Grounds is a running app. Stand anywhere in Seattle, select your distance, and it builds you a route. Not just any route, though. It favors parks, water, landmarks and other places worth seeing, and it guides you with turn-by-turn directions.
Try it free for 7 days. Then $2.99 a month, cancel any time.
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What follows is a real route Grounds built from a door in Ballard. Scroll and you go for the run.
You start by heading up onto the Ballard Bridge, with the whole canal laid out underneath you.
Down below, the boats sit tied up at Fishermen's Terminal, and one is trolling in after a day on the water. Gulls circle overhead, waiting to see what scraps they can snatch.
You come off the bridge and there's a coffee shop on the corner you never knew about, Caffè Appassionato. You make a note to come back this week.
Then come the hills into Magnolia, the ones you normally avoid. But this route knows you can handle it, and it knows there's a payoff.
At the top the street turns to dirt and the trees close over you. Discovery Park. You've run here before, but always the same loop, mostly because you didn't know any other way to go.
Not anymore. The route winds and bends and comes out at the old fort. New ground, in a park you thought you knew.
You follow the directions down through the neighborhood, catching peeks of water between the houses. Then you're at the Locks: the smell of salt water, boats waiting their turn to go through, the salmon ladder. A Seattle classic.
Then you're back in Ballard, on streets you never run. A small bakery you've never tried. You'll be back on Saturday.
No pace. No mile splits. No elevation chart. Just the run. Just the high.
You can't wait to do it again tomorrow.
Routes seek out trails, parks, water, coffee shops and other good places. You see the best parts of your city without having to know where they are.
Home, a coffee shop, the local park. Use your location or drag the pin, and the route brings you back to where you began.
A voice in your headphones tells you each turn before you reach it, and a live map shows your progress if you want to look. You never have to stop and work out where you are.
When you finish, you get a list of the places the route went by, in order. The café you noticed or the park you'd never heard of now has a name, so you can go back.
Grounds remembers the routes it has given you. When you start from the same spot again, it tries to take you somewhere else: a different street out, a park you haven't been through, another way home. Run from your door all week and you see more of your neighborhood, not the same loop.
Grounds builds routes from anywhere on this map, from Edmonds down to Renton and out to Issaquah. What matters is where you start; the route itself may wander a little past the edge.
Cancel any time from your App Store settings.
Then $2.99 a month. Download the app, create your account, and go for a run.