Run 52: We Ended up at Home

We ran all around the city and ended up at home. 

But it wasn’t where we started.  About two-thirds of the way through, this project led us to the house and the neighborhood that we now call home.  On our Pleasant Ridge run we came across a stucco craftsman with an open house sign.  When we returned the next day to check it out, we fell in love with the details in the woodwork, the French doors, and the magnolia trees in the front yard. 

We hadn’t planned to buy a house (Too busy! Too much work!) and we hadn’t planned to leave Mount Lookout (Ault Park! Zips Cafe!) but on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving we found ourselves with a new set of a keys and lots of boxes to unpack.

 

For years—living in O’Bryonville and then Mt. Lookout—we ran on Observatory, Erie, and Madison and couldn’t imagine any other daily routes.  Back in January, we jotted down a note to ponder throughout the year: “Choosing where to live based on where to run… has this opened up neighborhoods we may not have considered?” 

When we ran in Pleasant Ridge on a Saturday in early October, the park behind the Recreation Center was filled with families, the sidewalks were shaded with trees, and there was plenty of variety in the topography.  Plus, we discovered that there is a “Pleasant Ridge Runners” club.  Sold.

But this project hasn’t been about making one neighborhood home.  Rather, the entire city now feels familiar. 

Now, when we see Twin Towers in the distance we know it to be in College Hill.  When someone tells us they live in Mt. Washington, we can picture them driving past the Creamy Whip on their way home from work.  When we hear a news story about any random place, chances are it was on one of our routes and we can say, “Oh, we ran by there.”  

 

When we’re driving through a place that at one time would have been unfamiliar, we recognize a cross-street or a park, and remember the run that took us there.  With every neighborhood is a bucket list for the sites to which we will return over the years and get to know better. There are so many: the Taft Museum, Krohn Conservatory, Stanbery Park, the list goes on.

And even more than the sites and streets that we know, we have an impression of each neighborhood that was formed from our firsthand experience.  We ran safely through the streets of every neighborhood, mostly in the morning.  In this way, all of the neighborhoods were bonded--we saw them as welcoming places where two runners from some other part of the city could show up and do their morning run.

 

 

We knew going into this year that Cincinnati has a robust running culture and a community of runners that grows each year.  Even people that don't run themselves are spirited about supporting people that do:  the deep crowds of spectators at the Flying Pig Marathon are proof enough.  As we ran through Avondale, Over-the-Rhine, Winton Hills and countless other neighborhoods, we received thumbs up and words of encouragement from complete strangers. 

 

This project gave us the opportunity to spend time with friends who share our passion for running and our love for this city.  Even better, in a few neighborhoods our friends became our running guides and showed us their neighborhoods from the perspective of someone who lives there.  On other runs, when a neighborhood was new to everyone our friends learned about new places as we did. 

 

It also gave us a chance to spend time together—to take a short trip each week and take on a small challenge.  We worked towards a shared goal and laughed a lot while doing it.  After a few weeks, it was clear that running was the easy part and that the real challenge would be plotting the courses and writing the recaps.  Now, just as we had found our rhythm, we’ve reached 52. 

 

This Saturday was the first in a long time that we didn’t wake up and drive together to the start of a carefully charted route in an unfamiliar neighborhood.  Instead, we each ran alone through our new neighborhood and then up Montgomery into Kennedy Heights. 

Since we moved to Pleasant Ridge in late November, it has been dark in the morning before work and then dark again when we get home.  Because of the shorter days our daily runs have been a bit disorienting, and this past Saturday’s was one of the first we’ve been able to do in the daylight.  It made us realize that although this project has officially ended, from now on we’ll run with a different perspective.  We’ll take more notice of the places around us.  We’ll ask our friends to join us.  We’ll wave to other runners.  We’ll seek out new routes. 

And because Cincinnati is home, every run will be a Run 52.

 

 

-Kayla and Donnie

 

 

 

Run 52: South Cumminsville

We “ran” in South Cumminsville the Sunday after Donnie ran the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon.  I say “ran” in quotation marks because “hobbled” may be the better verb.  While Donnie killed the marathon—achieving a 2 minute PR at 2:26:55 and coming in 6^th place overall—he has been limping around ever since. 

Since so many of you have asked, while Donnie was running the marathon, I was not running the marathon.  I was drinking coffee and reading Vogue in the athletes’ dressing room.  And taking selfies:

Technically, I had scheduled this week off from Run 52 months ago, knowing that Donnie would need some time to recover.  But it was a pretty day and I let this fact slip my mind as the Run 52 momentum carried us out the door and up I-75 to South Cumminsville. 

(Later Donnie would get a peek at my scheduling spreadsheet and curse my foresight coupled with a subsequent lack of follow-through.)

South Cumminsville is just south of Northside.  Until the construction of I-74, the two neighborhoods were originally one larger neighborhood known as Cumminsville.  We started our run from Working In Neighborhoods, on the corner of Dreman Avenue and Borden Street. 

 

Working In Neighborhoods (WIN) is a community-based nonprofit that develops affordable housing, provides leadership training, and offers homeownership classes and housing counseling.  They also put on a great spring 5k at Winton Woods called “Run for the American Dream.”   If you click on this link you can see an old picture of me running it. 

 

Working In Neighborhoods’ Economic Learning Center is on the at the Old St. Pius Church, which has been beautifully renovated into offices, classrooms, and senior apartments. 

 

On the blocks surrounding Working In Neighborhoods, there are well-maintained residential blocks with solid, single-family homes. Here there are great, affordable options for first-time homebuyers and families. 
 

 

 

The trees along Llewellyn were unsuccessfully trying to hang onto their summer green:

On the corner of Beekman and Dremen is the famous Mr. Gene’s Dog House.

If you keep going on Dremen past Mr. Gene’s, there is a tree-lined sidewalk that leads to the West Fork Mill Creek.  I’m obviously obsessed with the fall leaves, but I swear in the seven autumns I’ve spent in Cincinnati I don’t think they’ve ever been as pretty as they are this year:

 

 

 

I know the guy just raced 26 miles, but here he was really shuffling:

From this stretch, we were able to take a little path over to the Wayne Playground:

The Wayne Playground has basketball courts, baseball fields, and a wide open field where I was able to get in a few wide loops while Donnie rested.

From the playground, you can see the old Garfield Public School, which has been developed into apartments known as Garfield Commons. 

For some reason, I decided I could defy the limitations of being five feet tall and jump to touch the basketball net. 

Also, for some reason, I thought that putting my hand on my hip would help:

This doesn't have much to do with running, but ever since I told Donnie I dropped out of the fifth grade basketball league after one game, he does this schtick where he says in his announcer voice: “My wife… is a very short woman.  While the other children were playing basketball games after school... she was indoors sorting her spreadsheet.”

Clearly someone should give this guy his own show.

 And some Advil. 

-K.

View the full route with mile markers here:  http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=530184

 

Run 52: Sedamsville

Okay. First, things first, it’s: Sed-ams-ville not Seed-ums-ville. Admittedly, I made this mistake when I first saw this place on the map. Sedamsville is a tiny neighborhood on Cincinnati’s Westside that is famous for its haunted legends. It’s also notable for being the birthplace of one Peter Edward Rose. 

 

Revealing what she’s most interested in Kayla’s route took us by the Haunted Rectory, but we never made it by Pete’s birthplace. She explained that the rectory had been featured on TLC's Ghost Adventures show, which she must have caught in between Octo-Mom, The Elephant Mom, and The Goriest ER Surgeries Ever Recorded.

Building upon the haunted theme, our special-guest-runner (3rd time!), Emily Lee suggested that we dress up for our run. Emily showed up with a Hello-Kitty t-shirt, explaining that she was a middle-schooler.

As for Kayla, she pulled out a long-sleeved t-shirt that said “Sedamsville Make a Difference Day.” Her costume? Make a Difference Day volunteer.

Having just watched Run For Your Life, a documentary about the late New York City Marathon Director, Fred Lebow, I went for his look minus the tiny cap. What can I say? Nailed it.

After perusing through some Google Image searches, I decided that Kayla and I could have been Grete Waitz and Fred Lebow.

Once we were done comparing costumes , we started to explore Sedamsville. As we made our way through the neighborhood, Kayla reminded us that she was something of a Sedamsville expert as one of her first duties as a community organizer at her previous job was to canvas the streets of Sedamsville to get resident input on a business that was considering a new location along River Road.

 

The building stock in Sedamsville is really interesting, as it echoes the Italianate feel of nearby Lower Price Hills while maintaining its individual feeling.  The vista has the feel of a West Virigina mining town:

Adding to the small town feel were a few small businesses at the end of the residential blocks. These are the kind of shops that make me want to drive across town to buy a light bulb.

From the  neighborhood we made our way into Boldface Park, which sits on River Road. The first thing we noticed at Boldface was the very well done pavilion that overlooked the park. This ornate structure inspired an extensive photo expose.

 

Five hours later, we headed down River Road, which lived up to its name: check out this view!

Recently, there has been talk that there could soon be a river trail beginning from Lower Price Hill and continuing through the existing parks along the way all the way to Sayler Park.  

As we headed down River Road, I noticed that in the distance there was a man standing at the edge of the concrete steps in front of his house.  I wondered what he was doing and then noticed that he had several bottles of water in hand and was waving for us to stop.

Handing over a bottle to each of us, this Sedamsville resident wanted to know where we had been running.  A runner himself, he suggested of a loop that we might check out at  some point  in the future. He explained that if you ran along the riverfront, you could make a 12 mile loop out to Anderson Ferry and back along River Road. I filed this suggestion away for some weekend when the monotony of the same old loops becomes drives me to try something different.

For me this simple act, was an illustration of how running requires you to depend on others--even total strangers. With the Indianapolis Monumental Marathon, just a week away this truth was especially poignant , as I couldn’t have trained the way I did without Kayla. From her commitment to nutrition, which has kept me healthier this year, to her matter-of-fact assessment of my fitness “well you run over 20 miles every weekend, why would you be nervous about doing it next weekend?” Without her I might be wondering what I could have achieved instead of setting out to achieve it.

So what does this have to do with Sedamsville? Everything. When we started Run 52, it was because we knew that running and community go together. And in neighborhood after neighborhood we have been reminded of this fact, and Sedamsville was no different.

 

See our whole route here: http://www.usatf.org/routes/view.asp?rID=530161