New York City resident Todd Aydelotte has come up with an inventive way to make long runs in the city interesting: Turn them into a history lesson.

It started about two years ago, when he started running longer distances. Inspired by ultrarunners like Tommy Rivers Puzey and Timothy Olson, who seem to run wild, free, and connected to the land, Aydelotte wanted to bring that to his own runs. But running in canyons and near streams is not easily feasible in the concrete jungle.

Aydelotte needed to find a different way to motivate himself to go farther and distract himself from the pain that comes with running 50 or 60 miles.

When 8 to 12 laps around Central Park got too tedious, he had a revelation. He has always been a huge history buff, so he thought, “Why not combine running and history?”

Now, he does just that and tracks all his runs—and their historical significance—on Instagram.

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To prepare for his runs, Aydelotte trains his mind. He takes capturing the history very seriously, and spends hours in libraries and online arming himself with extraordinary amounts of research. He then documents the runs on his Instagram page with annotated notes of each destination’s significance.

“The way I train is to study, to read, and soak myself into the history,” Aydelotte told Runner’s World. “It’s a way to take running and push it into an area of meditation and intellectualism that inspires me.”

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On January 10th, 2019, he embarked on a 74-mile journey inspired by inventor Nikola Tesla. Tesla, a scientist at the turn of the twentieth century, believed that energy surrounds us, and there are ways for humans to access this energy. This big belief is the metaphor that drove Aydelotte’s run. He decided to hit the locations in NYC that honored Tesla, ending at the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe on Long Island, the site of Tesla’s last existing laboratory.

This run took about 17 and a half hours, including stops at two diners—the first for a late-night burger and the second for a big breakfast—and two laundromats, which he calls the secret to his running success during frigid weather. He pops in and dries his clothes off, warms up, then keeps going.

He has also completed routes following Barnum & Bailey Circus founder PT Barnum’s career, pivotal moments from Theodore Roosevelt’s time as NYC police commissioner, and the journey through the streets of New York as depicted in the film The Warriors.

Research isn’t the only way he preps for runs. Aydelotte also examines topographical maps to prepare himself for the terrain, and ensure his routes aren’t full of unexpected hills. He also analyzes crime heat maps, too, since he often runs through the night through areas that may be less safe. He won’t avoid a high-crime area, but said he wants to be aware of what he’s running through.

Aydelotte’s favorite run over the past two years followed the infamous “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz. But instead of focusing on Berkowitz, his route paid tribute to the victims instead. He ran 59 miles, and traced all of the shooting sites, but spent months researching the victims to learn more about them before taking off on the run.



Currently, he is preparing to do a 40-mile, five-borough ultra, which he calls “Slavery in New York,” to honor Black History Month. The run, which he will start today, kicks off at Sandy Ground in Staten Island, which is one of the oldest, free Black settlements in the United States.

Jordan Smith Digital Editor Her love of all things outdoors came from growing up in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and her passion for running was sparked by local elementary school cross-country meets.

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