way.
The waterfront: Aquatic Park to the Golden Gate Bridge
San Francisco's northern waterfront is one continuous, largely flat running corridor. The broader Golden Gate Promenade runs about 4 miles from Aquatic Park to the Golden Gate Bridge. Within it, the Crissy Field Promenade specifically covers roughly 2 miles one-way (4 miles round trip) between Marina Green and Fort Point/the Warming Hut — flat, waterfront, and popular enough that it's also the run leg of the T100 San Francisco pro triathlon (see Verus's own T100 San Francisco guide for that race's exact lap structure). If you keep going, the Golden Gate Bridge itself has a dedicated pedestrian path roughly 1.7 miles across.
Baker Beach to Lands End: the coastal trail
Where the waterfront promenade ends, the California Coastal Trail continues around the city's northwest corner from Baker Beach past the Golden Gate Bridge to Lands End, a route of roughly 4-4.5 miles one-way that's mostly flat and consistently rated among the most scenic running in the city, with clifftop Pacific views the whole way. Baker Beach itself carries a genuine landmark for anyone who's read about the Escape From Alcatraz Triathlon: the Sand Ladder, roughly 400 steps cut into the cliff, which the race's amateur run course climbs directly out of the sand — covered in full in Verus's guide to San Francisco Bay open-water swimming and triathlon culture.
The hills: what's actually steepest, and what to leave alone
Lombard Street's famous switchbacks are widely assumed to mark the city's steepest hill, but that's a misconception — the switchbacks exist precisely because the street's roughly 27% grade needed re-engineering to stay navigable. The genuinely steeper named street nearby is Filbert Street between Hyde and Leavenworth, at around 31.5%. Filbert's own sidewalk gives up entirely partway up and becomes the Filbert Steps, a mix of wooden and concrete stairs winding through residential gardens up Telegraph Hill to Coit Tower — one of the city's most popular stair climbs.
Steeper again is Bradford Street in Bernal Heights, commonly cited as San Francisco's actual steepest street at up to roughly 41% grade at its worst section.
Where hill running stops being running
Once a grade passes roughly 20%, most coaching guidance treats it as strength training rather than running — you're climbing, not striding. Filbert Street (31.5%) and Bradford Street (up to 41%) both fall well past that line. Treat them as a genuine leg-and-lung workout or a tourist detour, not a normal training hill.
The races that use these streets
Bay to Breakers is the city's oldest and most famous footrace — running since 1912, making it the oldest consecutively run annual footrace in the world, originally staged to lift spirits after the 1906 earthquake. It covers 7.46 miles (a 12K) from the Embarcadero to Ocean Beach via the Great Highway, with an optional "Breakers Bonus" extension to 15K introduced in 2018. Its costume culture — now the race's defining feature — reportedly traces to a 1974 prank by two runners who showed up in tuxedos.
The San Francisco Marathon has run since 1977, founded by the local Pamakids Runners Club; its course has moved several times, starting inside Golden Gate Park in its first year before the start/finish settled onto the Embarcadero in 2002. The current 26.2-mile course runs counterclockwise: Embarcadero at Market, through Fisherman's Wharf, Marina Green and Crissy Field, across the Golden Gate Bridge into Marin and back, through the Presidio and Golden Gate Park, out via Haight Street, then through the Mission, Potrero Hill and Dogpatch to finish at the Embarcadero at Howard. The 2027 race — its 50th anniversary edition — is scheduled for Sunday 25 July 2027, with a 5:15am start and a 6-hour cutoff; it's USATF-certified and a Boston Marathon qualifier.
Finding people to run with
San Francisco has a dense, well-documented run club scene. The San Francisco Road Runners Club runs a big Saturday-morning distance session from Marina Green (typically 7:45am) and Tuesday track workouts at Kezar Stadium, with newcomers welcome to join a Saturday run as a trial. Run Club SF meets Tuesday evenings in Golden Gate Park for a 3-5 mile "wildcard" run through hills and trails, Wednesday and Thursday evenings at Kezar Stadium for strength and speed work, and Saturday mornings for longer adventure runs around the city. The Golden Gate Running Club hosts weekly runs in the Presidio on Wednesdays and Sundays, and the Slow Runners Club meets Sunday mornings at the Panhandle for an explicitly unhurried group run through Golden Gate Park.
- Marina Green and Kezar Stadium are the two locations that come up again and again as club meeting points — useful to know even before you pick a specific group.
- Verus lets you list the dates you'll be in San Francisco so local runners can find you before you arrive, rather than trying to cold-message a club.
- If hills and trails feel intimidating on your own, a club run through them with a group that does it weekly is a far better first exposure than a solo attempt.