A long weekend for birthday celebrations in the capital of Estonia provided with a great opportunity to try running in Tallinn for the first time.
I flew in on Thursday night from London. There are plenty of options to fly to the Estonia from the UK, with direct connections provided by Ryanair and EasyJet as well, if they are your thing. I have been there many times and my preferred option is BA or Finnair with a quick stopover in Helsinki.
Tallinn is a gorgeous city with a lot to offer, even if just for a short city break and not with specific running plans. And those are the best destinations: a lot to do and a couple of cheeky runs on the side. Originally I had planned to take the early ferry on Saturday morning and steal a parkrun in Helsinki, but that did not work. The crossing is less than 2 hours, but Tallinn’s nightlife is great enough that waking up early enough to crawl on a ferry was too much to ask my hungover body.
Before flying back out on Monday, I want to get at least 2 runs in. I managed only one, which is a shame, because running in Tallinn comes natural if you can find the time. The city is very runner-friendly.
City overview for a run tourist
As I said, the impression I had in Tallinn, was that of a city made for runners. Or at least, one that had evolved to be extremely runners/bikers friendly over the last decade. Tallinn today is very different from the city it was just 20 years ago, when the post-Soviet scars were still very visible. Today, it is a modern European city that is embracing progressive trends as fast as it can.
And one of those progressive trends is making cities as walkable as possible. The city is already small and compact, but on top of that running/cycling/scooting lanes have been created in most of its wide avenues.
And they are proper ones, not just a line of paint in the ground like you often see in London. Here, you have well maintained, well signalled, separate lanes that runners and bikers can used in most places.
Add to that the fact that has a seaside city you have miles of seafront to enjoy and that the parks are beautiful, well maintained and green and you have a runners paradise.
But this is not all, obviously. Many more reasons why running in Tallinn is a great pleasure and you should not miss your chance if you happen to be here.
For one, traffic is moderate, which leads to excellent air quality even in the centre. Furthermore, let’s not forget the weather: as runners know, cold can be dealt with, while heat is a more difficult enemy. Well, due to its location in the fair North Eastern corner of Europe, even during the July 2023 heatwave, I was able to enjoy running in 18-degrees weather. Awesome. In winter, I guess snow will be the main issue to deal with.
One negative maybe? The Old Town would be a wonderful setting to run through, but it is always flooded with tourists, so I doubt more than a short pass through the cobblestones would be nice.
Running in Tallinn: seafront and Kadriorg route
I only ended up running once and the Kadriorg ruote was always the plan for my first adventure running in Tallinn. After landing at 1am on Thursday night, so when I woke up on Friday morning I was a bit tired: had I been fresh I could have gone much further on the seafront and enjoy a longer loop taking in a couple more parks.
I was staying at the Radisson Park Inn City Centre, just 5 minutes walk from the Old Town and 2 minutes walk from the new, interesting F&B Rotermanni Quarter. It is a good location for a Tallinn stay, but options are plenty in town. That said, my route starts from there.
The route is fully on roads and separate paved paths, with a short section on hard gravel. Without snow, it is fast underfoot and pleasant. I was running with road shoes, as you would expect on a city break, and it worked perfectly fine.
In terms of elevation, as you can see on the right picture above, this was the definition of flat-as-a-pancake… or more appropriately a blini, given location.
From my hotel, I started briefly running North through a parking lot and briefly had to navigate a busy intersection with a lot of roadworks. At the moment (July 2023), the city centre of Tallinn is riddled of roadworks: as said, the city is growing and improving at dramatic pace, so works have to happen sometimes. However, it never felt dangerous or congested, just a minor inconvenience.
After turning right, it was a long straight run by the side of the large(ish) passenger harbour: the first half is on the far side of the road from the sea: not particularly scenic, but enjoyable, on its own separate running/cycling path. Once the harbour area is cleared, you can cross the road and start running by the seaside.
The seaside path is great, wide, straight on the ocean. I was welcomed by a nice open view and the major road to your right is not busy and it is easily forgotten. Walkers and runners abound on the path and with more time and energy, I would have kept going for several KMs. However, on this route I wanted to cross into Kadriorg Park, which is probably less than 1KM from the harbour.
I cross at the point where you reach the monument on the second picture below – some kind of Russian war memorial, I believe. It is at a nice roundabout point, so I ran around it and then went to the road crossing just nearby by. Running in Tallinn is made even easier by the fact that motorists actually respect zebra crossings religiously. Fairly unusual to me, but I guess culturally Tallinn really is closer to the Scandinavian approach to life than the other cultures that make up its history and population.
The park is well tended, lush and it has hard pressed, easy-to-run-on gravel paths. It feels totally safe and welcoming. I could have run further into it, but for some reason I wanted to get to the palace (fourth pic below). I reached the beautiful palace quickly, then run along its front avenue and turned left to coast the other edge of the park until a nice fountain with interesting water features.
From there, it was just a matter of running back into town and following my Garmin recommendation to ‘return to start’. This part of town transitions from nice, small but unique independent townhouses to the bigger buildings of the city centre. The latter are interesting: you can see the progressive upgrade of old Soviet concrete blocks into modern buildings happening in front of you, alongside the extensive road upgrade works. Separate paths continue being your friends all through the city centre.
Other potential routes
When I am in ‘foreign’ cities, I use the RunGo app to look at routes other runners enjoy and then I usually build a route for myself there to check distance and elevation. If I like it, I can then build it on Garmin Connect again so that it can be transferred to Garmin Epix 2 to benefit from tun-by-turn navigation help.
Two other ideas I had which would make for a nice run:
- Start following the route above, but continue further on the seafront, well into Pirita. Reach the yachting harbour and continue following the road slightly in-land and then cross into the beautiful Pirita Terviserada forest. You can get some elevation here, inside a large, mature conifer forest. On the other side of the forest lies the historical Tallinn TV Tower, with amazing views of the area from its 23rd floor. Coming back to the centre inland, should give you roughly a half marathon loop;
- Head to the opposite direction from the hotel and loop around the Old Town until you get by the see, but heading West this time. Gentle rolling hills on this side, until the new Noblessner quarter, a new development area that has turned old submarine and navy docks into a vibrant museum and F&B district. It is worth a visit and a loop this way should net you around 10K.
Running in Tallinn: Video highlights
As usual, I’ve recorded and edited a few video snippets from my run. If you like it, please subscribe to my YouTube Channel, it is a fun past time for me! 😀
If you like this kind of reports and video highlights, you can also give a look at my parkrun course review and video highlights and at the similar reports I have prepared for more serious official races.
Running in Tallinn: conclusions
Tallinn is a beautiful city. Well worth a visit and it definitely offer plenty to see while sneaking in a cheeky run, with distances for all tastes and energy levels. And if you run too far and cannot find the energy to run back, you can use one of the ubiquitous electric scooters to go back to base. I will be back to try one of the longer routes, pretty sure about that.
