Few – if any – Airdrie residents know the city’s roads better than Steve Gray.
Approximately one year ago, Gray set a goal for himself to run down every single street in Airdrie. The 58-year-old Meadowbrook resident is hoping to achieve that goal before the end of 2021.
“I love a challenge,” he said.
As of Aug. 12, Gray said he had run down 608 of Airdrie’s streets, roads, avenues and boulevards. To track his progress, he uses an application called CityStrides. According to the app, Airdrie has 660 walkable streets, meaning Gray has already reached 92 per cent of his total.
The experienced runner said the idea emerged during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when formal long-distance races were not able to take place. He said he needed to find an escape from the stress that came with the pandemic, especially as his work as an engineer was dwindling at the time.
“I needed to keep myself busy,” he said.
Gray tracks his runs on the CityStrides website, which works by uploading data from an activity tracker and correlating his running routes with a map of the city.
“[The app] will populate a world map of everywhere in the world you have either walked, hiked, or ran,” he explained. “So, it’s pretty cool.”
The runner said when he was introduced to the app by a friend about a year ago, he uploaded his backlogged activity and discovered he had already run down 35 per cent of Airdrie’s streets.
He figured the pandemic provided the opportunity to finish what he had inadvertently started. Since deciding to undertake the challenge, in the last year, Gray has run along 377 of Airdrie’s roads.
The Meadowbrook resident said he is currently working on completing the areas on the west side of the city, which often amass into extremely long-distance runs, as he does not use any form of vehicular transportation to get where he is running.
“I could cheat and jump on a bike or car and drive over there and start running, but no – I run from Meadowbrook,” Gray laughed. “It’s thousands of kilometers you have to do [in total] to try and get it all.
“There’s always a lot of double-backing, because as soon as you run a crescent, you have to go back and run that street that you missed,” he added.
Gray said running in this capacity provided him with a different challenge than his previous experiences. An accomplished marathon runner, he is a pacesetter for the Calgary Marathon and has also run in the Boston Marathon twice.
His current challenge has not only helped Gray stay in shape doing what he loves, but it has also allowed him to see parts of the city he may have otherwise never known about.
“This has been a great experience for me, because I’ve seen so many subdivisions and houses that I never knew existed,” he said.
Gray encourages others to walk or run in different areas of their community, not only for a change of scenery, but to gain a deeper understanding and appreciation for where they live.
“It’s very cool to experience all of Airdrie,” he said, adding he is also in the process of running every parking lot in the city, and joked that perhaps his next venture should be running down every back alley.
“I’m trying to cover wherever a vehicle can drive,” he said.
