Love it when you can walk down the street to get to the starting line of a race and today was a great morning for running. We walked about a mile to our neighborhood brewery Black Hat Brew Works for the first running of the Black Hat Brew 5K held in conjunction with GetFit.

For the first annual running of the race, a really nice crowd assembled at the starting line as the race was about to kick off. Awesome to see a good group of runners and walkers ready to tackle the course and help raise funds for the Fire for Effect Foundation. Fire for Effect Foundation’s mission is to honor and empower veterans, first responders, and their families by providing essential resources, support, and community-building initiatives that foster resilience, restore hope, and strengthen the fabric of the community.

The race took place in the industrial park where both Black Hat and GetFit are located and it can’t get much more local than this. The race took runners through three loops of the industrial park which was tougher than one might think as the course featured a good amount of hills mixed in which, of course, needed to be tackled three times. There was a water stop out on the course which came in handy as the hills and a sun certainly warmed you up out on the course.

The only hiccup with the race was that the course was a touch long clocking in at 3.6 miles but the race directors did well to work with the timing company and ensure the official results were based upon the 3.6 miles ran rather than the 3.1 mile, 5K distance. These things happen and for a first annual run it’s something that can be rectified next year. Based upon the 3.6 mile distance, I finished the race with a time of 31:34, good for 8:46/miles. Not bad for a back-to-back race weekend!

Post-run, all runners were given a ticket for a free drink inside the brewery. As many of you know, I gave up drinking almost three years ago but Black Hat let the ticket be used for one of the non-alcoholic beers they offer at the brewery from Go Brewing. Awesome! After the run plenty of runners and walkers stuck around, enjoyed the outside area of the brewery, hit up the offerings of the brewery and took advantage of the Just the Dip food truck on site, too.

We walked back home from the race which provided some extra steps on the running watch.