During our Asheville 2013 trip, I was fortunate to quickly find an excellent running route. We were staying at the Renaissance Hotel, which made it easy to get out of Downtown on foot.
Those windy streets at top right are mountainside roads. Town Mountain Road would be great running, but it's a suicide highway (no shoulders).
The key is to take Charlotte Street, a nicely sidewalked through street, to Macon Ave. Macon Ave is how you get up to the fancy mountainside hotels (The Fitzgerald, Grove Park Inn). It eventually turns into Old Toll Road, which is very steep and not plagued by too many cars.
Old Toll Road eventually intersects Sunset Drive, which is one way to loop back to Macon and Charlotte.
Though I love loops, I found it somewhat annoying to run down Sunset. I prefer doing the run as an out-and-backer.
According to my iOS running app, Footpath, this run ascends 530 ft with a round trip distance of about five miles, which is a very nice way to start a vacation day.
On one of my runs, I went beyond the Sunset Drive intersection, but I ran out of energy before reaching the next decision point and turned around. It seems like there is more opportunity than I've explored on this mountain, but it's hard to tell from looking at Google maps.
On my first trek down Sunset, I had to turn around, because I saw an adult black bear eating garbage up the road. I was pretty tired from the Old Toll Road ascent and didn't feel up to wrestling a bear. When We mentioned this to a chef at The Imperial Life who bikes, he claimed to see bears on 1/3 rides. He said that in many cases, he feels confident riding by if he's going fast, but he thinks twice when going uphill.
