Seeing the sights on the run

Like to train and sightsee at the same time? Now you can see New York, Washington D.C. and even hometown Chicago while on the run.

City Running Tours offers tours for joggers, led by running guides who point out places of note and offer historical facts and trivia along the way.

New York tours include an eight-mile bridge run that takes you from Manhattan over the Brooklyn Bridge, through the trendy Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, under elevated subway tracks and back over the Williamsburg Bridge to the Lower East Side.

Other routes include Central Park, the sights of downtown, Greenwich Village, Harlem, the Lower East Side, and a Broadway run all the way up the famous street to the northern tip of Manhattan.

In Washington, the routes include runs with views of famous landmarks like the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the White House and Arlington Cemetery.

A Chicago run along Lake Michigan is obvious, but you also can sign on for a running tour themed on the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, focusing on old Chicago and historic sites. The "Wrigleyville Run" starts and ends at Wrigley Field and a tour of Jackson Park and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition sites promises tales of "mystery and murder."

City Running Tours (cityrunningtours.com) will also accommodate any schedule, any day of the year, and design customized runs like a midnight tour of Times Square or a sunrise jog around the National Mall. The basic price is $60 for the first six miles and $6 for each mile after that.

The tours are aimed at business travelers who want off the hotel treadmill or visitors who don't want to interrupt a training program, but City Running Tours also will organize group runs.