Hi, my name is Ricky. 👋 I'm a runner and software developer in the Bay Area. I've run for many years and have tried a few times to start logging or quantifying my running as I've worked in data visualization and now mapping. It never stuck though. It's the running and not analysis around it which I enjoy.
Things change though. I used to cruise for miles in the countryside, but my tendons now prefer a more moderately-paced slog up a steep hill. Gravel roads are a great place to empty your head and train for a marathon, but I can hardly walk out the door these days without someone in a car testing whether if they just plow through a crosswalk, I'll happily jump out of their way. Most days I stay inside or run a one mile loop back and forth.
Time and city life have changed what running means to me, and this blog represents my desire to channel all of this into something positive, to convey the simple excitement of walking out the door with shoes and a metro card and finding a small adventure.
The ground rules are simple: I start from the 12th Street Oakland BART station and see how far I can get on a couple energy gels and a Clipper Card. I haven't decided if I'll limit my runs to the Bay Area. At the time of writing, I don't know the bus system very well so I'll have to learn it. Ride shares are out of bounds.
If there are a couple things which make the running possible, it's Salomon shoes and GaiaGPS maps. This blog is made from scratch with Mapbox (full disclosure: I work at Mapbox!) and Preact. You can find the source on GitHub at rreusser/trains-and-trails. It's MIT-licensed and perhaps not the worst, though you'll probably be hard-pressed to repurpose too much of it without significant rewrites. You're welcome to try!
Comments? Questions? Let me know on Mastodon or by filing an issue on GitHub. 🏃♂️