I finished Vienna, Austria sometime in March, but never got around writing my ‘victory’ post, so here it is:
Why:
I initially saw several posts about Citystrides on reddit, but didn’t really consider joining since the city of Vienna is fairly large and I couldn’t imagine realistically finishing. At some point I took the plunge, and spent some time looking around other major cities and stumbled upon @denisbafounta, who at that stage had a sizeable chunk (30%ish?) of Berlin covered, which opened my eyes to the possibility that the task was not as unrealistic as I initially thought. I did a few trial runs and soon decided to go for it in earnest.
How:
- All running
- Offset starts, if possible by public transport
- when doubling back, always touch the end of the street/crossing street
- some light fence/gate-hopping to get nodes
I ended up splitting the city in three concentric circles: the center were streets I could cover running from home, the second layer were streets that I covered with short runs that I could drive/cycle to before work, and the area to the city border, which I reserved for long runs to reduce the number of trips as much as possible.
I can’t access the notifications anymore so I’m not sure what the exact stats are (@JamesChevalier it seems a bit harsh that access to existing notifications is lost when the subscriber status lapses), but the whole project took around 4,5 years, including a 6-9 months of injury breaks.
Take away:
I’m not a Vienna native, so in addition to discovering many new areas I can now claim to have a better knowledge of the city than most locals!
I also want to highlight a less talked-about benefit I encountered. When I joined Citystrides I was in a very bad place mentally. At the time Citystrides wasn’t yet the polished site we know today, which gave me the chance to get involved in the community and add some ideas. Figuring out useful additions, seeing them get considered and, in some cases, implemented, was the jolt I needed to get out of the rut I was in.
As I started getting serious about collecting streets I noticed that the steady process of plan → run → see the map fill in helped me get my thoughts in a better place over time. Maybe it was the routine, maybe the negative thoughts were no match for the tedium of running 20km of suburban cookie-cutter streets. Whatever it was, it feels like my completion tracked my mental health pretty closely over the project: starting at a dangerously low 13% and now all topped up. Thanks Citystrides!
TLDR: do Citystrides, it’s cheaper than therapy! 
than I needed to complete Sheffield 
- safe striding, Jim
.