Run every street or trail in your town with the latest virtual running challenge

Because of COVID-19, many race teams and organizers have transitioned to virtual competitions this year, and Aravaipa Running is one company that has gone all in (at least for 2020) on this racing format. The team held the Dam Good Run Virtual Race in March (the company’s first virtual event of the pandemic), the Lone Mountain Last Person Standing event in July and many other virtual runs. Now, the Aravaipa crew is preparing for an event called Every Damn Street/Trail — a challenge that will have participants run (or walk or bike) every street or trail in their town.

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Running every street 

The idea to run every street in a city or town is attributed to Rickey Gates, an American ultrarunner who did just that in San Fransisco in 2018. Gates’s challenge worked out to a whopping 2,085K in six weeks, but luckily for participants in the Every Damn Street event, they’ll have from September 1 to December 31 to complete their challenge, a window about three times longer than Gates had. An added bonus is that, depending where participants live, they likely won’t have to cover nearly as much ground as Gates did in San Fransisco (but if you live in a major city like he did, good luck with this massive undertaking). 

RELATED: WATCH: Rickey Gates’ San Francisco project (#Everysinglestreet)

The Aravaipa team has said the challenge is to give runners and cyclists a chance to “rediscover their city, their town, or their neighbourhood.” Even if you live in a small town, there are probably streets that you have never wandered down or neighbourhoods you’ve never explored. This challenge will change that. Plus, since Aravaipa is an event company that loves trail racing, the team has added the Every Damn Trail option for runners who would rather not run on the roads. 

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How the challenge works

Unlike many of the other Aravaipa virtual events, this isn’t a competition in which you face off against other runners worldwide. Instead, it’s a personal challenge to see how much you can run before the end of 2020. So many virtual races this year have seen runners competing inside their homes on their treadmills or in their living rooms, so this is an event that encourages participants to get out and explore.

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Even if you can’t complete every street or trail in your city or town, you can still produce a number of cool GPS maps as you work through different areas. To register for this challenge and “share Every Damn Street” with the Aravaipa Running team, click here.