Press Room

Canadians hoping to run away on vacation can now do so in the most literal way. "Sightjogging" is the athlete's answer to the tourist trundle, with companies around the world offering fast-paced city tours led by personal trainers. Cultural enlightenment has never made your heart pump quite like it will while jogging the cobblestone streets of Rome or the dusty trails of Kilimanjaro. "Personally, I like to call my trainers 'running cicerones,' " says Carolina Gasparetto, founder of Rome-based Sightjogging (www.sightjogging.it). Cicerone is the Italian word for a sightseeing guide. "They give artistic and historic information about the monuments, but also legends and curiosities about Rome." Tourists are greeted at their hotels by multilingual trainers who offer a choice of nine scenic jogs to such iconic locales as St. Peter's Basilica, the Colosseum, the Villa Borghese and Circus Maximus. Routes are rated for fitness level, length and theme -- artistic, green, panoramic or historic -- and participants are given heart-rate monitors to ensure they're not pushing themselves too hard. One hour will cost a solo jogger about $118, or four joggers $237. "It well suits nowadays' quick way of living," says Gasparetto, who started Sightjogging in September 2005. Vienna City Free Runners (www.privatecoach.at) provides a similar service in Austria every Tuesday and Thursday. Starting this year, Canada's Running Room chain is expanding into "running holidays," with packages for its marathoner clientele to New York, Prague, Siberia, Jamaica, Kathmandu, China and Mount Kilimanjaro. The last of these departs next month and is sold out (www.runningroom.com). "The interest has been phenomenal," says John Stanton, founder of the Running Room. "It's serving the new kind of runner out there who's looking for something where they can go on a holiday, but still have their sport involved."

link