The biggest race of the week didn’t happen on Election Day. There’s still one very, very big race yet to be run. The starting gun for the New York City Marathon fires on Sunday at 9:40 a.m., with 44,000 or so people, including a celebrity chef, a Today show weatherman, and a Chilean miner.
Gallery: Celebrity Marathoners
While the New York City Marathon is the Super Bowl of competitive running, that doesn’t necessarily mean that New York is the nation’s running capital the rest of the year. To find out the cities where runners consistently keep up a marathon’s pace, The Daily Beast partnered with DailyBurn.com, the fast-growing website and iPhone app where roughtly 1 million users enter and track running distance and other workout and calorie data. Using DailyBurn data, DailyBurn and The Daily Beast determined how far runners run, on average, in 19 of the biggest American cities in a typical one-week period.
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The differences between the leaders and the laggards was more than two miles. The top 10 are the winners—America's running capitals—while the bottom nine are the losers. And the city that left everyone in the dust? Read below.
#1, Boston, Massachusetts
Average miles run per week: 7.85 Favorite running spot: Charles River Reservation
#2, Baltimore-Washington, D.C., Maryland
Average miles run per week: 7.81 Favorite running spot: National Mall
#3, Los Angeles, California
Average miles run per week: 7.55 Favorite running spot: Lake Hollywood Reservoir
#4, Seattle, Washington
Average miles run per week: 7.53 Favorite running spot: Green Lake Park
#5, Denver, Colorado
Average miles run per week: 7.47 Favorite running spot: Cherry Creek Trail
#6, San Antonio, Texas
Average miles run per week: 7.44 Favorite running spot: McAllister Park Trails
#7, Cincinnati, Ohio
Average miles run per week: 7.05 Favorite running spot: Caesar Creek State Park
#8, San Francisco, California
Average miles run per week: 7.00 Favorite running spot: Golden Gate Park
#9, Chicago, Illinois
Average miles run per week: 6.99 Favorite running spot: Chicago Lakefront Trail
#10, San Diego, California
Average miles run per week: 6.83 Favorite running spot: Torrey Pines State Reserve
#11, Phoenix, Arizona
Average miles run per week: 6.68 Favorite running spot: The Arizona Canal
#12, New York, New York
Average miles run per week: 6.65 Favorite running spot: Central Park
#13, Miami, Florida
Average miles run per week: 6.60 Favorite running spot: Miami Springs
#14, St. Louis, Missouri
Average miles run per week: 6.30 Favorite running spot: West Tyson State Park, Chubb Trail
#15, Charlotte, North Carolina
Average miles run per week: 6.24 Favorite running spot: Reedy Creek Park
#16, Dallas, Texas
Average miles run per week: 6.19 Favorite running spot: White Rock Lake
#17, Portland, Oregon
Average miles run per week: 5.98 Favorite running spot: Forest Park
#18, Houston, Texas
Average miles run per week: 5.91 Favorite running spot: Memorial Park
#19, Atlanta, Georgia
Average miles run per week: 5.75 Favorite running spot: Chastain Park
