Gates ran every street in San Francisco in 2018, covering more than 2,000 km in 46 days. Richard watched the video several times, and started wondering whether he could do something similar in Calgary. \u201cI watched the video five or six times in about a two-month period and couldn\u2019t shake the \u2018what if\u2019 question when it came to Calgary,\u201d he told Canadian Running.<\/p>\n
When he started, Calgary had roughly 9,100 streets. Richard knew he\u2019d be taking on a substantial project, but the city grew considerably while he was working his way through it.<\/p>\n
Keeping up with a growing city<\/p>\n
Richard used CityStrides, an app that connects to Garmin or Strava and tracks completed streets on a map. Every six months or so, another 50 to 100 streets would be added, leaving him with more ground to cover. A few days before his planned finish, the app added another 71 streets. \u201cGiven my commitment to get it done on Oct. 25, I had to put in some extra work to get those extra 71 done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some parts of his project weren\u2019t fun. \u201cThere were a lot of days and nights I didn\u2019t want to drive to a far-away community to finish some streets, and it sometimes might have looked cozier to stay at home and watch TV,\u201d he wrote on Instagram after completing the project.<\/p>\n
Injuries also slowed his progress. He initially covered roughly a quarter of the city each year, but several running injuries when he was about 60 to 70 per cent finished stretched out the final part of the challenge.<\/p>\n
![\"Rick](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Rick-Richard1-1024x751.jpeg\")
Photo courtesy of Rick Richard
\nGetting to know Calgary<\/p>\n
Richard had plenty of opportunities to find a favourite neighbourhood, but his choice changed often. \u201cI feel like I had a lot of recency bias, where I would come home after every run and declare that was the best neighbourhood I ran in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
One experience that stayed with him came from running through one community where he noticed an older townhouse with household belongings piled outside. The next day, he was running in a more affluent neighbourhood, when he spotted similar items piled inside someone\u2019s three-car garage. \u201cSo we all like stuff, and sometimes it\u2019s just economics that makes the difference,\u201d he said. \u201cThe person in the triple-car garage can just afford to store it inside.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says there weren\u2019t any neighbourhoods he didn\u2019t look forward to visiting. \u201cI feel super fortunate that being a 6\u20192\u201d male with good street smarts, I tend to feel pretty secure out there,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I know that\u2019s not the case for a lot of people, so when I come across other runners, particularly females, I make sure that I distance myself by crossing the street or try to let it be known that I\u2019m a legit runner and not a threat.\u201d<\/p>\n
Back where he began<\/p>\n
Richard decided a couple of years into the project that he wanted his final run to end on Midridge Place, where he\u2019d started the challenge. When his uncle became seriously ill two years ago, finishing there became particularly important; Midridge was his uncle\u2019s home. On Oct. 25, Richard returned to the same street, joined by friends and supporters for his final run.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks to everyone who came out tonight to share that last run, it was very special for sure and ended right where my Calgary journey started on Midridge Place with the same Parkin family on hand,\u201d he wrote on Instagram. He described the project as a \u201cfun labour of love that\u2019ll be tough to top.\u201d<\/p>\n
Richard already has more running planned, including the California International Marathon in December and the Vancouver Marathon in May. His goal is to return to the Boston Marathon, which he\u2019s run before.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calgary\u2019s Rick Richard was only a few days away from finishing a six-and-a-half-year project to run every street…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":950894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[49,325247,48,325248,325249,29412,61,325250],"class_list":["post-950893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ca","tag-calgary-runners","tag-canada","tag-citystrides","tag-rick-richard","tag-running-news","tag-technology","tag-urban-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=950893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/950893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/950894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=950893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=950893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=950893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}