Thursday, June 17, 2010

Running in Places

This last Saturday I had the opportunity to "go running" -- for so I like to call it, although an objective observer might well describe me as "shambling" -- in Victoria, B.C., a lovely and charming town with, as it turns out, all sorts of good paths to lope down. This was particularly exciting because it was, I realized, the first time I had ever gone running outside of the United States of America.

This thought activated the automatic spreadsheet generator in my mind, and before you know it I was mentally compiling a list of states I've gone running in. And in the spirit of my-blog-is-kind-of-a-scrapbook-and-thus-doesn't-always-have-content-you-could-possibly-be-interested-in, here's that list to the best of my memory!
  • Oregon (roughly 1982-87; 2001-present)
  • California (The Brookings (Oregon) High School cross-country course required six crossings of the state line.)
  • Kansas (1991-1992)
  • Alaska (1992)
  • Colorado (having learned to take running gear on vacation, Summer 2008. At 9000 feet, this was quite the experience. Subsequent running at Casa del In-Laws, at 5000 feet, has been difficult but a little less like drowning.)
  • Pennsylvania (September 2009)
  • West Virginia (Clarksville "Mayor's Path," September 2009)
  • Washington (coupled with geohashing expedition, November 2009)
  • British Columbia (June, 2010)
It's possible that I've run in Montana, Wisconsin, and New Mexico too, but in none of these cases am I confident enough in my memory to add it to the list.

Now, just to head off the wiseacres: no, I do not intend to try to go running in every U.S. county. (...although, every Oregon county... hmmm....)

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

Me:

Oregon, California, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Illinois, D.C., Maryland, Vermont, England, Italy. I think that's it so far, but I might've run at some academic conferences I'm forgetting.

(Then I had to list the states I've run races in for my own amusement!)

margaret said...

How far do you have to go for it to be considered running?

Ben said...

I had no idea you did Cross Country in high school!

Michael5000 said...

mags: 1 mile

Ben: Small school. I did almost everything.