Meet Michael: the man who ran every single Glasgow street

What started as a lockdown exercise notion ended today almost 1500 miles, or 2325 km, later, roughly the same distance from Glasgow to Moscow.

Michael Shanks started venturing into unfamiliar territory on his runs, when lockdown hit in March 2020, during his daily exercise period.

He then had the idea to run all over Glasgow inspired by an American runner who was doing every street in his city.

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Since then, he has run along every single one of Glasgow 6143 streets, using a web app to track and record every run.

Michael, a modern studies teacher at Park Mains School, in Erskine, ran the city often in 10k segments, posting progress and landmarks on twitter, but sometimes longer.

He ran on all the main streets, the big famous streets and sought out the smallest, shortest and hardest to find streets, to get to his target.

He ran up to all the streets with boundaries with East and West Dunbartonshire, Renfrewshire and East Renfrewshire North and South Lanarkshire.

Housing estates, industrial estates, parks and pathways, his trainers have pounded them all.

If you live in Glasgow, Michael has run past your home at some point in his quest. You may have seen him and thought he was just another runner out training for a race or keeping fit, but your street was one more ticked on the way to covering the entire city.

Michael finished his final segment in George Square today in front of the City Chambers where some friends were there to greet him.

He said it included every street, every road, avenue and lane in the city, that has a name.

Michael said: “It started as a use of the exercise we had in the first lockdown when you were allowed out once a day, that was when I started.

“I started exploring my own neighbourhood a bit more, just running round streets I hadn’t been on before.

“Then I discovered an athlete in America, Rickey Gates, who had run every single street in San Francisco and he’d mapped it out and ticked them off and I thought that sounded like a good adventure.”

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He doesn’t have a favourite street, or if he does, he is not revealing it.

Instead, he said: “There are some areas I really liked, running in more than others like Garthamlock which has a lot of lanes in and outof places. A problem is if you run on a dead end street you’ve got to run all the way back out of it and you do twice the distance but places like Garthamlock and Craigend have wee lanes that connect them up so that was good.

“The city is full of nice streets.”

With the amount of building work going on in Glasgow there have been some where his progress was thwarted.

Michael added: “There were some that were inaccessible, so some of them I just asked if I could nip in and run the street which usually gets a strange reaction, others I had to wait for them to be finished because a lot of the city is still being built.”

As well as new streets there are old ones, that once were  busy but are now deserted.

He said: “There are a lot of ghost streets as well, where they were streets once upon a time and still have street lights and street signs but actually have no houses, so Easterhouse for example is full of streets that don’t exist anymore but are still actually there . They are really interesting to run as well.

“I’m very much an amateur runner. I’m not in the same category as Ricky Gates. I’m a teacher by day so I was running after school.”

People ask him ‘why?’ His answer is simple.

He said: “It’s an adventure about exploring where you live, I used to go running round the exact  same place every day and I realised I didn’t really know a lot about my own community. It’s a good way to find out about where you live.”

As well as the running and staying fit, being a teacher, it is not a surprise to find out there is an academic element to Michael’s adventure.

He has been researching the social history of parts of the city and specific streets as he ticked them off.

He said: “The history bit has been the most interesting in a way. The plan is to concentrate on a few key stories from people living in streets today, then go back through the history of the street.”

He said one example is Kennedy Drive in Govan, looking at the history, with Mary Barbour the rent strike campaigner, and speaking to who lives there now.

He is keen for anyone with stories about their own street to get in touch.