Beau’s On the Run in Washington D.C.

Jen Beauchesne shared this Beau’s Beer Runners update about running in America’s Capital while training for the half-marathon in Canada’s Capital!

Every year craft brewers from North America and around the world come together for an annual education and networking event called the Craft Brewers Conference. Though easily mistaken for a beard and tattoo convention, it actually attracts more than 10,000 talented craft beer industry folks, and this year took place in Washington DC. Knowing that craft beer + running = Oh Yeah, a super-cool local Washington brewery called DC Brau sent out an invitation for a group run on the Tuesday morning of the conference. What better occasion for my brother Steve’s first group run? He had to get over his shyness first, of course.

The approx. 9K run took us path the Smithsonian Castle and some war memorials and around the Washington Monument and up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, which in turn had a pretty cool view…. of the Washington Monument. Almost like they planned it that way. But what are the chances of that?

Washington is both a cool and at times frustrating city to run it, at least The National Mall area we were in. The running paths are nice and wide and take you past some pretty stunning buildings and gardens, and even an old-timey carousel. But on the flip side there are many, many street crossings with super-long signal lights, so our group had to slow up and ‘take the walk’ at just about every intersection. Along the way there were options to add inclines and stairs up to monuments if you wanted to add some elevation. And we did.

About 45 minutes in, though, the heat and city air and dehydration of hotel life all caught up to me and I started to have trouble breathing, and dropped to the back of the pack all wheezy-like. Steve was running and chatting with some folks from Brewery Vivant (all the coolest breweries run too), but slowed down to check on me. I told him I wasn’t doing so great, and that I might have to kick it early. He laughed, told me we were almost done anyway, and then dumped his entire water bottle over-top of my head. I laughed, and then we finished the run.