Hi friends! On Saturday, I was up early for a fun adventure: a sunrise running tour of DC.
My friend Derek, who works in Brand Communications for Brooks, was in town for the Marine Corps Marathon weekend festivities. As you guys know, I’m a Brooks Run Happy Blogger Ambassador, and Derek has been with us on all of the Brooks blogger trips I’ve been on. When I found out he’d be in town this weekend, we made plans to meet up – for a run, of course! This was his very first time in DC (he lives in Seattle), so I knew I wanted to show him a bunch of my favorite sights via our running shoes. Derek had to work at the race expo for Brooks starting at 9 on Saturday, so we decided to meet up at 7 a.m. (oof) at Iwo Jima Memorial, just as the sun was beginning to rise.
Iwo Jima is where both the Marine Corps Marathon and the Marine Corps 10k would finish the next day, and it was already getting set up for the festivities. Derek was running the 10k so it was a nice little preview/heads up about the course’s uphill finish!
I planned out one of my favorite monument/scenery-tastic 6 mile loops for us to do, and we set off towards Memorial Bridge and from there, ran down along the Mt. Vernon trail. Nothing beats this trail at sunrise – the views are always gorgeous.
By the time we left the trail and ran over the 14th street bridge, the sunrise was amazing. What a treat – hadn’t seen one of these for awhile!
Our next stop was a visit to the Jefferson Memorial, including a selfie, of course. Excuse our squinty/half asleep eyes. 🙂
From there, we ran around the tidal basin to the MLK Memorial.
The trees down around the National Mall are starting to change – love those reds!
We ran around the Washington Monument and down the National Mall, then up into the city to his hotel near Metro Center. By the time we got there, we had covered just over 6 miles. I was considering hopping in a cab back to my car at Iwo Jima, but I was feeling so good and enjoying the run and beautiful weather so much that I decided, what the heck – I’ll just run on back!
After saying goodbye to Derek, I forged on back to the mall, over to Lincoln and the reflecting pool…
And then over Memorial Bridge and back up to Iwo Jima.
I ran right through the finish line for the races the next day, which was fun. 🙂
I ended up covering 9.3 miles. Wow! Unintentional long run – those are the best. Love those days where you are randomly just really feeling it!
Derek went on to win 3rd place (amazing, right?!!?) in the MCM 10k the next day (pace: 5:29 min/miles – insane)! Guess our shake out run was good luck. 😉 Congrats, Derek!!!
As for the rest of the weekend, it was nice and low key! I enjoyed a post-run feast with Matt at home before spending the rest of the day relaxing.
I went out to dinner with some girlfriends on Saturday night, then met up with Matt and friends to carve pumpkins. Here’s mine – “Captain Kitty.” 😉
Yesterday was low key, too – Matt and I took a nice long morning walk, then spent some time going through and getting rid of old clothes. Last night, we went out to dinner with my mom. Solid weekend – felt nice to be home after so much travel lately!
Have a great day, everyone! 🙂
If you ran the MCM or MCM 10k, how did it go?! I really want to do that race some year… bucket list!
Who else carved pumpkins this weekend? What did you carve?
