Touring Brooks Headquarters & The Brooks PR Invitational

Hi from the plane on the way back to DC from Seattle! I’ll be back tomorrow morning to share a big touristy highlights post from Seattle (e.g. restaurant & sightseeing recommendations), but for now I wanted to pop in quickly and share a recap of two of the cool Brooks-related activities we got into this weekend.

The first big highlight from the weekend though was of course the company!

Brooks Run Happy bloggers in attendance: Fit Bottomed Girls, Meals and Miles, Olive to Run, Hungry Runner Girl, and rUnladylike. Such a fun and inspiring group of women!

Hanging with the Brooks staff/Brooks PR crew was a blast, too. Everyone from their team is so nice and I loved seeing a bunch of them again that I met last year on our New York Brooks blogger trip.

On Friday afternoon, we had the pleasure of touring the Brooks Seattle headquarters.

We got a sneak peak of some of their Fall 2014 line of shoes and clothes while we were there. Pretty!

The main shoe updates (beyond just color changes) will be in the neutral shoe lines. The Glycerin 12 will be the plushest in the neutral category with max midsole cushion, and the Ghost 7 will be lighter and more flexible. Cool! Loved all the color updates, too – I wear the Brooks Ravenna and loved the purple (upper right in the photo below). The fall line will be out in July!

Another big update will be the release of the Pure Grit 3, which is a lightweight trail shoe in their Pure Project line. I love the PureConnects (the PureConnect 2 is my fave), so I’m excited to hopefully try out the Pure Grits at some point! Brooks worked with Scott Jurek to develop the shoes and spent time out in Boulder, CO testing them out on trails with him and talking to him about what makes a great trail shoe. They shared a short video about the whole experience on YouTube if you want to check it out!

The other big running/Brooks related highlight of the weekend (besides the Rock ‘n’ Roll half marathon, of course!) was the opportunity to attend the Brooks PR Invitational on Saturday afternoon.

For the PR Invitational, Brooks brings together the fastest high school runners in the country for an annual race. They pay the kids’ way to Seattle and put them up for the weekend, too!

It was incredible to see firsthand just how fast these kids are. I can’t wait until I see some of them in the Olympics in future years and realize: wow, I saw them in person out in Seattle!

See that 9:52 on the clock and the girl about to finish? Yeah, that was for a 2 mile race. (The final time was 9:53.) #insane

Needless to say, I’m now inspired to do some serious speed work. I think I’ll skip the hurdles, though. ;) I’m always terrified watching races with hurdles that the athletes are going to fall!

Speaking of elite athletes, the other bloggers and I also had the pleasure of meeting some of the Brooks Beasts Track Club while at the track meet.

Based in Seattle, the Brooks Beast Track Club was started in early 2013. We had a lot of fun talking to the Beasts – and were all in awe of their training regimens. For the 5k distance, the women were doing mileage in the 70s and 80s each week! Wow!

I hope you all had wonderful weekends and that those of you participating in the Summer Shape Up are ready for a rockin’ week 2 starting tomorrow! The week 2 meal plan from me and week 2 workouts from Gina are both linked to on my Summer Shape Up page. :)

Have a great night, everyone, and see you in the morning for my Seattle restaurant & sightseeing recommendations/adventures!

p.s. This is totally unrelated, but remember when my blog buddy Courtney and I spent a day in NYC in April with Fitness Magazine doing a photo and video shoot? Well, stay tuned – this week I can (finally!) share all the details about what we were up to! :)