Thursday April 15, 2021

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2021|04

Road Runner

Parag Bohyar is running every street in the city.

by Anita LeBlanc

From the February, 2021 issue

Parag Bohyar is running the length of every street in Ann Arbor.

Bohyar, an ergonomist in the auto industry, began running regularly in 2016. Last June, he decided to shake up his routine by running streets in nearby neighborhoods. After a couple of months, he'd run most of them--and set a goal to traverse every street in the city.

Bohyar begins each day's run where the previous one ended, covering two to three miles on weekdays and fifteen to twenty miles on weekends. He uses his Garmin watch and citystrides.com to keep track.

If anyone else had done this before him, he wasn't able to find them. But he was inspired by a story he read about U-M biologist Kevin Bohannon biking all 818 miles of city streets. He credits his wife Soumya and young daughter for cheerleading his effort and hopes that he will inspire others. He was aiming to complete his odyssey by the end of January--and then move on to running all of Ann Arbor's city parks and trails.

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from Calls & Letters, March 2021

"I enjoyed the piece on Parag Bhoyar in UpFront," Devon Akmon emailed ("Road runner," February). "However, he is certainly not the first to complete the challenge of running every street in A2. I finished that challenge last summer and I'm certain I wasn't the first.

"Running Fit hosted a winter challenge to run all the streets of A2 way back in the early 2000s. Back then you had to log runs using highlighter and a map! :)"

"Inspired by Covid, a friend of mine, her dog and her husband walked EVERY street in Ann Arbor between about May 2020-January 2021," Yvonne Stevens emailed. "My husband and I walked with them about once a week and it was a fun project. She took lots of pictures of all kinds of different things, e.g. a lot of the not-living animals in the city and many, many curiosities that the city

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and its people have to offer."

Sue Merrill Anderson and her husband also "walked every street in Ann Arbor three years ago, then traversed every park and playground the next year (bucket list for both of us)," she emailed. "We planned on riding all of the bus routes last year, but the virus has changed that plan. One thing we discovered is that, after living here for over 50 years, we don't know our city as well as we thought we did. There are many amazing neighborhoods and special places which I know Parag will see. I wish him well on his journey--be careful in those neighborhoods where people have not shoveled!    

[Originally published in February, 2021.]

 

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On January 27, 2021, Sue Merrill Andersen wrote:

My husband and I walked every street in Ann Arbor three years ago, then traversed every park and play ground the next year (bucket list for both of us). We planned on riding all of the bus routes last year, but the virus has changed that plan. One thing we discovered is that, after living here for over 50 years, we don't know our city as well as we thought we did. There are many amazing neighborhoods and special places which I know Parag will see. I wish him well on his journey - be careful in those neighborhoods where people have not shoveled!

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On January 28, 2021, Parag Bhoyar wrote:

Thank you Sue for your kind words! I finished all the streets two weeks back and I indeed discovered so much through this journey. I am planning to cover all the trails in all City parks. Bird hill, Nichols are one of my favorites.

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