1,100 Miles Later, D.C. Man Rests

Runner Touches Every City Street

Runner Michael Bryant, 41, charts his mileage and plans his next path using an oversize map and log book. (By Sarah L. Voisin -- The Washington Post)

Michael Bryant is a serial procrastinator when his to-do list includes repairing his basement or building a deck for his back yard or even finishing graduate school.

But Bryant does not mess around when it comes to the important stuff -- such as running all of Washington's 1,100 miles of public streets, including its freeways, military bases, college campuses and 10 cemeteries.

Not even the sweltering 94-degree heat stopped him Monday night when he embarked on what he said was the last of the 280 runs it took to complete his three-year quest to jog the entire city.

"It's almost cathartic," said Bryant, 41, standing at the starting point for the final run, 13th and C streets SE, the air thick. He quickly qualified his enthusiasm: "As long as you don't overdo it and kill yourself."

In the realm of quixotic obsessions, Bryant's urban marathon might be singular, although not entirely unprecedented, at least for him. In 2002, he completed his first odyssey, running home to his Northwest rowhouse from each of Metro's 83 stations.

It was when he finished that two-year journey that the computer systems administrator hatched his next one. It has taken him from Georgetown to Congress Heights, from the sweeping green vistas of Rock Creek Park to the hold-your-nose stench of the Blue Plains sewage plant in Southwest.

"I didn't know it smelled so bad," Bryant said. "Had to go twice."

The reasons for his journeys were simple. He hoped to give himself a purpose for exercise beyond mere sweat and strain. And he also wanted to see the city in its entirety, not just the familiar stretch from his Mount Pleasant home to his Capitol Hill office.

"You can live here your whole life, you know the museums, the theaters, the restaurants, and you still only see 5 percent of the city," he said. "If you want to see the whole thing, you have to make the conscious effort."

A log of his trips -- including Bolling Air Force Base and the Southeast-Southwest Freeway -- fill a red spiral notebook in which he has scrawled every street he traveled, as well as a few unusual sights and sounds along the way.

"Come on, white boy, run a little faster," one man yelled at him as he ran along South Dakota Avenue NE a couple of years ago, according to the log.

"Why is your booty showing so much?" yelled another as he jogged through another neighborhood a few days later.