Stories from the run commute: “I ran trails before monitoring the stock market all day”

When Calgary-born Carlee Price was training for her marathon back in 2011, run-commuting to and from her work in Seattle became a staple in her preparation. The idea arose both because of her dislike for driving and also because she was finding it hard to fit in her workouts during the day. 

At the time, she was working in Seattle as a finance portfolio manager. The hours were long and the work was demanding. Living in the west coast meant that it had to be an early start to get to the office on time for the markets to open. She would have to get to work for 6:00 a.m. so as to be ready when the markets opened at 6:30 a.m. From there, she had to be paying close attention throughout the day until 4:30 p.m. It was tough to keep up these 10-hour days while also getting in proper training for a 42.2K. She got the idea to start run-commuting. 

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“I was just working really long hours and training for a marathon,” she says. “I happened to live just the right distance from work.” That’s when she got the idea to just start run-commuting as a way to build her mileage. To work out the little details to get everything to run smoothly, she would drive in to work with all of her needs packed in her car: a change of running clothes for the way home and a suit, shower supplies and makeup for after the run the next morning. She’d then run home with just her keys, cards, ID and phone. In the morning, she would wake up, run to the office, grab her suit from her car, and then take full advantage of the shower facilities and towel service at her office. 

“The trick was to have the morning match up with the evening,” says Price. She did that for the entire summer of 2011 leading into a fall marathon. Having this set-up allowed her to get in all the necessary miles at a time of day that allowed it. “It was really hard to sneak out during the day for a workout,” she says. 

When setting out on her route, she was spoiled with riverside trails. After leaving her front door, she had to run just three quarters of a mile to the trail head and then run past the University of Washington and over a bridge towards downtown. Once downtown, the run was typically fairly stop-and-start until she arrived at the office. The route distance totaled 4.8 miles. Her favourite part of that run, she says, was a hidden wooded trail near her house with a covered bridge, a boardwalk and overgrown forest. She hasn’t even known it existed.

Run-commuting draws people in for a variety of reasons. Similarly then, each run commuter will list a different set of perks. The bonuses of adopting this kind of routine are different for everyone. A common benefit though is the time saving element. Most runners like the idea of getting the run in during the time period where they would otherwise be sitting in a car, stuck in traffic or on public transit. “The time saving was definitely an almost unintended positive. When you only have 90 minutes of free time a day, that’s big,” says Price.  

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The other draw for Price was not having to get in the car as often. “I also hate, hate, hate driving,” she says. While the morning drive wasn’t too busy, she found the drives home quite stressful. “It was nice to get home and have accomplished something and not be wigged out because some guy just cut you off,” she says. And as for the morning, she felt more in control of her arrival time not having to be vulnerable to traffic or others drivers on the road. 

These days, Price is no longer run-commuting as she works from her new home in Texas as an angel investor. The schedule is also much more flexible. She did compete in the Austin Marathon and the New York Marathon this year and says she’s quite confident she’ll be a lifelong runner. And if the job situation ever were to change, she would be back to run-commuting in a heartbeat.