Brooklyn's Blogging Jogger is NOT Quitting

We were a little dismayed when we read this story saying that Gary Jarvis, who had just past the halway point in his quest to run every street in Brooklyn, was giving up. (The original headline was "Runner quits, ends his Brooklyn dream".) The article quoted Mr. Jarvis as saying that he was "lazy." We knew from emails that Mr. Jarvis was planning to take a short break from the grueling routine before setting out on the second half of his runs, but he had not mentioned anything about quitting. Mr. Jarvis makes it official on his wonderful blog, Runs Brooklyn: No way he's quitting. He is taking some time to allow his body to heal, but he will be off and running the rest of Brooklyn's streets and doing his superb photography and wonderful blog in the process. Here's what Mr. Jarvis--who has been producing an incredible collection of Brooklyn photographs as he runs--has to say:

Seriously, I wasn't going to post anything for another couple of days, but I found myself compelled to pass along the following:

1) I am not mortally injured, and
2) I still plan on resuming this whole running thing.

A few days ago, I was surprised to receive a phone call from a reporter at the New York Post asking me to verify whether or not I was, in fact, abandoning my plan to run all the streets of Brooklyn. I of course replied in the negative, and went on to explain that I'm merely taking some time off to rest up and heal a bit. And while I hadn't really thought about it prior to talking with this guy, after our conversation I realized that there were indeed a few hints here and there that might lead people to this (quite erroneous) conclusion.

Some of the confusion, of course, probably has its origins in my predilection for self-deprecatory rhetoric, and my apparent fondness for endlessly writing about the various aches and pains I've encountered and my general physical decrepitude. (When reading back through the archived posts, in fact, I was struck by the frequency with which I engaged in this sort of grousing. Yikes!)

But some of the rest might be traced to brief mentions in two relatively small local media outlets. First, a couple of weeks ago the Brooklyn Paper (a free weekly distributed to "bulk drop" locations throughout the borough's more upscale neighborhoods) ran this short piece which, though I didn't seem to notice at the time, does offer a somewhat distorted version of things. It calls me an "Iowa native," for instance, even though the "About Me" box at the very top of this blog clearly states that I'd moved to Brooklyn after "thirty years in New Jersey and another ten in Iowa." Moreover, the piece seems to imply that I might not even run the second half because I didn't think things all the way through, or simply because I'm "too lazy."

We hadn't emailed Mr. Jarvis to ask if it was true, because we assumed he would deal with the story in due course. (We did not from previous correspondence that the grind was wearing him down, particularly the planning needed to his every street in the borough, and that he was looking forward to a short break.) In any case, Mr. Jarvis has now clearly spoken. We look forward to all of the great blog items and cool photos to come.