Running Every Single Street in San Francisco with Rickey Gates

Wild Ideas Worth Living

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4.7 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Rickey Gates is a professional athlete and endurance runner known for redefining what it means to explore on foot. After racing at an elite level, he ran 3,700 miles across America and later completed every street in San Francisco. Nearly seven years later, Rickey is tackling his latest challenge: identifying and running 50 Classic Trails across North America. His adventures go beyond distance—they are a way for him to explore, connect, and see the world in a whole new light.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Professional athlete Ricky Gates isn't your typical runner.
0:11.4	While he started his career racing at an elite level, he's always dreamed of crossing huge landscapes at his own pace.
0:19.1	Ricky is now making those dreams a reality.
0:22.2	In 2017, he ran 3,700 miles across America.
0:27.0	The following year, he spent a month and a half running every single street in San Francisco.
0:32.9	How many miles of streets are there in San Francisco?
0:36.4	And I just Googled it right then and there.
0:38.6	And it just came up immediately, 1,173 miles of street in San Francisco.
0:44.6	I'm like, oh, that's like going from Denver to San Francisco on foot.
0:49.7	Like, that took me six weeks or seven weeks.
0:52.0	Like, I think I can do that here.
0:56.1	Ricky completed that project almost seven years ago.
0:59.6	And now he's taking on a new challenge, identifying and running 50 classic trails in North America.
1:07.1	As with all of Ricky's endeavors, this wild idea is about more than the miles.
1:12.4	It's a way for him to explore, connect, and see the world in a whole new light.
1:17.6	I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production,
1:23.9	presented by Capital One and the REI Co-Op Mastercard.
1:31.3	Thank you. presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard. Ricky Gates, welcome to wild ideas worth living.
1:34.7	You are a man of many, many wild ideas.
1:38.3	What about running Lord Yuan?
1:40.3	Like, you could have been a soccer player,
1:42.8	you could have been a motorcycle rider, you could have been a motorcycle rider, you could
	...

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