I spent the summer after my freshman year in college on the New Jersey shore working in a gourmet cheese shop, living with the owner and her family and a college friend. That summer is a blur of physical activity of bicycling in a fury to be on time for my shifts, splitting massive wheels of Jarlsberg and building arm strength for the first time and cool night walks past the pastel beach houses. The whirlwind of cheese, cash registers, rich New Yorkers, babies, dogs, sand, and old and new friends washes over the few memories I have of running. I know I must have been running, because I was tan and fit enough for my mom to say I looked like a teen model when I got off the plane in August. I do remember reading trashy novels on the beach and getting sand in my Discman, listening to my friend as she wrestled with which school to transfer to and dancing around the living room to The Eagles with the family’s new baby. Sometimes running is the most memorable part of an experience. Sometimes it is the simplest.

Ohio was the second state I ran in and the first state I experimented with running as a way to relieve stress. I wouldn’t have called myself a runner when I attended Wittenberg University in Ohio but I knew people who were. I also needed running as something just for me. Running was a way to counteract both the gluttony of the cafeteria and the lack of personal space that comes with having a roommate for the first time. My freshman year roommate and I couldn’t have been more different. I was liberal, Madison Wisconsin, energized to major in East Asian Studies fresh from four years of Japanese language and a summer study abroad. My roommate was Cleveland suburbs, and her father had just been fired “because of a Japanese company.” In turn, her family wouldn’t let Japanese cars park in their driveway and didn’t understand my desire to learn a foreign language. We were in America and should speak American, she said. Needless to say she hated all the Japanese-made Hello Kitty stuff I lugged in, including a neon kitty face I posted over her bed. One morning I woke up to her mom blow-drying her hair at my bedside while my roommate whispered “don’t wake Katie.” It was the first time I woke up, got dressed, and went for a run with no steps, stretches or snacks in between. I did it because I had to get out. Since that day I’ve gotten up and gone for a run because it seemed like the only answer and the only thing I knew how to do. Running isn’t always the answer but it is the first step.

The first time I broke into a run was in the state of Wisconsin. I don’t remember my first 5K distance but I do remember building up to running slowly. I wasn’t on cross country or track so high school fitness, outside of tennis practice, was instead a gradual transition from walking to running, like the stages of man first striding with a Walkman to the today of sprinting with a cell phone. While Washington is where I became a runner, Wisconsin is where I learned to run.

One teacher’s winter vacation home from Seattle after recently running a half marathon I embarked on a five mile run in Madison. I was amazed at how much ground I could cover simply on my feet. In the bitter cold I ran through my old neighborhood past my childhood home on streets I had walked, ridden a bike, or driven on but never ran. To run on the blocks felt strange. I noticed hills I hadn’t noticed before. Blocks that I usually walked felt short on the run. Blocks that I usually drove on felt much longer. I’d lost my sense of measurement.

Ten years later I was home for a long run while training for a marathon. I had been looking forward to the run because while it was a long run, 12 miles, I could also cover a lot of miles and it was a taper week of training. Distances become relative when training for a marathon. I had mapped out a route that I could run home to my parents’ downtown condo. It was September and very cold when my mom dropped me off in what she considered a less than desirable neighborhood.  I think she asked if I had mace. A few miles in was the lovely fall country run I had intended, but after crossing a street I lost the trail. Lost, in my hometown, in a part of town that wasn’t home to me. When I finally made it home I posted on Facebook: “Last long run in Madison: Mom drops me off by the side of Verona road to run 12 miles on the Capitol City trail with the parting words, “do you have your mace and a small handgun?” I lose the trail and fight the blustery gales in 39 degrees on Fish Hatchery for several miles, eventually making it to the farmers market. Banana bread helps, but to those missed three miles: I will hunt you down and destroy you. Nobody messes with my training.”

Being lost in my hometown on an “easy” run pushed me over the edge. I told my mom that I could only do 9 instead of the 12 miles and started to cry. That’s the thing about being at home and running: it triggers your emotions in a way that just running, or just being at home, can’t.

Since that run I’ve been back to some of my favorite neighborhoods and old biking routes to run. I’ve run through the arboretum as the leaves fell listening to Streisand’s “Memories.”  I’ve even run a half marathon with my dad, he dressed as the Tin Man and me as Dorothy, red sequined sneakers and all because wherever the road takes you, there’s no place like home.

This story is not about a particularly amazing feat, physically or emotionally. But it is my story of achieving something big by doing many small things.  We want to “travel the world” which starts with one country. We want to “get in shape” which is the result of healthy, mindful habits. We want a “meaningful career” which for most people comes after a lot of trial and error. It doesn’t arrive to you one day. You arrive at it after years of showing up and trying a little harder than you did the day before.

I had the idea for this project sitting on my couch watching a documentary I rented from the library. That should tell you that you can begin to achieve great things by sitting on your couch. Dean Karnazes’ “Ultra Marathon Man” was the documentary. I followed Karnazes as he ran 50 marathons in all 50 states in 50 consecutive days. When I tell people the subject of the documentary I always pause before the “50 consecutive days” part.  Sometimes adding “wait for it.” The film follows Karnazes across the country with his family and team of icers, massage practitioners, cooks, and various other logistics peoples I cannot begin to comprehend. I don’t have this team of support nor do I have the physiological superpowers required to match his achievement. What I do have is time, interest, the will to always want to be able to run a 5K, and friends across the country.

I also wanted a way to intentionally travel, to keep the momentum going. And, there is something about touching the earth through running that connects you to a place in a way that other types of travel don’t. When you run you’re not walking through a museum, strolling the River Walk, or waiting at a Manhattan crosswalk, you’re experiencing the place in a different way because what you’re doing is a little bit hard. Or, sometimes, very difficult. Because you’re running your needs are more similar to the needs of a local than those of a tourist: how’s the weather, am I hungry, how does my body feel today, is this a safe area? Tourists think these things too but there’s a bigger agenda of pleasure. In 5k in 50 states the agenda was not pleasure, it was distance. Pleasure was the result of the distance.

The first ten states were unintentional, meaning that I know I have run in them and I can recall one or multiple times I ran a 5K distance or further but they were before I embarked on this project. For the first ten states I will describe the most memorable run or runs and what running in that state means to me.

Here’s the story of how I did something big by doing many small things.