SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) – What better way to get to know your state than by running it street by street?
Bryant Heath, 35, grew up in Texas and has lived in Sugarhouse, Utah for around 10 years.
Heath tells ABC4 he moved to Utah after he was done with school for an engineering job, and has since made Utah his home.
Back in late 2019, Heath was looking at a Google map when he noticed how little of Salt Lake City he had actually seen in his 10 years spent in the state.
During his time spent in the city, he says he stuck to his neighborhood, venturing into downtown Salt Lake City now and then, but never really going far.
He wanted to get out and see more of the great Beehive State, so he decided to log his miles for running and explore the city.
He began by running every street of Salt Lake City for a total of 994 miles. He says this goal started as a New Year’s Resolution in 2020, and he was able to finish the streets of Salt Lake City at the end of December 2020.
He then moved to Millcreek and ran 299 miles. He says he started in January 2021 and finished in April.
Heath tells ABC4 he loves to run or walk because it allows him to see things he otherwise wouldn’t be able to if he were buzzing by it in a car.
He says his back-to-normal runs “all seemed so boring now.” He wanted to continue to branch out his exploring, so he decided to run the streets of Utah’s rural areas.
The first city he visited outside Salt Lake County was Fairview, the hometown of Governor Spencer Cox. He says he didn’t know much about Fairview other than it was Gov. Cox’s stomping grounds.
He ran the 20.5 miles in Fairview this last week. He was even retweeted by Gov. Cox when he shared the news of his run.
“If I can explore locally, lets see if I can expand this out and see if I can go to each county and run a town in each county,” Heath shares with ABC4. He says he wants to “explore more broadly the entirety of the state.”
“It kinda reminds me of the small town my grandparents lived in small town West Texas,” Heath says of his run through Fairview.
While he was running, he says it reminded him of the time he spent with his grandparents. “More sentimental than I expected it to be,” Heath shares of his run.
Looking forward, Heath says he has received a lot of suggestions from Utah residents on areas of the state he should run and says he plans to check them out.
As he continues to explore the state, he will share where he is going and what he finds on his Instagram account.
