At 6:30 a.m. on a frosty Friday morning in January, 21 people jogged back and forth along a two-block stretch of Gallery Place. They ran down the dark street, waited for the stoplight to change, then kept running. Run, wait, run. Turn around. Run, wait, run. Up and down 10th Street NW, between G and E streets. To early-rising passersby, this must have looked like some strangely conceived New Year’s resolution, or possibly a unique form of torture.
But, no. The group was running for a different purpose: free Chipotle.
The pack of runners, along with over 100,000 others across the United States, are participating in the Chipotle Segment Challenge Series Contest. Hosted by Chipotle and fitness-tracking app Strava, the challenge encourages runners and walkers to embark on that two-block journey to pass the 10th and E Chipotle as many times as possible before Jan. 31. The Strava app monitors how many times users run this segment and places them on a leader board accordingly. Don’t live in D.C.? Don’t worry — there are routes in New York City, Los Angeles, Columbus, Chicago and Denver.
The prize for the top-ranking runner in each city: one free Chipotle bowl every week for a year. That’s what got these people out of bed to do two-block shuttle runs on a pre-dawn January morning.
Chipotle partnered with Strava after noticing the number of professional and amateur athletes who eat at its restaurants before and after exercising, says Chris Brandt, chief brand officer at Chipotle. Its goal in launching the challenge at the beginning of the year was to help people focus on their fitness goals and simultaneously drive business, including to its line of nutrition-conscious lifestyle bowls.
But wait — is Chipotle even good running fuel? According to Meghann Featherstun, a runner and sports dietitian, it can be. This is partly because you can customize the amount of protein, carbohydrates and fat your body needs to perform at its best. Featherstun says a marathon-running friend of hers would always eat Chipotle for lunch while training, and she appreciates that the flexibility in ordering options allows for nutritious pre- and post-run meals.
Joseph Snowaert, a 29-year-old contractor who has consistently ranked near the top of the D.C. leader board, has long enjoyed what he calls “weird” running challenges, such as beer miles. Since the beginning of the month, he’s been riding the Metro to Gallery Place, then walking to the segment where he’ll spend “a few hours” running back and forth. That January morning, he brought members of his running group, a local chapter of national running club the November Project, with him.
Though the competition has been friendly, the race for first place is tight. Snowaert and two other runners are neck and neck, with the app’s “local legend” crown switching among them almost daily. One of them is Thomas Sargeant, a 25-year-old House of Representatives security specialist. Since he found out about the Segment Challenge from a friend, he has woken up at 4 every morning — “no days off,” he says — to run the segment. He gauges how much time he’ll spend each day by checking Strava to see how many miles his closest competitor, Blake Reinke, has covered. Blasting “1989 (Taylor’s Version)” in his headphones, he’ll run anywhere from seven to 14 miles to make up the difference, sometimes coming back to the segment after work if Reinke has pulled ahead again.
Reinke, a 30-year-old aerospace engineer, typically operates on an opposite schedule, running in the afternoon and basing his mileage on how Snowaert and Sargeant have done. However, the three have encountered one another during their respective workouts.
“Pretty early on, Thomas, Joe and I were all out there,” says Reinke. “It was funny because everyone was taking the competition a little bit more seriously. No one really made eye contact. We just trailed each other after each stoplight, and then we all started following each other on Strava, and commenting and liking each other’s posts.”
Though the prize is alluring, the runners are motivated just as much by the thrill of winning — burrito bragging rights — as by the promise of free Chipotle. Long-distance runners are often competitive people, after all, but a surprising amount of inspiration has come from the community the challenge has formed. Snowaert (who’d logged about 69.4 miles along the two-block route as of Thursday afternoon), Reinke (about 89.4 miles) and Sargeant (about 38.8 miles) have become friendly, following one another on Strava and commenting on each other’s daily runs. After the winner is crowned, Reinke and Sargeant plan to go out for a drink together.
“The thing about Strava is you share your activities with people, and just from doing that, I’ve been able to connect with people,” says Sargeant. “I think it’d be cool to meet some of [the competitors] and learn their stories, too.”
If they need a place to meet, we know a spot that sells burritos.