One can hardly say that Rickey Gates is a lazy guy. He loves the mountains, writes and takes beautiful photos. But he mostly runs, so there’s no use getting around it. He is primarily a trail runner, the kind full of ideas and plans (okay, almost all trail runners are) and the kind with the good fortune and, of course, the merit of having a sponsor like Salomon willing to go along with all his craziness.
From March to August 2017, he ran across the United States, to say. But today we are talking about a project that is even crazier in its own way, namely Every Single Street.
In fact, in the fall of 2018 Gates saw fit to start running through all the streets of his city (San Francisco, about 1,800 miles of streets), and let’s be clear that when I say all of them I really mean all of them: every hidden alley, every bridge, every freeway access. All.
Of course (because in addition to being crazy, we are all also a bit nerdy) by constantly monitoring progress and carefully planning each new outing so as to cover as many roads as possible with as little energy expenditure as possible. Moreover, in parallel Gates documented everything with a rich photographic compendium, divided into hilarious thematic categories, among my favorites definitely
lost animals
e
used condoms
.
And when you have run through all the streets of San Francisco then what do you do? Well, you start doing the same thing in Mexico City, Portland and Santa Fe, but what a question.
The spin-offs
The feat has obviously (oh my, maybe it wasn’t so obvious) inspired so many athletes around the world to experiment with the same project in their own cities that even here in the joyous Po Valley we have Every Single Street Milano with a daily photo documentation on Instagram. Michele Sarzana started his project in February 2021: at least “consciously” as he puts it, the truth is that from the beginning of the pandemic onward it was something that-decrees permitting-he had already started doing.
To date he has completed a little over 65 percent of the roads, and so far it has been relatively easy, now it is up to him to reach all those extremely peripheral areas and all those hidden lanes that have not yet been traveled.
The beauty of these projects-beyond each person’s personal challenge with themselves-lies in the fact that they allow you to (re)discover your city. Both because you pass through streets you had never passed through or even thought you would pass through, and because you pass through them while running, thus rediscovering even familiar places with a completely different pace and focus.
I have had the good fortune-okay, maybe good fortune is not the most apt term-to run with Michele on some of her crazy outings, and I must say there is a lot of fun to be had: a little less fun is often having to retrace newly run roads in order to complete adjacent routes as well, but I have never complained about it much (that’s not true, I complain about it all the time). As for me, the most interesting outings were in the Quarto Oggiaro, Greco-Pirelli and Barona areas whose folklore remains unparalleled.
I want to do it too
I certainly won’t be the one to dissuade you from doing it; however, choose a city where no one is already doing it. To do all this takes method-Rickey Gates started by coloring in marker small paper maps printed from Google Maps, but the most useful and functional tool is definitely CityStrides, which in addition to tracking progress allows you to plan outings in areas yet to be completed.
The good news is that you can link it to your Garmin or Strava account so that he will consider the roads in which you actually have already run to be already completed, this may take a few hours but it’s better than starting from scratch!