In order to snap myself out of my self-quarantined rut, I’ve started to add a little spice to my life. My first step was to start up an exercise challenge for the month of May: 1,000 pull-ups and 2,000 push-ups. I’m almost a week in now and while I’m a little sore, I’m still on track.
But this was more of a start than an end. I need to mix things up a bit more. Preferably running related. Maybe even big A adventure. But what could I do that is local?
Every Single Street
The idea is to run every street in your city. I guess this has been around for a while, but I heard about it a year or so ago when Rickey Gates spent over month running every street in San Francisco. It seemed like a cool idea, but I don’t live in a city. Or a town. I’m way out in the suburbs closer to the country than a city.
So I never really considered this would be something I could do until I read recently about a guy over in Jersey running every street in Egg Harbor Township. I follow his blog and he’s mentioned it before (think it’s a year long project for him), but I had never really connected it to me. For some reason, this time a little light went off inside my head and I thought why not my township.
I live in Pocopson Township, which isn’t all that large. Maybe 3-4 miles from top to bottom and end to end. I went onto their website and apparently there’s 30 miles of roads in the township. OK, now we’re talking.
The game plan is for me to run every single street in Pocopson Saturday. I obviously have to run/walk/crawl all roads within the township, however I’ve decided on a couple rules to make it a little more meaningful for me. First, I have to start and end at my house. Second, no support. I’m going to need to resupply at least once so that will have to be at my house as well. Third, I want to do this in a single day.
I am really, really excited about this project. It’s got a great combination of familiarity and novelty. While I’ve lived here for over 15 years and driven down these roads hundreds of times, there are some neighborhoods that I’ve never been in before let alone run down. And while I can print out a map and plan out a route, it’s hard to guess how many miles it will really take to complete. Forty? Fifty? More? Considering the amount of cul-de-sacs, retracements, and miles outside the township I’ll need to run, it’s possible I might be pushing 60 miles before I complete the run.
The other cool thing is that there’s absolutely no pressure associated with this. I have no time or pace goals. If something goes wrong, I can always try again the following weekend or a month from now. It’s not like the roads are going anywhere. I can just relax and enjoy my trip around my township. Every single street of it.