Personal Trainers in Sauganash, Edgebrook and Forest Glen

The Sauganash Trail runs one mile from Bryn Mawr to Devon near Kostner. The Chicago Department of Transportation built it in the mid-2000s and it opened in 2008, with a 12-foot paved center lane and a 3-foot soft-surface path along each side. That layout gives a trainer options: tempo intervals on the pavement, easier miles on the softer edges, and mobility work on the lawn beside it. The neighborhood park at 5861 N. Kostner adds tennis and pickleball courts, and it carries local history: the area was once part of a reservation granted in 1830 to the Potawatomi leader also known as Billy Caldwell.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago describes Forest Glen as a community of owner-occupied single-family homes, with bungalows common around Forest Glen proper and larger houses in Sauganash. CMAP's snapshot counts about 82 percent of housing units as single-family detached, most of them built between 1940 and 1969. If you have a basement, a spare room or a garage, your trainer can set up there. If not, a living room floor works, because we bring the equipment the program needs. Nutrition counseling is available alongside the training plan.

This corner of the city is ringed by forest preserves, parks, golf courses and cemeteries, and the Encyclopedia of Chicago notes its gently rolling, heavily wooded terrain, unlike the flat lake plain found elsewhere in Chicago. The North Branch of the Chicago River winds through the eastern part of the community, which is why many streets break from the grid. LaBagh Woods and Sauganash Prairie cover about 103 acres along the river, according to the City's Nature and Wildlife Plan, and Caldwell Woods on Devon Avenue offers a sledding hill and an entrance to the North Branch Trail. Hills and river paths make a welcome change from flat sidewalks.