By Guide Chelsey Grassfield
The first tour I led with City Running Tours was for an American Chemical Society conference at McCormick Place in Chicago. This is how I met Becca Greenberg, when we lead this tour with another colleague. This is also how I met Mitch, one of the runners in my group; we’ve been following and encouraging each other on Strava since. I invited Mitch to share his experiences participating in running tours through conferences.
Mitch is on the far left in the green hat.
Mitch has run tours coordinated by the American Chemical Society in San Diego, Boston, and Chicago. “They have two national conferences every year, and it seems that no matter which one you go to, no matter where it is, there's always been a running tour for an affinity group of younger chemists, folks getting into this kind of intimidating world of big time research. This is one way to make friends, to make it feel a little bit more casual.”
A way to casually network
“As someone who's young in my career, I want to network. I am thinking about opportunities to meet people. Otherwise, conferences can be fairly impersonal. You can go from meeting to meeting to meeting, seeing people talk but never actually having a one on one conversation.”
A running tour is a way to get this meaningful interaction with other conference attendees. “You end up striking up a conversation as you run from place to place, and then, if that conversation turns out to be kind of a bust, there's an automatic reset point where you can find somebody else to talk to [he’s referring to the stops we make to talk about points of interest].”
Checking all the boxes, Mitch said, “I'm doing it as a tour, a way to network and meet people, and to have something fun that's not work related. I really appreciate that break in the day.”
A way to stay healthy
Maintaining fitness when traveling for work can be challenging, but a running tour provides an opportunity to get a run in you might have otherwise skipped. “Where I am in my running career now, I don't need external motivation to go run anymore, but I can imagine for folks who are new to running or have this motivation to be healthier, it can be challenging. Going on work trips is not the thing you do when you want to get healthy; you just eat whatever garbage is there. So having this run, I think it makes you feel good that you're going to do something you want to do anyway (see the city) but do it in a way that has a positive impact on your life.”
“Always after we're all done, I chat up the tour guide: now I want to go on my own run, where should I go? And then you've already been running all over town; you know all the good spots and the places to see. It’s great fact-finding.” Mitch uses these runs as a launching point for his own adventures in new cities, getting the lay of the land with a local first. At the end of his running tour of Chicago, he asked me about The 606 trail, how to get there and if it was a nice place to run (recommended the green to the blue line and yes!).
A chance to be a perpetual novice
“When you have a conference that large, even if I am the most seasoned chemist that's ever been, there are still so many different ways I can feel dumb. You stand in this very narrowly focused lane. But the moment you step outside of that lane suddenly you feel dumb all over again. Any of those folks that I ran with, they knew so much more, so much different information than me. We likely couldn't have this sciencey conversation, anyways. So it was nice to just connect on something that was different that we could all just sort of bond over; we all know running in one way or another.”
Attending or hosting a conference soon? See if a running or yoga tour is offered. If not, suggest it. These are a great way to maintain a healthy lifestyle and connect with other participants on a deeper level while on work trips, just ask Mitch.
