Fairfield, CT - Our motto at Fairfield HamletHub is "Seas the Day", which is "Seize the Day" with a shoreline twist. And one thing we're fond of doing is catching the sunrise at our town's Penfield Beach. You have to get up pretty early in the summertime to catch that moment and, usually, we're about the only soul on the sand.
This morning was a bit different, as we found ourselves in the company of seven other early risers, whose common bond turned out to be that they were all Fairfield Warde High School graduates, were all boys cross country runners at the school and had all just completed their first year of college.
This particular morning, they had agreed to meet at the beach, catch the sunup and take a run together. We captured for posterity (and our Instagram page) a photo of them gathered around a lifeguard chair. As we were doing so, one of the seven, Joseph Walewski, spoke up to share an interesting story.
"I just finished my first year at Connecticut College and, upon returning home in March, I decided to spend the extra time in Fairfield taking on a challenge I never thought I would: to run every street in the town," he said. It immediately piqued our interest.
"Although I've been GPS logging my runs for five years now and, therefore, had a head start (I had previously run approximately 20% of the roads), I thought there were too many dead ends and side streets to make the challenge worth it. However, with all of the extra time and wanting a change of scenery because of being stuck in the same place, I finally decided on April 3 to go for it," he continued.
To canvass all 1,125 streets, he broke the town into 43 regions and created running routes to fill in those areas. At the time of this email, according to his best estimates, Joe is 76% of the way done and will finish either late July or early August.
Attached is a screenshot of his progress with the town borders superimposed. "I've run almost every street outside of Greenfield Hills already," he noted.
The story conjured up Tom Hanks' character Forrest Gump in the film of the same name, who decided, "That day, for no particular reason, I decided to go for a little run. So I ran to the end of the road. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d run to the end of town. And when I got there, I thought maybe I’d just run across Greenbow County. And I figured, since I run this far, maybe I’d just run across the great state of Alabama. And that’s what I did. I ran clear across Alabama. For no particular reason I just kept on going. I ran clear to the ocean. And when I got there, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well turn around, just keep on going. When I got to another ocean, I figured, since I’d gone this far, I might as well just turn back, keep right on going.”
What will Joe did when he's finished running all the roads in Fairfield? Will he run across Fairfield County? Will he run across the great state of Connecticut? Will he run clear across the country... and back?
Time will tell. For now, we'll cheer, "Run, Joe! Run!"
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