Every State

I'm trying to run a race in every state. Should I also try to watch a baseball game in every state?

Last week I made a bunch of summer travel plans. I spent the winter applying for summer fellowships and teacher workshops, which paid off nicely. This summer I’ll be headed to D.C., Williamsburg, and Hartford to learn about Civics, the American Revolution, and Mark Twain. I am super excited.

If you are a teacher interested in (mostly) funded PD travel, subscribe to Lillie’s newsletter. Every month she highlights these types of teacher travel opportunities.

I’m tacking a day or two on each trip to do what I always do when traveling in the US: go to a baseball game and/or run a race.

For the past couple of decades, I’ve been slowly nurturing my goal to run a race in every state. I have no timeline on this quest, so it’s a very slow-moving goal. Especially these days, as I live in the northwest corner of the country and have already knocked out most of the states west of the Mississippi.

This is not a particularly cool goal. Many runners have checked off full marathons in every state. I’ve even read about someone who ran a Boston Qualifying Marathon in all 50 states. I can’t even do that in ONE state.¹ For my purposes, any little 5K counts.

I love this goal because:

• I often end up in small, random cities and off-the-beaten-path towns that I never would have thought about visiting if I hadn’t gone looking for a race.

• Small community races are the perfect place to meet locals.

• Races often take runners through the most scenic parts of a city or community, so sometimes you get to see a lot of sights along the way (this is more true for big city marathons and 1/2 marathons)

• It’s fun to do the same thing in every single state, for comparative purposes

This can be a challenging goal because:

• Most races take place on weekends. So even if I’m going on a 10-day vacation, I can usually only squeeze in 1 race.

• Packing extra running clothes and shoes challenges my carry-on-only packing strategy.

• Small town races on Sunday mornings are often not on public transportation routes, necessitating ride shares or car rentals.

• Sometimes there isn’t enough time to run and then get back to the hotel for a shower before flying home. In this case, I usually pay the day rate at a local gym, which isn’t cheap.

A lesson to teach: A clickable map

I’ve long wanted a place where I can record all the states I’ve raced in.

I have records of races scattered across old blogs, physical calendars, and my sketchy memory. I recently found a website where I can customize a map with links, notes, and colors. I had too much fun putting everything together and remembering trips from the past couple of decades.

While I was at it, I decided to record baseball games too. I don’t currently have a goal to attend a baseball game in every state, but who knows what the future will bring? There isn’t an MLB stadium in every state, but I also love the minor leagues. I suppose I’ll have to cultivate a love of college ball if I want to really get to every state.

Green: I’ve been to the state, but no races or baseball games were experienced

Light Pink: Just a race

Light Purple: Just a baseball game

Dark pink/purple: Ran a race AND went to a baseball game

Light gray: Haven’t even been to the state

To do: Run a race in all those green, light purple, and gray states.

You may have noticed that you cannot click on each state and see all notes and links about all the baseball and running I’ve done in that state. That is because the embed code didn’t work. Sigh.

In case you want to make a clickable map for your classroom, I was going to recommend this website. It was super easy to create the map, add notes, color-code the states, save your work and return to it later. The faulty embed code didn’t work for me though, so what you see above is just a screen shot. It could be user error though, so…maybe give it a try? I’ve never had an embedding problem though. Just sayin.’

If you are an analog person, I’d recommend printing out a blank map from this website, posting it on your classroom wall, and then every time you learn about a new country or state, color it in. During my homeschool era (aka, spring 2020), I read my kids picture books from around the world and we’d color in each country (or state) and add a summary of each book as we went.

A book to read: BETTER, FASTER, FARTHER: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women by Maggie Mertens

My favorite Maggie Mertens post from My So-Called Feminist Life is when she interviews Dave Berri about women’s sports. They discuss the WNBA, the economics of sports (why the whole “the WNBA doesn’t make a profit” line is ridiculous), and how the song Take Me Out to the Ball Game is a feminist anthem. Read all about it right here:

A Sports Economist Tells the Trolls They're Wrong About Women's Sports

But this interview isn’t the only brilliant thing from Maggie Mertens. Her whole newsletter is feminist gold, as is her book: BETTER, FASTER, FARTHER: how Running Changed Everything We Know About Women

Picture by me, in front of Seattle’s Elliot Bay Bookstore

Maggie Mertens documents the history of men discouraging/forbidding women to run. At every turn of the track, women were told “NO!” It was claimed that women collapsed in exhausted heaps after running a mere half mile. Women were told that running would strip them of their future ability to carry babies. Women’s World Records were ignored or not officially recorded. When Bobbi Gibb wanted to run the Boston Marathon in 1966, her parents sent her to a psychiatrist.²

Women were finally allowed to run the 800-meter, then the mile, then the marathon. But they were are assured by society that they will never, ever, ever be faster than men. It is biologically impossible.

Perhaps it’s time to stop believing such assurances.

Mertens writes:

“Today, the mile world records between men and women are less than 25 seconds apart. The 100-meter records are less than one second apart…According to UltraRunning magazine, around thirty ultramarathons in North America are won by women every year.”

In 2019 Jasmin Paris smashed the course record of UK’s Spine Race (268 miles with 37,000 feet in elevation gain), which included her pumping breast milk at aide stations along the way. Mertens writes about how, in 2023, a man won the race: “the host makes a flub: he says the winner, Damian Hall, has set a new course record. But, in fact he’s only set a record for the men.”

If you are inspired to start running ultramarathons after reading BETTER, FASTER, FARTHER, be sure to check out Sarah Lavender Smith’s newsletter.

Happy teaching, traveling, and reading! See y’all next Sunday.

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1. I tried once, but I fell off my 8:12 mile pace around mile 20 and basically crawled the last 6 miles. A Boston qualifying 3:35 marathon is not in the cards for me. This is fine. As long as I can still run pain-free, I’m happy.

2. Check out GIRL RUNNING, a picture book biography about Bobbi’s Boston Marathon run.