The Ghost Race: Lululemon’s Virtual Race to Return to the Schuylkill River Trail

This 8K isn't your average race.
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Remember last year when the folks at Lululemon teamed up with Strava to turn Philly’s Schuylkill River Trail into a virtual race course for a full week? Well, they’re back at it again. Yesterday, Lululemon Philadelphia announced on Facebook that the Ghost Race will be making its return to the trail — with a new route this time around — from October 13th through 22nd. Yippee!

If you’re wondering what the heck a virtual race is, let us explain: For the Ghost Race, the folks at Lululemon have set a race route — an out-and-back 8K along the SRT — that you can run any time between 12:01 a.m. on October 13th through 11:59 p.m. on October 22nd. You can run the race whenever you want, with whomever you want, and however many times you’d like, and as long as you are registered and tracking your race time with the Strava app, your time will go up on a virtual leaderboard for the race. Quite the incentive to run your hardest, huh?

This year, they’re switching the route up: Rather than starting at the South Street Bridge, the race will start at Lloyd Hall on Boathouse Row and take runners out to Strawberry Mansion Bridge. There, they’ll turn around and head back to the finish at Lloyd Hall.

So, what do you get for all this running, you ask? Well, last year, Lululemon hosted a big post-race party for everyone who ran, though there are no details on the website yet on whether or not that’s the case for this year’s race. If nothing else, the virtual race gives you a reason to push yourself and see how you stack up against your fellow Philly runners. (A little friendly competition never hurt anyone, right?) Bonus: The race week falls about a month out from Philadelphia Marathon weekend, making it a great opportunity to gauge how your training is coming along.

If you prefer to run in a pack versus solo, like last year, the Ghost Race will have organized group race times with some of Philly’s well-known runners throughout the week (last year, folks like Jon Lyons of Run215 and Rebecca Barber of the Rocky 50K led groups along the course). Dates and times for those are TBA, but you can check the website for updates.

Okay, now all you’ve got to do is mark your calendar and register, which you can do here. Happy running!

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