My map leaves something to be desired, but it will do the trick.

(Sunday Paper, Year VIII, Issue 25)

If you follow me on the running Instagram page, you know this already…but I’ve created another running challenge for myself this summer:

I’m going to run every street in Framingham.

You might think, John, isn’t training for and running a marathon challenge enough?

And, yes, that’s certainly true.

But there are a lot of miles involved in training and having something to spice it up can sometimes help me wrap my brain around it.

I have a 3-to-4 mile loop in my neighborhood that I love and that I’ve run quite a bit over the years.

But, with all due respect to my little 3-to-4 mile loop - and even the couple of 5-6 mile loops I run - sometimes I get bored with running the same route all the time.

And, if there’s one thing about me and running over the years, it’s that I can turn any little excuse into a big excuse and use it as a way to get out of some running activity.

So, in order to eliminate those kinds of excuses, sometimes I need a gimmick.

When I was training for the Wilmington Marathon this winter, I used the wooden soldiers positioned around town as an excuse to expand my running horizons.

And as I did that and ran in areas of the city I had never run before, it occurred to me that maybe I should try to run every street in the city, which I had heard of some people doing during the stay-at-home portions of the pandemic.

I thought about it a lot this winter and spring and couldn’t really find an app that I could work with satisfactorily (without creating a slew of new accounts and messing up some of my running record-keeping)…but I also couldn’t find a good analog map of Framingham to work with.

So, right when I began training I got artsy and craftsy and printed some map segments and taped them together and I have something to work with and highlight as I go through my training.

Right now I have about 10 or 11 miles of Framingham streets highlighted, which gives me a nice feeling of accomplishment after my training runs…but it’s also a little overwhelming when I look at how much of the map there still is to cover.

It’s complicated by the fact that I want to run my long runs in Boston along flat road to simulate Chicago, and a couple of my next long runs are actually totally out of town.

But I’ll worry about that closer to October - there’s no reason this challenge has to end before the marathon…and I certainly have a lot of miles to run between now and October 8. I bet I’ll come pretty close to covering the entirety of Framingham.

For now, though, I’m running in areas of the city I haven’t run before. (That’s another trick here - I need to do a little scouting to make sure unfamiliar areas are safe…there are some busy streets I know of that don’t have sidewalks and I need to figure out if there are any of those I’m going to have to skip.) (My rule of thumb is, I think, “What would I say if my daughters told me they were running on this street?” Or, more accurately, “Would my daughters be upset with me if they knew I ran down this street?” If it seems like it would be upsetting…it’s probably not a good idea.)

And it really shifts my focus on the actual runs. I like going out for a 5-mile run and not thinking about my legs being tired or the actual running process other than, “Oh no, I’m almost at 4.5 miles and I still have to make it down those two streets over there.” It’s a really nice mental place for me.

I do think, too, since I’m not able to do the Chicago course before the marathon the way I can do the Boston course that running unfamiliar roads for unsure distances gets me used to that aspect of running a marathon.

So, I’ll keep you posted on how this goes. I like it a lot so far, and it seems to be exactly what I need to get me through this summer of running.

And maybe by the end of the summer you’ll realize why I keep saying to myself, “Holy crap there sure are a lot of streets in Framingham.”

What I’ve Been Enjoying

One of the perks of the Mets ticket memberships is you get a Yankees-Mets game mixed in…which is a tough ticket to get. I took my dad as kind of a Father’s Day celebration (I’ll be back at Citi Field today with my own kids as another Father’s Day celebration) and since I didn’t want to do two New York round trips in a few days I took the train down Wednesday and back Thursday.

I hadn’t done this in a really long time. It was nice. I didn’t get as much work done on the train as I thought I might (part of the rationale was instead of driving where I couldn’t do work I could get 3 hours of work done both ways), but I guess I used the time wisely enough. I got some reading in, I did a little work, and I got some sleep.

But I liked it a lot. It’s a pretty good option if I’m making a solo trip, because it wasn’t much more money than what I’d spend for the two tanks of gas I’d need for a round trip to New York. (I can pretty much make it there and back on a full tank, but almost immediately need to re-fill upon the return.)

And after hearing about issues in New York’s public transportation system, I was pretty pleased with how easily I made my connections getting from Moynihan Train Hall to the N train and into Queens. I’ll definitely make it happen again.

Notes

*This was a light week for me on the running training plan. I did 3 miles Tuesday, 5 on Friday, and Saturday’s long run was 9 miles. Tuesday and Friday I was able to fill in the empty-ish Framingham map with some good highlighting…but Saturday I ran in New York to wrap up week two of training. There’s a good pic on the running Instagram page (link below) if you want to see where I ran on Saturday.

*That map pictured above is but a small fraction of central and north Framingham. There is a whole lot of the eastern, western, and southern parts of Framingham you can’t see there. But, don’t worry…I’ll highlight it all in the end.

*A reminder (or news, if you’re new): I am running the Chicago Marathon for Team RMHC - raising money for Ronald McDonald House Charities. You can donate here if you’re interested - we’re a little shy of my goal, but there’s plenty of time to get up and over it! Thank you for donating and playing the Super Bowl squares if you did that months ago.

*The Mets beat the Yankees in the game we were at in the 10th inning. It was the second Mets win I’ve seen in person, and their second walk-off win (in their last at-bat). The other two games were just so-so performances and losses. To be honest, the Mets had no business winning this game with the way they played - but maybe it’ll present a turning point in this disappointing season.

*I’m pretty sure this was also only the second Mets-Yankees game I attended in the 26 years of interleague play. It made me look back at the box score of the first one I went to - the third-ever game between the Mets and Yankees, which was at Yankee Stadium in 1997. My friends and I got walk-up bleacher seats in a game that I didn’t remember went to extra innings - I did remember the Mets had lost and that David Cone pitched for the Yankees that day, but I didn’t realize it was so close. 3-2 Yankees in 10 innings. (I don’t know. Maybe I’ve been to one more over the years but I don’t remember. I don’t like the way the crowd gets riled up at one another so I don’t love going to these games, to be honest.)

*I know this time of year is usually for guest posts, but to be honest, my usual guest posters aren’t as interested in doing it as they used to be when they were littler. So you’re stuck with mostly me…although maybe there will be a couple coming up. I guess you’ll just have to stay tuned.

*The social media links are below if you’re interested in more details about the running journey or whatever else I post about. You can Like the Facebook page to keep tabs on my writing…as mentioned, the Instagram is the running one. Thanks for following along!