Man who ran down every single DC street shares his favorite things about the city

Dion Thompson-Davoli has seen every sidewalk, row house and neighborhood in D.C., after he finished running down each of the 1,838 streets in the city Friday.

Dion Thompson-Davoli finished his final street in the early morning hours when the heat and humidity were brutal.

“By the time I was done with my last one, it must have been almost 90 degrees,” Thompson-Davoli told WTOP. “I was soaked through my shoes, which is just the worst when you’re jogging and your feet are squelching against the ground.”

He started the challenge two years ago after downloading an app called CityStrides, which tracks your running paths in your city, and quickly ran every street in Takoma Park, Maryland, the city where he lived.

He then crossed into D.C.

It took until my very last day here, but as of this morning I have run every single street of the nation’s capital. All 1,838 of them pic.twitter.com/rmVH507loc

— Dion (@2024dion) July 5, 2024

“It was a lot of fun. It was a great way to see the city,” Thompson-Davoli said.

In a typical week, he would log 10 to 12 miles of new road. The only roads he did not complete were interstates and the street where former President Barack Obama resides, which was blocked off by Secret Service.

Over his 2-year-long challenge, he had a few takeaways of the District.

“D.C. is a beautiful city. It’s just a city of neighborhoods, really more than anywhere else I’ve ever lived. There is nothing to Washington more than downtown, and then a succession of really gorgeous neighborhoods,” said Thompson-Davoli, suggesting that he may be one of the only people to have ever gone down every street on foot.

He also said the city had more hills than he was expecting, which were not a pleasant feature for someone planning to run the nearly 2,000 miles of road.

But he admitted it does provide some beautiful scenic overlooks, such as Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast, where “you can look down the hill and see the monuments from a distance,” or upper Connecticut Avenue in Northwest.

“(It’s) just a city full of friendly people. People are sitting out on their porches, they’ll wave at you as you go by, kids will say ‘hi’ to you, or want to jog with you for a little bit, which was always fun,” he said.

Some of his favorite neighborhoods to run were Northwest D.C.’s Palisades and Spring Valley.

“There’s some gorgeous historic home architecture on the far west side of the city that is really worth your time,” he said.

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