When the pandemic hit back in March I was in the middle of training to run the Big Sur International Marathon. It was to be my first one and I was very excited, even though the course is known to be one of the toughest in the country. So when lockdown hit the race was postponed until September (and eventually canceled altogether) and I found myself with no goal to run toward—having something on the calendar is very motivating for me.
I’ve had asthma for my entire life, which meant the Coronavirus was incredibly scary to me, especially at the beginning. Laura and I locked ourselves away for a month and running was on hold (she, too, was training for Big Sur).
It was cabin fever that finally got me out the door to start running again; I’d been doing it every day prior to this and I missed being outside and moving. Most information we were receiving said exercising outdoors was OK to do, so I gave it a try. It didn’t go well at first and I realized it was because I didn’t have a race to train for. That wasn’t in the cards, so I needed to find another kind of event.
Then I remembered a project I’d heard about, where ultra runner Rickey Gates ran every single street in San Francisco. Our town of Montclair, New Jersey, is much smaller than that city, so we decided we could do it here. I began to prepare.
It turns out there’s a lot of planning to run such a thorough course. The virgo in me loves that, though. I plotted out each day’s route—we planned on five miles, five days a week for five weeks. I drew up a paper map every day to carry along and mark off as we went.
It turned out the five-week schedule was too ambitious, though. Laura got a quick hip injury and we cut down our miles. We dropped down to three days per week and the project went on for an extra month. I wasn’t happy about it at the time. In retrospect though, it was good to take a little longer to finish. We got to savor visiting each little nook of our town, including many areas we’d never been to before. The total mileage of the township is about 125 miles, but with dead ends and backtracking it ended up being about 150.
What I love about this project, especially during a pandemic, is its simplicity. It requires almost nothing but time and curiosity. Most people wouldn’t think to do it, but it’s such a fun and easy way to really get to know the place where you live and to just be present. I don’t think a lot of people pay very close attention to their surroundings these days, and they’re really missing out. I know I’ve been guilty of having my nose buried in my phone way too often and letting the interesting things pass right in front of me. But running every street in our town taught me how great it is to be here now. I discovered really cool things I had no idea existed, even though they’ve been there the whole time. Things like the fork in the road from Yogi Berra’s famous quote and Buzz Aldrin’s home.
I’m so grateful for not only this project itself, but the lesson it taught me. It’s one of many things I learned in 2020, and I’ll share more of them in the upcoming weeks.