Michael Ragsdale braves the elements Sunday, Feb. 14 for a bone-chilling run around Marshfield.
A Valentines message written in the roads: Ragsdale took to the streets Feb. 14 to spread a little love.
Pictured is a hammer which appears to have its head aimed toward the old city pool. Ragsdale mapped out the route before running it to create the street drawing.
Ragsdale skips the streets for a run at the track. The Marshfield teacher has always found a way to put a creative spin on his endeavors
As a teacher at Webster Elementary, Michael Ragsdale is no stranger to setting goals. After all, it was the school's motto last year. While Ragsdale had always ran after college, he began to take it more seriously about 5 years ago.
"When Webster had the main idea of setting goals last year, I decided I was going to set a goal of running 1,000 miles in a school year," he said. 9 months."
Enter COVID-19. According to Ragsdale, the impact of the coronavirus sent him into a sort of depression due to drastic changes in routine and sense of normality. However, that's when he began to push toward his goal even more.
"When I finished the 1,000 mile goal I needed something else," Ragsdale said. "I started following this guy who ran every street in San Fransisco and I thought well... I don't have a big city like that but let's see if I can run every street in Marshfield."
By the summer, Ragsdale had completed his inital thousand mile goal and completed the task of running every street in the city limits of Marshfield. As he was posting the completed roadmaps on social media, he noticed the accuracy of the tracking in the lines he was creating as he ran.
"I started wondering if I could turn that into shapes or objects so I took a map of Marshfield, flipped it, rotated it and started seeing images within the streets," he added. "From there it just took off."
For those who know Michael Ragsdale, this artistic side is nothing new for him. In addition to his teaching career, he's a self-published author of a cartoon character named Ace the Donkey.
"Ace the Donkey is a character I created that's a complete play on words," he said. "I was doing these little doodles here and there and I've always been inspired by wordplay so I took the original term for a donkey and I drew him in a hole, then on a jack..."
Ace the Donkey lives out his adventures among the pages of a humor categorized cofee table book, which is available at Ragzillo.com.
"I thought of every word with that root word and tried to create one a week for a year. I got that plus 10 and I'm still coming up with some as we speak," said Ragsdale. "I'll actually have another series called Ace and Friends coming out soon."
For more of Ragsdale's art - map or book, find him on Instagram @ragzillo. Who knows, maybe Ace will make an appearance on the streets of Marshfield someday.
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