The Schuylkill River Loop Race and City Fitness

Fifteen years ago I made a goal to run a race in every state. 

This is not a particularly challenging goal. There are hundreds of runners in the 50 + D.C. Marathon group who have run a full marathon in every state. I’ve read about women who have run marathons on every continent and completed Boston qualifying races in every state. 

For me? Any little 5K counts. And I don’t have a timeline.  

Sometimes progress on that goal was swift, like when I decided that I was moving away from Denver and had to pack all those middle-of-the-country races in while I was still close to the Midwest. 

Sometimes progress was slow, like over the past ten years. Since 2013, I’ve been  tucked up in the northwest corner of the United States. Having completed most of the states west of the Mississippi, I’m to a point where taking a weekend road trip to a race in a new state is impossible. Now, flights are involved.

So when a solo trip to Philadelphia for a teaching conference was planned, you bet the first thing I did was to search for races that weekend. 

I found a perfect one. 

The Schuylkill Loop Race is both the oldest race in Philadelphia and a local cult favorite race.  I didn’t get any cult vibes, but maybe I just didn’t talk to the right people.

The flat 8.4 loop starts between Boat House Row and the Art Museum. I made things extra fun by also running to the race from my hotel downtown, tacking on an additional mile and a half. I’d meant to walk to the race but failed to wake up in time. It’s always good to get a bit of speed training in moments before the race starts, right? 

We ran past the Rocky statue and looped around the hard-to-pronounce river. To be honest, I’d had more fun at the Rocky statue the previous morning, when a bunch of social studies teachers met up to run the steps before the conference (and yes! I still made it to the first session of the day. Barely).

My favorite part of the run was the Laurel Hill Cemetery. Huge cemeteries with mausoleums are not a thing in Seattle, so I was a bit blown away by the sheer size of the place.

Afterwards, I traipsed back to my hotel and marveled that I could go three whole city blocks without seeing a coffee shop. That is also not a thing in Seattle. 

Then I employed my favorite running-while-traveling hack. 

The race, like so many others, was on a Sunday. I’d booked a flight home that night.

This is a common problem. Most runners want to get to their destination a day or two before the race to ensuring acclimation, a good night’s rest, and time to pick up your packet and bib number before the race. But then after the race, it’s time to go home. I have endured many car trips soaked in a cold post-race sweat. 

This isn’t an option if you are about to hop on a cross-country flight (not for me anyway). Unable to secure a late check out and unwilling to pay the $200+ for another night at the hotel, I took myself and my luggage to City Fitness. I paid the $25 daily gym rate and thoroughly enjoyed my shower, sauna, second shower, and space to make myself clean and presentable again. I highly recommend the locker rooms at City Fitness if you are ever in Philadelphia. They even have those fancy locks that you can set yourself built right into each locker so you don’t have to rent or bring your own clunky padlock. I’m sure the rest of the gym was great too, but it’s not like I checked out the treadmills or anything.  

Then I headed out to enjoy my last day in Philadelphia, clean and happy. 

Thirty more states to go?