(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 533: Running to Work

This week we’re joined by bridge engineer Daniel Baxter to talk about his almost daily running commute. We chat about bridges, the gear you need for running in cold weather, staying safe on the roads, and the benefits of running to work.

Check out Daniel’s specially curated spotify playlist.

To listen to this episode, find it at Streetsblog USA or the hosting archive.

Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript:

Jeff Wood: Daniel Baxter, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast.

Daniel Baxter: Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.

Jeff Wood: Yeah, thanks for being here. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Daniel Baxter: Sure. I’m Daniel Baxter. I work as a structural engineer, designing new bridges and rehabilitating existing bridges in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I’ve been for the past 11 years.

I’m originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I grew up. Then I did this sort of dual degree, BA in physics, BS in civil engineering, and an MS in structural engineering program through Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and then Washington University in St. Louis, where I graduated in December of 2003. [00:03:00] Then I was in Cleveland, Ohio for 10 years working as a bridge engineer and then moved to Minneapolis to help open my company’s office here in 2014 where I’ve been ever since. So I’ve been on a Midwestern Circle tour

Jeff Wood: pretty much. It’s a good tour to be on. Yeah, it’s a good tour. I like these cities.

So gimme a little bit of background in terms of what got you interested in bridges or structural engineering. I’m curious where that came from.

Daniel Baxter: That’s a good question. It’s something I’ve always been interested in, I think since I was a really young child. I remember I’ve also been interested in trains for a long time and I remember my parents got me like assembled a sort of ho scale model, train table back when I think I was in third grade or so, and one of my first.

Building projects for it was to build an elevated highway through it spanning over the tracks and such, and around, around the city out of balsa wood, which gradually grew more intricate over the years. And yeah, it’s just been a lifelong interest of [00:04:00] mine.

Jeff Wood: Yeah. And so you ended up gonna school for it and now you build bridges, which is fascinating.

Daniel Baxter: Yeah, and it can be really satisfying to see the thing that you’ve been just working on designing for. It can be years, literally just take physical shape and then it’s something a lot of people get to use. So I’d say like half of my work tends to be designing new bridges and probably the other half is rehabilitating or analyzing existing ones.

And that’s rewarding too, to be able to keep these structures in service for many years to come and make sure they’re safe. Of course. Do you have a favorite bridge? Yes. I would say that is the Mackinac Bridge between the lower and upper peninsula of Michigan. It’s one of the longest suspension bridges in the United States.

It was built, I think it opened in 1957, and it’s a bridge too, that like my family took on our traditional family vacations up to Northern Minnesota. For Ann Arbor. So I think it has kind of significance to me, but it’s a really impressive structure. It was designed in the wake of the Tacoma Narrows bridge collapse, and if you look at the [00:05:00] structure, you can see how it’s a reaction to that.

It has the roadway is supported by a really deep stiffening truss as it’s called to keep the bridge from moving around too much in the wind. The middle two lanes of it have steel grading to help the wind pass through it, rather than move the bridge around which gives the whole suspension bridge spans of it.

Just a really robust, a strong look to them and just, it has like really gradual long approach spans on each side of it too. So just the whole experience of crossing that bridge is, it’s a really great experience because you see the suspension spans and the towers off in the distance and then they get closer and it’s just a real bull bridge.

Jeff Wood: Can you explain the Tacoma eras for folks that might know? I know what it is, but I think that just is a fascinating history and the videos of that are really arresting as well.

Daniel Baxter: Oh yes. I feel if you were going to elementary school in the 1980s and may, maybe they stopped doing this, but I remember like everyone, it seems saw the film strip of a suspension bridge that’s like oscillating in the wind and eventually the oscillations [00:06:00] just get larger and the bridge comes down.

It was located in the Tacoma Arrows and Washington State believe it was open in the, I should know the exact day. I wanna say like early 1940s or so. At the time, the thinking of its designers, was that just a pretty slender steel, what’s called a steel plate girders? It’s just essentially two steel girders on either side of the roadway that aren’t very deep, was of a sufficient rigidity to support the structure against oscillations from wind.

But I think right after an open, people started to notice that it w, it was moving around more than was like desirable under wind. And then on the fateful day, those oscillations just kept increasing and just be, became too much and it came down.

Jeff Wood: I’ll put a link to the video in the show notes. It’s very, it’s crazy.

Why do you think people and we’ll get to our main topic, which is actually totally different than bridge construction, but I’m just fascinated by this topic ’cause you’re an expert. I’m wondering why people are psychologically drawn to bridges. I’m always fascinated by the [00:07:00] bridges that you cross when you go into different cities and stuff.

My parents lived in Rotterdam, so we have their Erasmus brogue there, and I just made a trip to visit my wife’s family in China. And so we went between Macau and Hong Kong on that bridge, which is a really long bridge. And so they’ve sparked some sort of imagination in us in a, and there’s a psychological connection to them.

I’m wondering if there’s something to that specifically.

Daniel Baxter: I

Jeff Wood: think there really

Daniel Baxter: is, I think off the top of my head that it’s probably because they’re just, they’re part of transit systems, whether it’s a highway or a railroad or pedestrian bike facility. And as being part of that, like they’re part of the journey you take to, to get somewhere.

And I think that having particularly the more sort of monumental. Structures, more monumental bridges just being part of a journey you take. I think they in a way, bring like a physical reality to something that might feel symbolic as part of taking a journey from one place to another.

Jeff Wood: Okay, let’s talk about running. I wanted to talk to you about this subject because I’m big into running in the past, and I ran [00:08:00] a lot in high school and college. I got up to 90 miles a week. I was really like jamming it out, but I stopped running in 2005 because my body was like telling me, stop.

But I’ve always been fascinated by this topic specifically as it pertains to cities. My connection to running in Austin when I was at the University of Texas was, basically I learned every street within a 10 mile radius of the university like. Every street. I’ve probably been on every street, maybe twice.

And it gives you this connection to cities that I think is really interesting because you’re taking it at that running pace. And so I’m curious for you, first off, what’s your history with running?

Daniel Baxter: My history with running’s relatively recent and actually growing up, I wasn’t really athletic at all, and running is not something that occurred to me as something I’d wanna do.

Like from time to time and pe, they’d make us run a mile or something like that. And I never enjoyed it. I remember and. I think it was my sophomore year of high school, we did the President Kennedy physical fitness evaluation thing. And in the fall a friend and I were running around the track to do our [00:09:00] mile and I was trying to keep a decent pace and he was just like, slow down.

The whole point of this is to show improvement in the spring when they’ll test us again. So I was like, okay. And I think that spring loop was probably the last time I ran anywhere. Until 2012 when a relatively new bridge I had helped design in Cleveland, had a 5K race that was being held that sort of in honor of it because it was a pretty new structure that had replaced a, an older bridge that had been falling apart for a long time over the Cleveland Zoo.

And my coworkers were like, Hey, you really should run in this race. You helped design it. And I’m like I’ve never run anywhere, but my wife and I had been taken some. Cycling classes and I, oh, maybe I can do this. So ran a few loops around the block near our house and was like, I think this is possible.

So did the race. Gave it a try. I think my time was probably 31 minutes or something like that and was like, oh, I actually could do this and that. That was the start of it, and just kept trying to go for longer distances from that [00:10:00] point on, and then completed my first marathon, not very quickly, but did complete it in 2015.

Jeff Wood: It’s interesting because when you start getting the running bug, some folks take it really far and they wanna go and run marathons and they run 10 Ks and all this stuff. Yeah. And it seems like you’ve gone the same way. But the training for that requires, and this is one of the reasons I don’t run anymore, is because the training for that requires a lot of effort, a lot of time.

It’s a drain on your time. Yeah. I had an atypical college experience because I was running, so we were up at 6:00 AM we were training twice a day and most people are out on the weekends partying. We were going to meets and stuff. And so you took this and decided I need to get my miles in, but I can’t do it by taking away time from my family and all that stuff.

So I’m curious how you came to the realization that commuting, running for commuting was the answer to that problem.

Daniel Baxter: I think it was a couple things. One is that like I’m fortunate to live in a urban neighborhood near the Mississippi River that’s about six miles from downtown Minneapolis. And also fortunate enough to be working in an office building that has [00:11:00] showers in it.

I’d fallen into the pattern of taking the bus to the light rail just for my typical commute, which also parallel PA bike trails much of the way and just. With the time it takes to walk to the bus, stop and wait for the bus and then get to the light rail and wait for the train. And I realized that, the time that the bus to the train takes door to door, I realized that it really isn’t like terribly quicker than what it would take to actually run that distance.

And I think I’d seen maybe a couple articles on the subject. I know a professor here at the University of Minnesota, Evan Roberts, published a. Article about run commuting and local active transportation news sites. Streets MN in 2014, which I’m pretty sure I read. And that got me thinking, that seemed like all the ingredients were in place, that the commute was a runable distance.

There were dedicated trails I could use. And then, once I got to the building, there’s a shower facility available and there’s also public transit I could take if I had to get home so that I wasn’t locked into [00:12:00] to running both ways. Seeing that all the ingredients were there to make it work.

Plus the feeling that, yeah, if I really wanna improve it running, I need to be getting in more miles. And when I was able to get in with, just, ’cause at the time when I finished my first marathon, I’d be like four minutes and 59 seconds and, or four hour, no, not four minutes, four hour 59. Impressive. And then it’s, and then some seconds it, it didn’t go so well, and I realized that the reason was just, I just wasn’t running enough miles.

Our daughter was three months old at the time, so I just felt I couldn’t really be running that much more after work or I. On the weekends than I was at the time. But hey, with all the ingredients it seems like in place to be able to run to the office, I could really run quite a bit more in the time I’d been using to take transit, maybe just about 15 minutes or so more.

And it really seems to be the best way to improve my running.

Jeff Wood: Are you still racing? Are you still going marathons or is it just a commute thing now?

Daniel Baxter: Yeah, I haven’t run a marathon since 2022. I’m thinking about it. Maybe [00:13:00] later this year. It’s mostly a commute thing now for me. I have a couple friends who are into running and there’s a sort of series of races we’ve been doing.

In the spring we just did a 10 K and then we’re gonna do a 10 mile trail race in May, which then will lead up to a half marathon between two harbors. In Duluth, it’s called like Grandma’s half marathon in June. So it is fun to have friends to be training with in racing with, but I would say that’s not probably the main focus of mine.

Jeff Wood: So what’s your typical commute look like? What’s the routine in terms of getting yourself ready to go for a run and then getting out into the world and then getting to work and sitting down at your desk?

Daniel Baxter: Oh, I went through that routine today so I can drive it.

Jeff Wood: I was wondering

Daniel Baxter: if you were gonna do it today before our discussion.

It seemed fitting, but I’d probably do it anyway. ’cause Wednesdays typical run day for me, but I’m slow in the morning. So like on a typical day, I’ll wake up at four 30. Then just by the time I’ve done everything I need to do to get ready to leave, usually I’m walking out the door just a little before five [00:14:00] 30.

I wish it took me less than an hour, but just making sure I have everything I need and I’m not locked out of the building and all. It just takes a little bit. And then the route I usually take, we’re fortunate enough, our house is fairly close to the Mississippi and there’s a dedicated trail along the Mississippi, all the way from our neighborhood to the outskirts of downtown Minneapolis.

It’s just a few blocks away. So once I get on that, I’ll just take that trail downtown and there are no major. There’s a couple driveways for parking lots, but there are no street crossings, so it’s a real nice direct route. Then I’ll run through the last miles through the outskirts and then downtown Minneapolis, and then typically arrive at my building.

A little before six 30, just depending on if it’s a relaxed run, like really relaxed, it’ll take me about an hour. If I’m like pushing the pace to train for a race or just ’cause I’m in a rush and I do it in less time, I think the quickest, I’ve done the commutes a little over 44 minutes, but then like today, I’ll get to my building say around like 6 25 in the morning.

I go up to my office, get my clothes. I have the clothes rack where I [00:15:00] keep my dress clothes and I keep the rest of my clothes in an office drawer. Just get those things together, go down to the shower and get cleaned up, and then sit down at my desk ready to go and freshly showered around seven.

What time do you go to sleep to get up at four 30? Probably later than I should. U usually on a weekday, like nine 30, sometimes earlier. I aim

Jeff Wood: for nine 30 ish. Are you a morning lark instead of I’m an night owl, so like I’m, I can’t go to bed before midnight. My brain doesn’t shut off until then.

Daniel Baxter: I think that left to my own devices actually might be night owl too, because like when we’re on vacation, I tend to go to bed a lot later.

But in terms of working, I’m a morning person. Like I like to be in my desk by seven and to have that hour to get things in order, do whatever I need to do before meetings start up and things. ’cause basically no one ever seems to wanna have a meeting before. Eight in the morning and even like an 8:00 AM meeting’s pretty rare, from work standpoint, I do starting

Jeff Wood: a little early, get over faster for being on the West coast too. I’m always fascinated by that [00:16:00] because sometimes people would wanna have meetings like 8:00 AM East Coast time. I’m like, come on guys. Like five, yeah, 5:00 AM doesn’t work. Doesn’t work for me.

You mentioned safety. You mentioned like you only have a couple driveways on your way there, but I’m curious how you navigate safety at times when you know the sun hasn’t come up yet and it’s dark, and so you have those safety issues that might come up because you’re a runner and you’re an individual versus all the vehicles out there, et cetera.

Daniel Baxter: Except for a few, really just a few months during the summer. It’s either like completely dark for my morning commute or dark at the beginning of it, or the sun is just coming up. So I always wear a headlamp and a red flashing taillight that I just clip to the back and a headlamp. And my backpack has a reflective sash on it too.

The first five miles there. Like one nice thing about Minneapolis is that the trails and the parks, such as the West River Parkway Trail that I take. They actually have two separate trails, one for cyclists and one for pedestrians. So just sticking to the pedestrian trail, I can feel pretty safe that I don’t have to worry about a [00:17:00] cyclist hitting me or something like that.

Then once I get to the downtown area, I take a route in the still parallels the river that actually doesn’t have too much street crossing for it. So it’s really only the last half mile that I’m navigating through intersections. That’s probably, I’ve never thankfully had an accident, but that’s probably the most dangerous part of the run.

And I just try to run really defensively, particularly when I’m running home. Like I find that there, there are not too many people out and about actually at six 30 in the morning. But going home, there are a lot of people trying to make left. Turns and right turns, and even if I have a walk signal, I try to make sure to make eye contact with people who are looking to turn right or turn left before I run in front of them because I know that they may be looking at traffic coming from the opposite direction and not even thinking to look for a pedestrian.

And that strategy has worked pretty well. I also, for the afternoons, when I’m running home for that first mile out of downtown, I always just run at a slower pace too, and then don’t speed up until I get to the river trail.

Jeff Wood: My teammates and I [00:18:00] in college we banged our fair share of car hoods because they weren’t looking when we were crossing the street and had the right of way.

So I understand that completely. It’s an always interesting dance with cars and drivers because you’re never quite sure when they’re looking and even if you look ’em straight in the eye sometimes, it’s like they’re looking past you. Yeah. It’s crazy.

Daniel Baxter: And I don’t know, I feel like maybe it’s stereotypical, but I feel like I have found that for whatever reason, drivers of German luxury cars are the most.

Problematic in this regard. If I see like that BMW seven series trying to make that left turn, I’m like, oh, they’re not stopping. Stop. Yeah.

Jeff Wood: There’s also a weather aspect of this too. That’s interesting, especially since you’re in Minneapolis and here in the Bay Area. I don’t think people would worry about layers and balaclavas and things like that too much.

But you have specifically in the winter, you have a particular issue with cold climate that happens.

Daniel Baxter: Yeah, I don’t have the source of the statistic, but I remember reading somewhere that like Minneapolis is the major city in the country that has the largest swing between the average cold temperature and like the average high temperature between the winter and the [00:19:00] summer.

So there, there is a really wide temperature range here. I think as far as just the cold weather goes, I’ve just figured it out gradually by trial and error. I’m just, personally, I’m someone that likes to stick to routines, so I think as I started to do this, as it got colder, I didn’t want that to be the reason that, oh, I’ve got a.

I’ve gotta stop. So I just kept figuring out what works with adding layers, and then if things went okay at a given cold temperature, then if it was even colder than that, I’d be like, okay, I think this will work. Plus one additional layer and think the coldest that I’ve run to the office was a minus 23.

And that, that required a lot more layers than usual. Like one strategy I use is that if it’s below zero, I just try not to have any exposed skin. And there’s products, like one of them seems like it’s intended for like people working in the arctic called the Cold Avenger, which is this face mask thing you put on that kind of creates a pool of warm air in, in, in front of your mouth.

And so like between that and no exposed skin, I found that actually those low zero temps really aren’t [00:20:00] so terrible.

Jeff Wood: Your wife and your colleagues at work seem to worry about you though at temperatures that drop below, I guess negative 23 ’cause they wouldn’t let you go one day.

Daniel Baxter: Yeah. I wanted to see how all of this gear would work.

This was back in 2019 when it was, I think it was gonna be minus 28. And like the polar vortex had been making the rounds and the news and the afternoon before. A couple of actually my sort of senior manager tech people in the company had called me up ’cause they knew I, I like to do this. And they were like, please don’t run tomorrow.

And I was like, oh, okay. I’ll think about it. But then overnight when I was sleeping, my wife left out all these post-it notes in the bathroom saying, please don’t run. So I was like, okay, I guess I better not. Yeah. It’s probably the best. Yeah. So I haven’t figured out like if everything works minus 28, but I know it does.

It minus 23.

Jeff Wood: My coldest race was negative 19 in it was a Terre Haute, Indiana, I think it was. And because we wore singlets and shorts, we didn’t have all the equipment. We have to wear our uniforms. Yeah. We just stole our we stole our comforters from our hotel rooms and just wore [00:21:00] them until the gun went off and then we threw ’em off and started running.

Yeah. But it was cold. When it’s that cold. Sweat doesn’t freeze at 32 degrees. It’s got salt in it. Oh yeah. So there’s icicles hanging off of people’s beanies. There was like, I couldn’t feel my fingers, my mom had to untie my shoes after the race was finished. I was just like, it was a mess.

And I was like I can’t deal with, when you’re equipped with more gear, I think it’s better, but if you’re just racing in the cold weather, it’s a little bit different, I think.

Daniel Baxter: Oh, I bet that sounds terrible. Particularly waiting for the race to begin. Like I, I’ve done a couple of like Turkey trots on.

Thanksgiving morning, which have been really cold and just waiting. It doesn’t really bother me once the race starts, but just waiting for them to start is

Jeff Wood: just, yeah, and it’s, I can’t

Daniel Baxter: imagine minus nine. Like it’s one thing when it’s 20 degrees and you’re waiting for it just, but like minus 19.

It’s bad. It was bad.

Jeff Wood: It was ugly. We made it through, finished the race. Not, didn’t do too hot. Didn’t do too hot. Everybody had to race it. But the funny part is that you see the guys from like Wisconsin and all like North Minnesota and stuff, they all had these massive beards and they were like, they were ready, right?

Because they’d been doing it. Us [00:22:00] kids from Texas, we didn’t know any better. How do you deal with injury? Because I feel like that’s something that could curtail some of the commuting that you do if you get like pulled muscle or something along those lines because it’s not quite the same when you’re riding the bus or the train.

You have to worry about your body a little bit more.

Daniel Baxter: Yeah, I would say two approaches to it. One, I’ve found that just since I’ve started like regularly strength training in 2018, that seems to have helped, but not like completely eliminated injuries. ’cause like before I was doing that, I just seemed to have.

More issues, let’s say like it band syndrome or things of that nature. And I think that’s particularly true when I’m carting around a backpack, particularly if it’s heavily loaded, just strengthening the lower body to make sure that it’s not getting overtaxed by that and how it throws off where the center of masses too.

So just having that additional strength. And then I have had two since I’ve been really in the full swing of it, two significant injuries like plantar fasciitis and then a. Abductor strain and what’s worked for [00:23:00] me is working with a Minnesota based physical therapist who also is a runner herself. Her name is Dr.

Jamie. Her approach has been to just keep me running, but to have run walk intervals or run a shorter distance and then like hop on a bike share. I guess luckily for me, the injuries have taken place at the beginning of the summer when the bike share bikes are out, so that’s allowed me to say, okay, I’m gonna run, walk.

Four miles or something and then jump on a bike for the rest of the way and do the runs at a reduced pace. So although it’s frustrating when those injuries happen and get in the way of races or slow my pace, like that approach at least, has allowed me to keep the active commute going.

Jeff Wood: And this is something I ask folks too, is like, how often do you replace your shoes?

When I was running it was every 500 miles. No matter what they look like, they probably look pretty clean, but if you don’t do it every 500 miles, the midsole will break down and you can’t even tell. But I’m curious, like from your perspective, what’s your like gear replacement? The signs that something needs to be fixed,

Daniel Baxter: I’m.[00:24:00]

I should be better at tracking the mileage on my shoes on drama than I am. I should put the new shoes in there. I’m a heel striker, so usually the sign for me is that just the rubber at the base of the sole just starts getting like completely worn off the heels and that it’s just like. Styrofoam than hitting the ground.

So when that happens, that to me is the sign that it’s time for new shoes.

Jeff Wood: Probably should go a little bit before that if I’m being honest. Yeah, I probably

Daniel Baxter: should. I think it probably ends up being maybe, hopefully not more than 500 miles. Yeah.

Jeff Wood: But

Daniel Baxter: I should keep a closer eye on that than I am.

Jeff Wood: I just tell people that because it’s something that I learned is like when my knees started to get twingy, then I was like, okay, I need a new pair of shoes, and then it went away.

And so if you make sure that you, because people are often like, don’t your knees hurt? Don’t your don’t your joints hurt and anatomically your body’s made for running. And if you keep everything straight and normal and refurbished, then you should be okay. But, wearing a shoe too long and sometimes that shoe might look okay, but in the midsole breaks down.

And that’s when the injury’s can happen and stuff like that. So I [00:25:00] always warn people about that because I think it’s something that isn’t talked about very much overall, especially on transportation planning podcasts. Yeah. But yeah, it’s definitely an expense. ’cause the

Daniel Baxter: running

Jeff Wood: sheet are cheap.

That’s another thing is like it’s somewhat expensive to get all the gear for the winter weather. Yeah. And the shoes and all that stuff. So compared to like your regular commute, are you saving money? Are you spending more money just to run? Are you breaking even? What’s the expenditure in terms of that?

Daniel Baxter: From the best I can tell, I think it’s. Cheaper, probably significantly than driving to the office would be, but I’d say it’s probably the same amount of money or maybe a little more than taking transit. I tend to buy all my running gear at the same store at St. City running just across the river in St.

Paul. And last year I added up all my credit card charges there and they came to, I think they came to about like $450 or so. And then I compared that to like how much bus fare would be for, I dunno, I think probably about 190 run commutes or something. And it came out [00:26:00] about exactly the same.

Certainly if you factor in parking in downtown Minneapolis and my wife and I just did one car, so we have to get a second car, we would be a lot more expensive than the running would be. But yeah, I think it’s probably comparable to taking transit and paying the transit fair if you’re in the office.

You say four or five days a week? Maybe more, but like definitely less than driving.

Jeff Wood: I was thinking also there’s some mental health benefits there. There’s some physical benefits, there’s longevity, there’s healthcare benefits probably there as well. So there’s probably like a long-term win and even over transit and biking, which I think, most people probably should take it before they drive to work, but there’s probably something to that as well.

Daniel Baxter: I wouldn’t say so. I feel fortunate. I seem to be in pretty good health and it definitely, from a mental health standpoint, like I tend to feel like so much better once I actually arrive at the office having run here versus like when I start out or sometimes I will take transit and I just, yeah, I just don’t feel as good when I get to the office or get home versus how it feels from [00:27:00] having run.

Have you gotten one of the hard to find runner’s highs? Yeah, I’m pretty sure. Like sometimes I’ll be like, I actually probably shouldn’t feel this good given all the sort of high stakes meetings I have today, or what else is in store for the rest of the day, but I’ll be like. If it’s there, I’ll enjoy it.

It’s long. The last,

Jeff Wood: I think I only had one once. Yeah. For all the running I did, I only had one once, but man, that was only once. Only once. But it was, I had lots of good days, don’t get me wrong, but there’s something different about that one day that was just like, it was crazy.

I’d never a felt so good. I think you mentioned your article, like some sort of a flow state. I felt like my legs were like floating on the concrete. I felt this is what people are after when they’re going for trying to get a runner’s high. This probably would make me come back over and over again.

Daniel Baxter: I think what you’re talking about that sounds more like the flow state thing, which to me is much more rare. Like I usually feel just about after every commute. I’ll feel better once I get to my destination if I’ve run there, then [00:28:00] when I started. But in terms of that, the sort of flow state where it starts to feel like you’re going really fast, but it also feels effortless at the same time.

I feel like that. That happens only once in a great while, and it seems to be some, yeah. Combination of just how rested my body is at the time, and even what music I’m listening to. I don’t know if you’re a Talking Heads fan, but the song in there is like the great curve on remaining light goes really well with running in.

I’ve experienced it.

Jeff Wood: That’s so interesting. I’m wondering with your music, because. I used to run with a Walkman, which actually was funny ’cause when I ran, it was a tape Walkman because this is a long time ago, but it was a tape Walkman and it actually changed my stride because it was like heavier on one side than the other one.

And so I could feel my like arm going around more when I was taking a turn on the track, which is weird. But I always tried to like. You always have run mixes, but you think that you need like some banger music to like, get you through it. And sometimes I did, but sometimes you also need some soft stuff to like just relax and get into it as well.

So what’s your mix of, [00:29:00] hardcore strong stuff versus, and maybe like more techno slash, I don’t even know if you listen to that type of stuff, but hard versus softer music.

Daniel Baxter: I would not sure what genre that I’m in. Maybe. Maybe given my age, I’m 45. I don’t know. Maybe this is all like dad rock now, but in terms of say like I’m in a race and like really want some high energy music.

Maybe this doesn’t seem high energy to other people, but I. I know that police song, like synchronicity one, something about a fast beat like that. There’s an REM song a later one, like Supernatural, super serious it’s called. That’s like a nice one to finish a race to lighter songs. I don’t, I’m a big REM fan and some of their sort of less, less driving songs work pretty well for me.

But if I hear new songs on the alternative radio station that I like, I’ll throw ’em on my playlist too.

Jeff Wood: You’re an REM fan Up is a totally underrated album for me. I love that album. I don’t know what it is about it, but it’s just like that. That’s my jam. I love Life Search Pageant and I love, like I have every one, but [00:30:00] Up for some reason is just I don’t know if it hit me just a certain point in college or something, but I was just like, this is amazing.

Yep. But it’s just criminally underrated to me. I completely agree. I was just talking about this, the other game

Daniel Baxter: with a friend. We were talking about what are your favorite REM albums? And I said I have six. I don’t think any one of these six is better than the other and just like listing them in chronological order, I’d say they’re.

Murmur, life rich pageant out of time, automatic for the people will do adventures in Hi-Fi and up. And I agree that I think up is criminally underrated too. And it’s so

Jeff Wood: good.

Daniel Baxter: Yeah, it’s actually personally meaningful to me too. ’cause going back to the beginning of our conversation, just after my junior year in college, I was trying to decide, hey, do I wanna go through with this dual degree engineering program or do I wanna do something else?

And I was just driving solo up from Ann Arbor up to the north shore of Minnesota where my parents were just. To go visit them. And the last song on Up falls decline came on just as I was starting to cross the Mackinac Bridge and it’s the sort of these like ethereal layers of synths and things. And I was like, oh, [00:31:00] Bridget, this is what I should do.

So I was like, that, that made the decision for me and I just went out and did it.

Jeff Wood: That’s awesome. It’s funny, I used to be, I’m gonna be honest about this, I used to be a running snob and I used to be like, those people running for fun. Why are they doing that? You should be racing, you should be like, testing yourself.

And I grew out of that at some point. But I find it interesting to think about running and starting like you have later in life and, getting into it and, not necessarily you’re racing a little bit, but mostly it’s just as a way to. Get to work, but also I imagine, anyways, now it’s a part of your routine.

You said you’re a routine oriented person, but I wonder about that. Do you feel is it something that you see people and you’re like, okay, anybody can do this and I am, I’m in, or was it something that was a little bit daunting before you got started? Because I’m wondering if folks listening might be daunted by it as something that’s maybe I, when I was younger I could have done that, but now it’s like too much.

Daniel Baxter: I would say it was definitely daunting for me. ’cause yeah, those like initial experiences where they make you run the mile in school, like I don’t like that

Jeff Wood: by the way. I don’t like that they make it into a [00:32:00] punishment. Yeah it’s actually worthwhile otherwise. But

Daniel Baxter: like I never enjoyed those, I always felt exhausted afterwards.

I think they left me feeling that Hey, why would anyone do this for any reason? And it was just something that never really occurred to me as something I’d even want to do. I think. Just, I’ve never really been that good at sports and I think like back in 2012 when I was talked into it and discovered that, oh, this is actually something I can do.

And now that I’m, I think when the goal is just to try to get through a given distance rather than run as fast as you can around a track four times, then that kind of res it and just makes it seem a lot more doable and. Not that the larger distances didn’t still feel daunting, but I think looking at it from a perspective as like, how can I comfortably run this distance at about the same pace rather than running as in like, how fast would you run if say you’re getting chased by a bear, which maybe was the, like the idea back in school just [00:33:00] makes it seem a lot more doable

Jeff Wood: and

Daniel Baxter: pleasant.

Jeff Wood: I don’t know if you’re supposed to run away from bears. I think they’re way faster than us. I think you’re supposed to just make yourself a bit, I think you’re right. I think you’re

Daniel Baxter: probably supposed to put your arms on, yell. Yell

Jeff Wood: really loud and make yourself. Off big as you possibly can. Yeah. Don’t run away from bears, please.

But yeah, I just, speaking of crazy things, what’s your craziest experience running? Is there anything that’s happened on your way or to and from work that is just wow, that was a crazy day on the trail?

Daniel Baxter: Let me think about that. I feel pretty fortunate actually, that I’ve been doing this for, I think as of the summer will be 10 years and it’s actually been like.

Really mundane in a way. Like I’m lucky I haven’t been the victim of any crime or had any super close calls with getting hit by a car or anything like that. So I feel good that just over all of this time going back and forth, that nothing too out of the ordinary has really ever happened. Probably the most out there runs have been some of the extreme weather, like getting out of the house and discovering that [00:34:00] everything is covered in a layer of ice.

But then putting on ice spikes and being able to get to the office. And then like I remember one day I got to the office and felt a little bad that I was like 15 minutes late because I had been going slowly on the ice and then no one else arrived until an hour and a half later. ’cause they’d all gotten stuck in traffic.

And this was before the pandemic when people would come into the office anyway, even if there was an ice storm. I don’t know. Sometimes when it’s really hot out or it seems like people act a little more squirrely for whatever reason, but

Jeff Wood: yeah. Yeah. You get a different clientele out there, I imagine, at different weather points.

Daniel Baxter: Yeah.

Jeff Wood: Do you have any recommendations for folks who might wanna try this out? What’s the first step they should take if they wanna just test it out first? Definitely don’t go out and buy every piece of gear and then decide to, to not deal with that. Oh yeah. Yes. Is there any suggestions you have as a long time run commuter?

Sure.

Daniel Baxter: I think a good way to try it out is to just. Try running back, try running home from your office or your, or wherever your workplace is. Particularly if there’s a way that you can store some things overnight, safely in your workplace. ’cause like even if you just have a cell [00:35:00] phone holder and some pockets, often you can just take what you need to get into your house and get back the next day that way without needing to buy a backpack.

And could also try to see if you could run part of the way and then like hop on a bus for the rest of the way or. Hop on a, like a bike share, although that’s a little more dicey ’cause it’d be hard to do that with a helmet. But if you’re able to pair up a trial, run with a bus on the way home, see how that works?

’cause then that doesn’t require necessarily the backpack or the workplace shower or any of that stuff. And then if you like it, you can keep doing that. And then if you still like it, then I think maybe that’s the time to start investing. In the gear, like the backpack and figuring out what do you do post run when you get to the workplace.

And there’s also, some of the times when I’ve found running to be the most convenient too, is not even back from my office, but sometimes it’s just like going home from, say, an event at the University of Minnesota where the transit option would take almost an hour. ’cause it’s not really a transit corridor between my house and the campus here.

I have one of those near my house and I find that it’s easier for me to run there to buy things than I, I wouldn’t really wanna bike there. So sometimes just given a, like a one-off. Out and back run. I think you would need a backpack for that. Just to see how that goes. Can be a good way to approach it too.

Jeff Wood: Yeah, I wanna give a shout out to Street Set in where I found your article about run commuting and I do a weekly or almost biweekly piece for them too. And so I really appreciate what they’ve been doing and excited that’s where I found it. And that’s where you are, putting your pen to paper as it were.

Daniel Baxter: Oh yeah. They’re a great website on, I’d like to thank them for publishing my art first article I wrote for them. Usually the rest of the articles I bring just tend to be like technical [00:37:00] articles about bridge design. Yeah. Where can folks find you if you wish to be found? Let me see. I’m, I think I’m pretty easy to find on LinkedIn if you wanna contact me there I am on Strava.

I don’t mind being followed there. Those two places are probably the easiest places to find me. It’s one of those. Awesome.

Jeff Wood: Daniel, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate your time.

Daniel Baxter: Oh yeah. Thanks so much for having me on your show. Appreciate that.