Stephanie Lasure is standing on the sidewalk on Duke Street looking at a map. Is that Arell Court on her left or just a private driveway, she asks?
The distinction is important. Lasure is running every street in Alexandria. But she’s not covering private roads, just public streets. Arell Court, it turns out, is a few hundred feet further down the road, so we resume running.
“Running is the best way to get to know a city,” said Lasure on a four-mile run earlier in June. “This is my city, I’m getting to know my city.”
A long-time Alexandria resident who lived in the city for 13 years before leaving and then returning in 2016, Lasure is an avid runner. She has completed 12 marathons and 18 ultramarathons (races longer than 26.2 miles), and, when not training for her next race, helps support the youth organization Girls on the Run in her free time.
She took on the challenge of running all of Alexandria after being inspired by Rickey Gates’s run of every street in San Francisco last year. Gates ran more than 1,300 miles across the city in 46 days, sharing his progress on social media under the hashtag #EverySingleStreet. It has morphed into a rallying cry for runners around the world who are attempting their own every-street challenge in cities from Austin to Madrid.
“I was just in a running funk, and this was inspiring and a new way to knock out some miles,” Lasure says. Sharing her progress on social media and marking it on a large city map on the wall of her Old Town apartment, she has covered about three-quarters of the city, or nearly 260 miles. This includes the length of King Street, much of Old Town, and many of the city’s outer car-oriented environs near Interstate 395 and Van Dorn Street.
Alexandria is a diverse city, both geographically and demographically, she says. Running some of the blocks off Duke Street with her shows the various microcosms of the city, from quiet residential lanes where the only competition to our conversation was birdsong to busy thoroughfares where I struggled to hear her over the roar of traffic.
Lasure has discovered quite a bit on her runs, like how the city’s streets are labelled.
“It’s a lot hillier than I thought,” she says with a chuckle. As if to prove her point, we climbed more than 500 feet on our run, or about five runs up Capitol Hill on Constitution Avenue.
There’s a tedium, but also an excitement, to running every block. The neighborhood we ran through was largely residential, with many large homes on leafy blocks. But we also did not know what was around the next corner, like the surprise of the more than 70-foot-hill up Tupelo Place that we both agreed would be good for hill-repeat training.
Lasure may be the first person to run every street in Alexandria. Run Washington first reported on her quest earlier this year.
There are no reports of anyone completing a similar challenge previously, and an inquiry to Pacers owner Chris Farley came up with nothing. The closest similar local accomplishment may be Michael Bryant’s three-year journey to run every street in the District, which he completed in July 2006, according to The Washington Post archives.
Alexandria Mayor Justin Wilson, a runner himself, met Lasure on a run organised by Pacers and they discussed her plans.
“I love Stephanie’s goal and I think it’s a great way to showcase our city and be fit,” Mayor Wilson told DCist. He added that he would “absolutely” be interested in joining Lasure for a run (she suggests his block in Del Ray, when she gets to the neighborhood).
Lasure’s tour-de-Alexandria has taken longer than she expected due to a shoulder injury that sidelined her for several months. Barring any further setbacks, she aims to complete every street sometime in August. She has saved the waterfront trail through North Old Town ending in Founders Park on the Potomac River for her last run.
“There’s no better soul searching that going out for a run,” she says as at the end of our run. “You don’t care what you look like, how you smell and when it’s done there’s the most amazing sense of personal accomplishment ever.”
