Meet the runner who tackled every single road in Sioux Falls

Bailey Vande Griend wrote a love letter to Sioux Falls.

Kind of.

More like, he ran a love letter to Sioux Falls. Over the past two years, Vande Griend has run every part of every road within city limits. That’s 2,402 streets and – because he had to run out and back on some – more than 4,000 miles.

This week, he did one last 6-mile run from his house on the west side, and that was it.

Vande Griend, 24, ran cross-country in high school and at Dordt College.

“For a long time, running for me was just competing, and I just ran to be fast,” Vande Griend said. “After college, this project came to me in kind of an identity crisis, just trying to see what I want to get out of this, my favorite hobby. Did I still want to compete? Did I want to be fast? I didn’t have a plan, but I just knew I wanted to keep running.”

At the time, he lived in an apartment near Veterans Parkway and 26th Street, and he tried to run all the streets near there. But he found that to get to new streets, the runs had to get longer and longer, so he started driving to new streets.

Then, he found the CityStrides website and began tracking his runs — here’s the link to his progress. “I thought, if I’m going to keep running, I should give myself a goal. I’ve always wanted to see Sioux Falls, and this is one way to do it.”

He ran everything.

“There is a wide variety,” he said. “Not every road is just through a neighborhood. In the northeast, you’re running through the highly industrial area, and there are no sidewalks. I ran the roads near the airport. Some gravel roads in town. Some roads are classified as roads, but they feel like private drives.”

There were quirks along the way.

For one, on a lonely road near 57th Street and Six Mile Road, a resident drove up alongside Vander Griend and demanded to see his map to prove he was on a city street and wasn’t trespassing.

There were areas with no sidewalks. Streets that weren’t plowed. Many, many dogs – from a particularly aggressive chihuahua to one run where six dogs barked at him – near Highway 38 on the west side of the city.

Up near Kiwanis Avenue and 60th Street North, a Rottweiler and a German shepherd barked as he went by, but when he backtracked, they sat at the edge of their driveway, appearing to wait for him. Vander Griend said he was a little freaked out, so he flagged down a driver and begged a ride – just past the driveway and the dogs.

He cut his ankle sinking into ice and snow near the Amazon fulfillment site. He ran through ditches, came to dead ends and navigated traffic and construction.

Anyone setting out on this kind of goal is bound to encounter challenges, and Vande Griend knew that would happen. But he also experienced the beauty of the city in ways that surprised him.

“At the beginning, I was just running from my apartment. I didn’t imagine I would do every single road.”

Vande Griend grew up on the east side of Sioux Falls, but he said the runs made him fall in love with the west side. “That’s my favorite part in general,” he said. “There were a lot of parts of Sioux Falls I wouldn’t have seen otherwise if I hadn’t been intentional to go run them.”

He and his wife moved to a house on the west side during the project, and he hadn’t run much in that area. “I didn’t buy the house just to finish this goal, though my wife likes to say that’s why we chose this one.”

While he has a ton of funny – and not so funny – stories about runs, he also has a quiet appreciation for the city and said many memories are just of running and thinking how pleasant an area is or how beautiful.

“I ran most of the roads near McKennan Park right when it was fall. When you just drive through, along 26th Street, you don’t get to go in and see how nice the houses are and how beautiful the trees are when they change color.”

He noticed things like the quality of the sidewalks in various areas, the different styles of houses, how the city is laid out from the rigid grids in the center to more convoluted streets in other areas.

“And then there are things like little ponds and lakes that if you’re just driving, you don’t see,” he said.

A favorite area was in eastern Sioux Falls between Madison and Maple streets. “There is a super nice neighborhood, and you can see a lot of the city over there. I could go over the whole map and see spots like that.”

On one run he noted: “Green grass, blue sky, cool breeze. Felt like I was running in a Windows screen saver.”

The project took him places he likely never would have gone to before, he said.

“A lot of the routes I’m running, you would never run them if you weren’t going out of your way to do them. You do see a lot of people you wouldn’t see otherwise.”

It also kept him running outside more – just to knock down more streets. An average run was 7 miles, but they ranged from 4 to 16 miles. He’s looking forward to having to think a little less about his running route and just step outside from his house.

Vande Griend grew up in a baseball and basketball family, but he discovered cross-country in high school. “I think the running community is just the healthiest and the best to be around. They are such great people. There’s no better place than running.”

He said he never would have believed he could accomplish something like this. “I was not good at all when I started.”

And now he knows the city inside and out. “I just wanted to see everything that Sioux Falls has. I love Sioux Falls. I think it’s a great place to live.”

“There were a lot of runs that were more of a pain than I expected,” he said. “It’s definitely a one-and-done kind of thing, but I’m glad I did it.”