Between the Uprights

Funny thing about goals. They say that if you really want to achieve them, you need to make them public. Say them out loud. Display them for the world to see.

Well, here goes. I've got some strange ones. I've been running a lot for the past five years, averaging more than a 1,000 miles in each. The vast majority of those have been run on the same bike trail near my house, the W&OD Trail. I like it because I know every crack and mile marker in a 10-mile stretch, and thus can step out my front door and know exactly where to turn around for anything from 3 to 20 miles.

But on January 1, bored with the trail I've literally run 1,000 times,  I stepped out the front door and headed the other way. I've done this before, mind you, so those course wasn't unknown. But two miles into the run, something different happened. I stopped to tie my shoe, and when I was done, I looked across the street and saw a park that I had never been in before. There was a trail off to one side leading to the far end of the park and I decided to follow it to see how far it went.

Not very far, as it turned out, and it spit me out onto a street. But again, it was one I can't recall having ever run (or driven or ridden) and I was only about 2 miles from the house I'd lived in for 18 years. So I followed it and soon found myself back on familiar turf, knowing exactly where I was. Then I realized that I could quickly turn off this street and back into uncharted waters (for me) and see some things I'd never seen before in my own neighborhood and community.

Years ago I read about some guys who set out to walk every street in Manhattan. One did it in 2 years. Another tried to finish in 2 months. So it occurred to me that I could knock out every street in Arlington county in a year, and hit my annual goal of running 1,000 miles. With just 26 square miles, Arlington is one of the smallest geographic county in the U.S., and has 961 "lane miles" of roads. I'm not going to run every lane, but I figure hitting them all once is going to get me close to 1,000 (I will obviously need to run parts of some multiple times).

There are a few rules:
1) No interstates or major highways.
2) For now, every run will start and end at my house. I may revise this as the end gets near.
3) If it's dangerous, I can skip it. I already had to do this once on Glebe Road near Chain Bridge. No shoulder, blind curves. Not a place to run.

Why? You ask. Why not? I reply. It's my own version of trainspotting. It doesn't make any sense but it's what I'm doing.

The map below, created with my handy-dandy Garmin Forerunner 310XT GPS watch, will show you what I covered in January (12 runs for 61 miles: will need to step it up if I'm going to make my goal). I can also see that I need to study maps before I go out. The long run up to north corner of the county shows where I turned around at the end of a loop street. I didn't know where I was or where the street was heading, it was getting late and I needed to get back. Turns out I could have kept going and knocked out that little secluded neighborhood. Now I have to go back to pick up those three blocks. Ugh. (Again, it makes no sense.)

(and I'm working on embedding the Google Earth map directly in the blog. If any of you readers know how to do that, I'd be much obliged.)
Goal post photo by Anthony Ferretti.