Share your story. Was it a friend that was already hunting nodes? 
Read it in the news? 
Twitter? Facebook? Some random person plodding down your dead-end road that you asked “what are you doing??” 
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It started with a Strava post on Rickey Gates’ Every Single Street - San Francisco he did. I followed Rickey on Strava, and got hooked on the idea of running every street in my city. I hadn’t heard of CityStrides until a twitter post of Rickey’s had a mention of it in the comments, and signed up that day.
Unfortunately not all NZ cities had been covered at that point so had a couple of months of not really doing much with the site, but did add Auckland to the missing cities list. Fortunately it didn’t take long for it to be added and I became a paid member 
. Of course that was the point I realised how many streets I thought I had run but had missed, including one not 500m from my front door!
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I noticed on strava another runner who seemed to be doing a lot of weird runs where there were activities with tons of cul-de-sacs and neighborhood streets instead of the large loop-type courses I usually did myself. A google search made his citystrides page pop up. That was the first time I had heard of of and after a few minutes of browsing I had signed myself up and told 3 other friends about the site…
I’ve probably already said too much…Next thing I know I am going to be investigated for stalking…
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Exactly this for me, too. Weird Strava routes that led to some curious searching. I’ve told many friends to try it out but no one seems as into it as I am 
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I’m a data nerd and was looking on Strava’s site at Explore Connected Apps. Thought CityStrides sounded interesting and tried it out!
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I wish I could remember the definitive answer to this question. It’s one I often ponder. AFAIK, none in my running circle were doing it. My best thought is my wife and I were wondering if we could walk all the streets in the hamlet of Oak Trail Shores (not in CS, yet. Added to SS). Or maybe same thought for St. Pete Beach, where my parents live. Maybe I was looking for ways (or an app), to track it, and a Google search led me to CS. That’s my best guess.
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I was looking for a way to find what percentage of the city I had covered, as I was already interested in running as many unique roads as possible. I ended up on an old Reddit thread about it which led me here. I intially wanted a percentage of total area covered (and still kindof do), rather than the percentage of unique roads, but once I saw how CS functioned I was hooked.
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Like others, I noticed that a friend was running strange routes and asked him about it. I was generally running the same routes, but needed a change, so it was perfect and quickly got hooked. I trained for a marathon doing almost exclusively citystrides and even got my BQ.
I’ve promoted citystrides to others and have gotten a few elites and one Olympian signed on.
This summer, I’ve been doing the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee and myself and others have promoted citystrides, so you likely got a few signed up from there. It is great to see people on the FB page for the race celebrating completing their city or town.
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I should add that when I run in a new location, I do citystrides, even though I know I won’t be able to accomplish much, but still great to see some roads completed. It has made running a lot more fun.
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I saw citystrides mentioned on Reddit a couple of times and eventually decided to take the plunge as running for exploration was always my main motivation anyway and I wanted to see how I was doing. In that sense, signing up has been a great success: I’ve run and discovered lots of places I didn’t even realize were part of the city, on the other hand, a run with 0 progressed and 0 completed feels like a waste now .
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Around october 2017, i was looking to do a heatmap, but didn’t want to buy a Strava Premium.
So i googled and found Strava Multiple Ride Mapper.
Looked good, but not perfect, still had to update manually, so i kept googling and eventually found CityStrides.
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Of my friends that now use citystrides:
Two joined to complete their city (and others nearby) as a motivation to get more miles in without doing the same exact routes every time.
A third is here purely for the lifemap. It is a (huge) stretch goal of his to eventually connect every purple line of his with the rest so there are no isolated tracks in his lifemap. Imagine his disappointment when he did a pair runs out of town and ran through an intersection on two different runs but on opposite corners of the street and those two didn’t connect. He has over an hour round trip to make to connect that last 40 feet.
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The fun part is that the guy I originally “stalked” to find CS noticed the change in a few other people’s runs and called us out on Strava with an “I see you found Citystrides” type comment.
More than once I have also seen him (and others who have since joined) hit a small town or neighborhood within days of one of the others show they completed it - all without discussion or comments. Strange coincidence? Probably not!
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I was introduced to CityStrides by my parkrun friend Calum Burrell. I don’t think he’s on the forums so I can’t tag him!
Last year I ran a minimum of 5k every day of the year to raise money for Alzheimer’s Research UK. In January this year, after running 2,448km (1,521 miles), I took a well-earned running break with my only running being my weekly parkrun fix.
Having done the majority of my 2019 running solo I’d planned on joining a running club (Penny Lane Striders) for the first time in April. And then lockdown came along and I ended up taking an extended running break of two months.
It was after seeing my first attempt at Strava art that Calum dropped me a line and asked if I’d heard of CityStrides. It had been mentioned on the parkrun With Me Now podcast the previous week. I checked it out and thought it looked like an interesting challenge. I knew about Rickey Gates’ #everysinglestreet project and so decided to have a go at my home city of Liverpool.
I’m currently at 12.89% with only 4,914 streets left to run. This is a long term project! I’m adding my runs and photos to my Facebook account along with my comments on what I’ve seen. I’ve also got a website - I just have to remember to keep it updated!
Wish me luck!
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For me it started with Rickey Gates’ ESS San Fransisco project. I liked the idea, but I’m way too lazy to mark all the streets that I ran on an actual physical map. After some Googling, I found CS.
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I saw Mr Gates SF project. Wondered how the mapping was done. Did a Google found CS 
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What is/was that? Too many Google results. Those two are busy!
https://twitter.com/rickeygates had a project to run every street in SF in one month https://www.everysinglestreet.com
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