Tom Brown Park

By Gordon Cherr

Map

Tom Brown Park is actually a collection of running, hiking and biking trails which crisscross each other in a hilly and mostly heavily shaded public park. Tom Brown Park is located north of Lincoln High School and east of the Federal Correctional Institute ("FCI"), and can be reached by driving on Capital Circle southeast (east of Park Avenue), and turning east onto Conner Boulevard. Turn left at the new traffic light and follow the signs into the park, and there is unlimited parking, especially at the public tennis courts or at the large softball facility.

Some of the trails at Tom Brown Park are the home course of the Lincoln Trojans High School cross-country teams, and a huge invitational high school cross-country meet is run there each autumn, usually in October. Also, the Tom Brown Bash is run there each year. Innumerable running and biking trails are located throughout the park, most are towards the East or lower end of the park. Actually, you could run for two hours out here and never set foot on the same path twice. Be warned, however, that some of the paths are rather hilly, and the lower lying ones can be mushy after a good rain. Some of the trails are wide enough to run several people across, others are definitely single file, and watch out for the footing!

The southernmost end of the park is across the street from the Lincoln High School track, a good place to jog or run intervals. Also, while there are many trails to run in the park, it is impossible to get lost as the running trails tend to cross each other or run parallel to one another.

In addition, development has begun at the Piney Z subdivision, just beyond the southern end of the park, further east on Conner Boulevard. There are paved roads now in place, and this is good, concentrated hill running, if that is what you want. In my opinion, this is as hilly as it gets in Leon County. But, in contrast to Tom Brown Park, there is little shade in Piney Z. So it doesn't make for a mid-afternoon run in the summer months (i.e., from April to October), but mornings and evenings should be fine.