It’s 5 a.m., and like most weekday mornings, I’m on my way to work, running along the Mississippi River from South Minneapolis to my office downtown with David Bowie serenading me through my earbuds. So far, my commute has felt very routine, and as someone who likes routines, I appreciate this. I’m thinking with some trepidation about what the day holds: a challenging 6 a.m. weight-lifting class and an afternoon call with my company’s regional manager about a difficult bridge analysis project that I am working on as a structural engineer. As my headlamp illuminates my billowing breath, though, I feel thankful that all of my body feels warm, considering the air temperature this morning is minus 18 degrees Fahrenheit. I start to worry that my oversize gloves will make it impossible to turn down my headlamp to avoid blinding oncoming pedestrians and cyclists. But this morning I end up having the river trail all to myself for the 6.2-mile run. I arrive at my building a little earlier than planned, after a relaxed 58-minute run.
Ten years ago, none of this would have felt routine, and temperatures anywhere near this cold would have had me choosing to drive downtown. Starting in 2015, I began running not just for exercise, but for transportation, including to work. Ten years of run-commuting have informed my thoughts on logistics, gear, benefits and challenges, and the types of trips for which this mode of transportation seems best suited. My goal here is to share some reflections that may be useful to the run-commute-curious.
Getting Started
My initial inspiration to begin run-commuting was finishing my first marathon in a not-exactly-fast time of 4 hours, 59 minutes and 29 seconds, as the 2015 Grandma’s Marathon online race results still note. The last six miles did not go well. As I watched the pace group I had been following recede into the distance ahead somewhere around mile 20 on London Road in Duluth, I realized my training had fallen short. Mostly, I was just not running enough miles to do longer races comfortably; I’d go for a couple of shorter runs during the week and one longer run every other weekend.
I’m an adult-onset runner, having started in my early 30s after a friend convinced me to run a 5k (3.1 miles) that crossed a new bridge I had helped design in Cleveland, Ohio. I had never considered myself athletic — in fact I had actively avoided sports for most of my life — but I found I enjoyed running enough to want to improve.
The problem was, my wife and I now had a 4-month-old baby. I didn’t like the idea of announcing that I would now be following a rigorous marathon training program, requiring me to spend even more hours away from home each week than I already did for work. Instead, inspired perhaps by Evan Roberts’ 2014 article in Streets.mn about run-commuting, I figured that running to the office to increase my mileage started to look like a much better solution. I usually took the Route 23 bus to the Blue Line for my commute, and the door-to-door transit time wasn’t significantly less than running the six miles to my office, meaning I could potentially run much more while spending the same amount of time with my family.
Logistics
That summer I took the plunge and purchased a compact IKEA clothes rack for my office and a backpack that had been recommended online for running. Initially, my routine was to drive once a week to the office and bring all the clothes and towels I’d need for the week, hang my dress clothes on the clothes rack and pack everything else away in an office drawer. My building downtown has showers, and while my coworkers may have thought the clothes rack was eccentric, I was always freshly showered by the time I sat down at my desk. After a few misadventures of packing a lunch in my backpack (hearing and feeling a bagel bouncing around in its container for six miles is irritating), I soon started my current routine of a Monday skyway walk over my lunch break, when I pick up all the food I need to make lunch at my office for the week. Carrying dress shoes is also undesirable, and I started keeping a couple of pairs permanently at the office.
The weekly drive has since become a bike ride, as my family got a front-loading electric cargo bike in 2021. I initially ran to the office about three days per week and took transit home. As my mileage increased, though, I started to do some round trips, taking the extra running clothes I would need for the trip home in my backpack. These days, I’ll typically do one round-trip run per week. For the rest of the week, I’ll run to work and bike or take transit home, or vice versa. (I’m fortunate that my building has a secure bike parking room where I can store my bike overnight.) I keep the same toiletries at the office that I’d use to shower at home, and as a balding 45-year-old man, my shower routine is fairly quick and straightforward–no hair dryer or other accoutrements required.
The Right Gear
Getting used to running with a backpack took some patience. Even with the weekly transport of clothes to the office, there are almost always items to carry in my backpack: wallet, building ID, a warmer coat for a bus ride home or a change of socks for a roundtrip run. My backpack of choice since 2020 has been the Mission Backpack, which was released that year by Tracksmith and Mission Workshop as part of Tracksmith’s perhaps ill-timed run-commute collection. Unfortunately it has since been discontinued, but used models may be available online. It is large enough to carry a full set of dress clothes, dress shoes and a towel if needed. (Note that I haven’t received anything for recommending products, brands or businesses; I’m just sharing my experience in an effort to be helpful.)
While just about any shirt and shorts will work for summer run-commuting, for the winter, I’ve figured out gradually what works best for me, through trial and error. (Being initially unaware of the existence of wind briefs was a painful learning experience.) Wearing thin layers works best for me, and Merino winter gear can dry in a vacant office in time to run home. For my recent -18F commute, I wore a Tracksmith Brighton Merino base layer under Tracksmith’s (since discontinued) Merino run-commute jacket. Over that I added a Craft Sportswear winter running jacket with another Craft jacket on top — a thin waterproof windbreaker that works well to retain heat. As for my lower body, Tracksmith’s lined Turnover half-tights (which I’ve found even more effective than wind briefs for winter running) and two pairs of Duluth Trading Company’s Buck Naked Base Layers under Craft’s winter running pants, along with Duluth Trading Company’s Heavyweight Merino Boot Socks, kept me plenty warm. A Merino wool headband and balaclava along with a stocking cap protected my head. I also wore ski goggles and a ColdAvenger face mask, a product recommended to me by an all-weather cyclist. The mask kept my goggles from fogging up and let me inhale a pleasant pool of warm air once I’d been running for a few minutes.
For more typical winter conditions, I’ll forgo the base layers, additional jackets, mask and goggles. My heart rate stays low during relaxed runs, but for those running faster, fewer layers would likely suffice even as temperatures plunge into the double digits below zero. For hot weather runs home, I keep a bottle of spray-on sunscreen in an office drawer.
For slippery conditions, attaching Kahtoola Nanospikes to my running boots has kept me sure-footed, and for deeper snow, my Salomon Snowspike ClimaSalomon WaterProofs (which one reviewer described as the “nuclear option” for winter running) have spikes that dig into ice and keep snow out of my shoes with a zip-up sleeve. The Snowspikes’ design and red-and-black color scheme are distinctive — I’ve even gotten compliments from sneakerheads on the light rail.
Strava and Weather Underground inform me that the coldest air temperature I’ve run in was -23F, on the way to the office on January 31, 2019. I remember I had planned to run to the office the previous morning when it was -28F. I’d been curious to see if my gear would keep me warm at that temperature, but I didn’t find out, because I woke up to discover sticky notes strategically placed around the house. They were from my wife, asking me not to run. I’d received two calls from senior managers at my company the afternoon before asking the same thing. I drove and parked in my building’s heated garage instead.
Running as Transportation
I’ve increasingly come to appreciate running as a mode of transportation particularly suited to three use cases: one-way trips with circuitous transit alternatives, getting around in bad weather, and accessing traffic-heavy parts of town.
Use Case 1: When Running is Faster than Transit
As the crow flies, my neighborhood is not far from the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus and offices near University Avenue and Highway 280. Transit trips between home and campus, though, can take an hour or more, whether by bus or light rail or both. But I can run home from these locations at a relaxed pace in 30 to 40 minutes. When I attend meetings and events on campus, I’ll typically wear my running clothes under business casual attire. When the event is over, I stow my work clothes in my backpack and start running. This works particularly well when I arrive at these events on the Green Line from my office downtown.
Although for me, running is usually faster than transit only for trips of six miles or less, there are a few exceptions. I once had an early morning board meeting in a suburban office tower in Golden Valley. My wife needed our car that day, but a fellow board member offered me a ride to work after the meeting. Taking public transit to the meeting would have required me to leave the house an hour and a half prior to the meeting to arrive on time, but I could do the run around 15 minutes faster and didn’t have to worry about the bus getting delayed by traffic downtown. I got in touch with another board member, who worked in the building. We arranged that she’d leave her keycard to the building’s showers in the jaws of a lion statue near the lobby. When I arrived after my 9.5-mile run to the meeting, I found the lion statue, retrieved the hidden keycard, took a shower, and sat down in the conference room on-time in my business attire, feeling fresh and, just maybe, a little bit smug.
Use Case 2: Bad Weather
Ice and snow can disrupt transit and make driving and biking tense, but as noted in Evan Roberts’ article, they don’t necessarily impact run-commuting. I remember one pre-pandemic morning when I realized after a few steps down my driveway that everything had been coated by a glaze of ice overnight. I went back for my Nanospikes and ran downtown at a cautious 10:30 minute/mile pace on the icy West River Parkway trail. I get anxious when I’m running late (literally, in this case), so I felt bad when I arrived at work later than usual. However, over an hour passed before anyone else got to the office. They had all gotten stuck in weather-related traffic.
This past December, both the Faster-than-Transit and Bad-Weather use cases applied when I ran 4.5 miles to get home from a holiday party on the University of Minnesota’s East Bank campus. As the party wrapped up, I packed my suit, dress shoes, tie and pocket square in my backpack and headed out into about six inches of snow that had fallen throughout the day. Despite the fluffy snow on the river trail and a fully loaded backpack, I was able to get home in 39 minutes and was snug in bed by the time even the quickest transit route could have gotten me home.
Use Case 3: Car-Centric Destinations
The Ford Parkway shopping district of St. Paul is conveniently located across the Mississippi from my part of South Minneapolis, but biking on congested Ford Parkway is unpleasant, and so is attempting to park in most of the Highland Park lots. A few winters ago, a late December ice storm was followed by low temperatures that made driving hazardous. My wife had a prescription to pick up from a pharmacy on Ford Parkway, and my kids were sad that our electronic menorah had broken. On top of that, we’d used up the last of our Hanukkah candles the previous evening.
I threw on the Salomon Snowspikes, ran to St. Paul and was soon on my way home with prescriptions, candles and even a replacement electronic menorah. In 10 years of run-commuting, that particular combination of items has been together in my backpack only once.
Why it Works
The additional mileage from run-commuting ultimately allowed me to reduce my fastest marathon time by about an hour and 15 minutes — while remaining happily married and a more present dad! Starting regular strength training in 2018 also boosted my race times, in addition to helping me quickly make it up the Bohemian Flats hill on West River Parkway with a loaded backpack. When I’m training for a race, I try to be intentional about doing tempo runs or intervals for a couple of my weekly commutes, while keeping the other runs at an easy pace. For longer races, I’ll incorporate long training runs (of about 15 miles or longer) by taking an indirect route to downtown on Friday mornings and carrying a water bottle when the drinking fountains are shut off for winter. I’ll often head west on the Minnehaha Creek trail to the Chain of Lakes, Loring Park and the Loring Greenway. This can require a very early start, but seeing the sunrise above the lakes makes it worthwhile.
Run-commuting has not been without its problems. Over the past 10 years I have had two significant injuries: plantar fasciitis and an adductor strain. On both occasions, I worked with Dr. Jamie Blumentritt, whose practice is called Physical Therapy on the Run. Dr. Blumentritt helped me recover from my injuries while not completely giving up my run-commutes, having me do run-walk intervals or jump on a bike share for part of the way. Walking on a warm summer day when I’d rather be running was discouraging, but better than not being outside at all.
I’ve also come to appreciate the day-to-day experience of running more than focusing on racing goals. Rarely, on warm spring or summer early mornings before sunrise, a large owl will silently swoop over my head on the river trail. Another warm early morning I saw a coyote purposefully running south on West River Parkway near South Fourth Street, while I passed it running north. I see the bald eagles who live along the river in the same area frequently on my runs home. Sometimes, when the scenery, music and my body’s condition all align, I get to experience what may be a running “flow state,” where it starts to feel almost effortless.
I remember running home from the office on Monday, March 16, 2020, through a suddenly deserted downtown, past signs taped to the Guthrie Theater’s doors announcing its abrupt closure. During COVID, I had the privilege of working from home, but I missed my commute until I returned to the office in May 2021. So I would leave the house at the same time as before, run a little more than halfway to the office, and turn around at the base of the hill under the Franklin Avenue Bridge.
I don’t usually listen to classical music when I run, but one grim early morning in January 2022 during the Omicron surge, I started up Brahms’ A German Requiem as I left the house at 4:45 a.m., taking the long way to the office along Minnehaha Creek. It soon began snowing steadily, and I saw no one else until reaching Lake Harriet just as the requiem was concluding a little over an hour later. With just the falling snow and wintry forested landscape along the creek to accompany the music through the predawn darkness, it was an unexpectedly moving experience.
Regardless of whether I’ve been buzzed by an owl, or just listened to a favorite R.E.M. album for the millionth time, I’ll arrive at work feeling better equipped to work through whatever is awaiting me. For reasons unknown, pressing bridge engineering questions seem mostly to arise at 3 p.m. on Fridays, and when this happens I can carry my laptop home in my backpack. After a tough day at work, I’ll channel my energy into my run home.
You Can, Too!
If you already enjoy running, then you may find running for transportation to be reliable, economical and, in some cases, surprisingly fast. Of all transportation modes, I’m most likely to arrive on time when I run. Biking comes in second, because it’s more susceptible to unexpected mechanical difficulties, snow and ice, and vandalism. (Curses on whoever stole the seat of my cargo bike when I was having dinner at the Tipsy Steer!) I am fortunate to have a workplace shower and clothes storage, access to beautiful trails, parallel transit services and an understanding spouse. I’m also conscious that as a middle-aged white man, people mostly ignore me when I’m running, which is just how I like it. Sadly, not all runners can say the same.
From a safety perspective, though, both the river trail and Chain of Lakes routes to downtown Minneapolis are frequented by numerous runners, cyclists and dog walkers from around 5:30 a.m through the evening commute year-round. Although I’m sure there are other run-commuters traveling more miles, more quickly and in more extreme weather than me, few of the other runners I see have backpacks, but perhaps this will change! If you are run-commute-curious, an experimental warm-weather run home from your workplace can be an easy way to give it a try without investing in a backpack and clothes rack, or needing to shower.
If you do decide to make those investments, though, there are financial advantages to run-commuting. In 2024, I ran 1,375 miles. (My combined mileage running and biking was 2,459 miles.) From a review of Strava data, about 90% of my weekly running on average is for transportation, so I estimate 1,230 running-as-transportation miles for 2024. Using the same methodology as Alica Valenti applied in a recent Streets.mn article, I saved more than $800 over driving if I apply the 2024 federal reimbursement rate of $0.67/mile. If I replaced 190 runs to my office with driving, parking downtown would add a cost of around $1,500, and my family would have to pay the costs of acquiring and maintaining a second vehicle.
Is all my running gear expensive? Definitely. In 2024, I spent $453 at Saint City Running for shoes and other gear. (And yes, I do typically run to Saint City Running. No one is more understanding than the staff of a running store when you arrive semi-sweaty.) Still, by running to work I saved enough money in bus fare to pay for my supplies (190 x $2.50 rush-hour fare = $475). And of course, there are the more intangible benefits — like experiencing low-flying owls along the river instead of brake lights on Hiawatha Avenue.
All photos are by Daniel J. Baxter.