When Steven Page’s typical daily schedule as a music educator became disrupted in March by the quarantine due to COVID-19, he decided to use his time wisely.
After hearing an NPR story about a man who had walked every street in New York City, Page decided that with the time allowed by an altered school schedule, he could embark on a mission to see every road in his hometown of Paducah.
He didn’t take the easy way out by driving every street as springtime bloomed. Already a dedicated runner with countless 5Ks, half marathons, and marathons completed, Page decided to explore Paducah on foot, since traveling to new cities to run races was off limits during the pandemic.
In went the earbuds as he put one foot in front of the other. As he ran, he listened to podcasts and enjoyed some time to himself, apart from teaching middle school choir and band or parenting his eight children. Plus, running was the perfect social distanced sport.
As he began, he tried to figure out the best way to document his journey. He thought about using Google Maps—an app that’s already on most phones—to record the journey, but the app didn’t allow him to create a route and mark off the city roads.
So, he went old school: a map from the Greater Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce.
He marked the streets off the paper map and recorded the miles in his Strava app to keep an accurate record.
He began documenting the journey through photos on Facebook and Instagram and used the hashtag #RunPaducah2020 to encourage others to join his quest to see his hometown.
On April 20th, he wrote on his Facebook page that the Information Age Park is technically in the city limits and had 5.5 miles of road to run. On May 23rd, he wrote that he had completed 75 percent of his goal to #RunPaducah2020. One of his observations that day, “There are a lot of teenagers outside making TIkTok videos.”
On June 18th, he was 90 percent finished. He observed then, “There are so many great parts of Paducah. I feel like I know the city now.”
His final post about #RunPaducah2020 came on August 3rd when he completed his quest. The mileage result: 750 miles of pavement in Paducah.
“I’m sure there’s not 700 miles of roads in Paducah,” he said, noting that many of his runs started at his house near the Coke Plant, so he had to run extra miles to reach some of the destinations, such as neighborhoods in Farley. “So [it was] a nine-mile run, but only one mile of it was actual new roads.”
Normally around the beginning of August, Page would have already been back at school to prep for the upcoming year as a choir teacher and band director at Heath Middle School.
“I’ve made the most of this time, though, and I’m in better shape than I’ve ever been,” Page wrote on his Facebook page. “Thanks be to God for no injuries and a family that has let me spend so much time on the road (and the trails!).”
After he completed the trek, he reflected on how he accomplished it.
Along his journey, he discovered more about his hometown. He found three or four gravel roads that are technically city roads.
“On the map, they look like a road, but they’re gravel,” he said. “There are two or three places that appeared on the map, and then when you get there, you can tell that the roads have been overgrown and covered up. There were some places in Littleville that appear on a map, but there’s not a road there. If you dug down in the dirt, you might find some asphalt, but it’s been a long time since it’s been a real road.”
Page discovered beauty in the neighborhoods, as people who found themselves at home during quarantine channeled their energies into landscaping and home improvement. And he saw neighborhoods that he only knew about from driving through but not really stopping and noticing the subtle architecture or beauty.
One of those areas is behind Morgan Elementary School, where he discovered several nicely kept houses. He also explored Forest Hills, near WPSD. He also found a cut-through route between Littleville and Robert Coleman Park.
“You can go under that overpass, and there’s the old Beasley Monuments Building,” he said. “And then right across from there are a couple of really cool-looking old houses that I’ve never noticed.”
Besides Paducah’s beauty, he noticed how friendly everyone is. People waved at him while he ran.
“Every time I would run past someone who was out at the grill, I would yell to them that I would be right back,” he said. “And they would always shout, ‘Come on back.’”
Page has shared his #RunPaducah2020 routes on the Paducah.travel blog, which includes a 6-mile loop from the Coke Plant, down Jefferson Street, and to the riverfront and back; an 8-mile loop from the Coke Plant to Jefferson, over to the Greenway Trail, and to the riverfront and back; and a 10-mile loop from the Coke Plant to 29th Street and looping around the city from the Beltline area into downtown and back out.
Page has not always been a runner, though. He began running in 2009 after his wife, Shana, trained for and ran a 5K. He saw her elation and thought to himself that running wouldn’t be too difficult for him because he had been athletic in his youth.
“I think I barely survived,” he said, chuckling. “But then, over the course of the next month or two, I got myself up to a 5K and then eventually got to where I could do a 10K. Within a year, I thought, ‘Well, I can do a half marathon.’ And then after another year, I thought, ‘I’m going to try to do a full marathon.’ So I’ve done 14 marathons, but I’m definitely not going to try to do more than that.”
Now 11 years into his running journey, he’s not ready to give up yet, and he encourages others to #RunPaducah2020.
“There’s so many cool parts of town that I think people don’t know about,” he said.
And exploring all that the city of Paducah has to offer is time well spent these days.
