A Full Day of Striding

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Hi wonderful CityStrides community!

Wanted to share a big milestone I had this past weekend. I participated in the Quarantine Backyard Ultra, which was hosted by my running coaches at Personal Peak, an amazing coaching company based out of Calgary, Canada.

About the race:

  • It was announced two weeks ago in light of all the cancellations from COVID-19, giving just enough time to taper
  • It is a Backyard Ultra format, which means you need to complete one 6.71km (4.167mi) loop every hour on the hour. If you finish before the hour is up you can eat, drink, stretch, use the washroom, sleep etc.
  • Some of the world’s best ultra runners signed up, and two are still vying for the win at the time of posting this thread (58 hours in = 389km = 242mi). Here’s the live feed (which will expire at some point)

My major personal milestones included:

  • Running a total of 108.4km, passing 50 miles & 100k for the first time in my life
  • Planning and executing 16 unique loops each trying to cover as many streets as possible in the given distance (see photo below)
  • Running 107 streets in a day (not the 214 the activity says… Calgary still has the double-up issue)
  • Inching that City Percentage up by… 1.17% :anguished:, and moving… 0 places up the city leaderboard :laughing:
  • Running up and down the alley by the garage/aid station I used 34 times total (to top up the distance to get that 6.71km/lap total)

Here are my activities in CityStrides and Strava.

Just wanted to share this with you because I :heart: CityStrides, the community here, and the whole philosophy behind running long, running everywhere, and slowly #paintingthetownpurple. Hope y’all are finding ways to stay not-crazy in this crazy time!

A tiny portion of the city complete… but every bit counts!

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My route maps for each lap:

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11 Likes
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@davemorin Wow Dave, well done. When I first read “backyard”, “quarantine”, and “ultra”, I took “backyard” to mean in the super-literal sense, i.e. the area behind your house. I thought, "An ultra, in one’s backyard? Is that even possible? I suppose it is. Crazy. But possible.:

But I get it now.

And also wow :sob: on the meager % bump. Perils of striding and living in a large city. I used to live in Chicago, and am glad I did not discover CS back then!

Again, kudos! Awesome effort.

Eric

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Thanks @ericjrw. You’re not too far off the mark… there were a few runners that took part in the race that ran in even smaller spaces than their backyards, and not on a treadmill: CBC Article feat. Matt Shepard. Check out both Matt Shepard (who happens to be my coach :smiley:) and the “living room guy”… they ran for 41 and 20 hours, respectively (275 and 134km).

It is slow and steady progress on the city %… that’s for sure. I track the neighbourhoods I complete as well for more reasonably attainable milestones… there are 257 in the city so can knock them off much more quickly.

I see you’re running out of Keller. Looks like you’ll be able to make good progress there.

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