Run clubs in Chicago

The Chicago Area Runners Association has been the backbone since 1978 and now has thousands of members with neighbourhood run crews across Chicagoland. That is a genuinely different model from the coastal cities: rather than a hundred unaffiliated crews, a lot of Chicago's group running sits under one long-established organisation with training programmes built around the marathon.

Around it sits a neighbourhood scene that maps onto the city's very distinct areas. Gold Coast and Lakeview clubs work the northern lakefront, Pilsen has its own long-standing group, and the brewery-based run has become close to a civic institution. Chicago's version of the social run almost always ends somewhere with beer, which distinguishes it from LA's coffee culture.

The Chicago Marathon organises the calendar the way the Tata Mumbai Marathon does in India. It runs in October, it is one of the six World Marathon Majors, and an enormous share of the city is in a training block from June onwards. Join a club in July and you will find yourself doing 16 miles on the lakefront whether or not that was the plan.

Chicago has the harshest winter of any city in this directory. January and February average minus six and a half at dawn, and that is before wind chill, which on the exposed lakefront is a serious factor rather than a technicality. Three months of the year, running outdoors here requires real kit and real commitment.

Summer swings hard the other way. July and August dawn around 19°C and reach 26 to 27°C by afternoon, with Midwest humidity behind it. It is far more manageable than Delhi or Chennai, but the contrast with February is about 26 degrees, which is the widest annual range on this list.

Rain is spread evenly and never dominant, at 8 to 14 days a month year-round. Snow and ice are the actual winter hazard, particularly on the lakefront path in the days after a storm, and the wind off the lake can turn an otherwise reasonable day into something unpleasant in either season.

May, June, September and October are the good months, and September and October in particular are excellent: dawn between 9°C and 16°C, lower humidity, and the trail at its best. The marathon sits in early October for exactly that reason.