Latest Progress – Run Blog
Follow @runallthestreets on Instagram!
Concept
It’s easy – just run all the streets, alleyways, stairs and other publicly accessible methods to get around your city on foot. Pittsburgh is my city, so here’s my challenge. Recently, my project was featured in a Pittsburgh CityPaper article.
Map
Large Maps! Below are a few “streets only” maps, with the more recent on top.
My Rules
My Inspiration
After I started this in earnest, I have come across a few people who have run all over Pittsburgh or another city. It seems like a movement now! Thanks to Alyssa for sharing these with me. Alyssa has run much of Pittsburgh, herself.
First, take a look at PacTom. For all the details, take a look at his site, of course. I would imagine that Tom has finished now, but the last post he has, from 2013, gives the impression he has a few streets to finish. Much like many houses in Pittsburgh, it’s a cliff-hanger! One of the more interesting things about Tom’s project is his rule that “each trip must start and end at ‘home'”. This in itself would add many, many miles to the effort. Tom, wherever you are, kudos to you. Tom has neat visualizations of his running data and also provides a big 6.5M KML file of his google maps data. His rules are slightly different than mine. For instance, I explicitly state I include stairs, while Tom does not. I don’t have to run from ‘home’, though.
Next look at City Strides. This is a very interesting project by James Chevalier who has run much of his city, Holyoke, Massachusetts. The neat thing about City Strides is that it brings this idea out to the community with a way to track it automatically. You link up your Strava (or whatever) account and his site draws a map of where you have run. For you competitive types, it also has a leader board and completion percentages. James deserves big kudos for all the work in this as well. The downside of City Strides is that it is not 100% accurate. I would say it is somewhere above 90% accurate. Doing this automatically from Strava data is a technically difficult undertaking. Decisions must be made automatically as to what street you actually are on. In some places, such as Pittsburgh, the Strava data actually places you “between” streets. Nonetheless, if you want a quick heatmap of where you’ve gone, this is a great site.
There are others as well, but I don’t have too much info on them. If you know of anyone, drop me a line.
If you’re interested in running all the streets in YOUR city or town, I’d love to hear from you! Follow @runallthestreets on Instagram!
RATS Badge
A “RATS” Badge is given to a run which “qualifies” for being a part of this project, that is, it is a run during which I have covered a new portion of some street, alleyway or stairs. All the runs I blog about have a RATS Badge. Track and runs which cover the ground I’ve already covered do not get a RATS Badge. Runs outside of Pittsburgh do not have a RATS Badge.
Run Stats
For those who are more detail oriented, check out the run stats page. It has tables with run statistics. I will be updating this periodically with new information. This is very out of date.
Streets
This is the beginning of a detailed list where I’ve run (Sorry, this is out of date, too)
Resources – List of Links
This website, including its contents and media, are copyrighted by Edward May