{"id":303,"date":"2020-11-07T17:41:00","date_gmt":"2020-11-07T22:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.salticid.com\/kogblog\/?p=303"},"modified":"2021-02-03T17:19:37","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T22:19:37","slug":"citystrides-100-of-northampton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.salticid.com\/kogblog\/2020\/11\/citystrides-100-of-northampton\/","title":{"rendered":"CityStrides – 100% of Northampton!"},"content":{"rendered":"

(back-dating this post, completed 2\/2\/2021)<\/em><\/p>\n

On November 7th, 2020, I completed my years-long project of running every street in Northampton<\/a>, thanks to CityStrides<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I joined in 2018 while training for the New York Marathon<\/a>, but since it syncs with RunKeeper<\/a>, my favorite run-recording app, it counted runs I had in 2015 while training for the Rochester Marathon and so I was already at 18%. I don’t remember exactly how I stumbled on it, but it was connected to working with CommonMedia<\/a> because that’s where James Chevalier<\/a>, the creator of the app, was working; I had signed up already when I saw him at a tech happy hour and we talked about it. Having it be something local was completely cool and unexpected.<\/p>\n

CityStrides has made running so much more fun! It helped a ton during marathon training when the miles started adding up; the extra motivation to complete streets made the long runs more rewarding. That got me to 76% of the city, pulling ahead of the nearest competitors<\/a> (#2<\/a> is at 65% as of today and #3<\/a> is at 49%; I didn’t record where they were then, but I don’t think either of them has been focusing on Northampton). It felt awesome to be in the lead, and I kept plugging away at nearby routes post-marathon, but my normal routine is only about 6 miles for a long run and I soon plateaued at a little over 80%.<\/p>\n

My philosophy (even pre-CityStrides) is that I want exercise to be self-propelled, so I strenuously avoid driving to a route. I make exceptions for races, of course, and some of my favorite hikes (especially with friends) require getting in the car, but I didn’t want a single stretch of CityStrides to involve driving, so I didn’t make much progress in 2019. This year I decided to prioritize finishing by biking to the outlying areas, starting with sections near ValleyBike<\/a> stations and then mixing in my regular bike.<\/p>\n

I got a bottle of champagne at the end of October in order to celebrate, with the unspoken hope that we’d actually be celebrating a Biden-Harris victory. On November 7th, after the spontaneous celebrations all over downtown, I rode to North King Street to finish the last segment, Trinity Circle<\/a> in Laurel Park<\/a>. As I had suspected from a previous attempt, it turns out to be a phantom section that I had to mark manually complete. But one of the really great things about CityStrides is it’s based on the open-source Open Street Map, so I’m trying to figure out how to report this as a phantom or paper street<\/a> and make it better for everyone. It’s very interesting that the official Laurel Park map<\/a>, GMaps<\/a>, and OSM<\/a> of this area are all totally different.<\/p>\n

I became a supporting member so I could get the instant gratification of uploading and syncing my new runs when I got home, but I’m really happy to do so anyway. It’s a great project and it’s free to use! One of the extra-nice features is that it brings in weather data, which RunKeeper doesn’t. I can look back on a particularly slow run and be reminded that it was 85 degrees with 100% humidity!<\/p>\n

Some thoughts on why this was so much fun:<\/p>\n