While living in Navy Yard and working in McLean, Jess Hood became frustrated with the drive to and from her job in corporate finance. So she decided to ditch the car once a week for a less common method of transport: running shoes. “I tried to find an innovative way to both get my workout in and get to work on time,” she explains.
Every Wednesday, Hood would lace up her New Balances, put on her Noxgear light-up vest, and head out over Memorial Bridge. She then jumped onto the Metro at Ballston, because otherwise the run would have been more than half a marathon. And yes—to answer a common question—her office building had a shower and a locker room for fresh clothes, so coworkers were never exposed to the aftermath of her exertions.
In 2023, Hood began documenting her run-commute experiences on Instagram and TikTok, along with other content about local running and stuff to do around DC. Her feeds proved unexpectedly popular, turning her into something of a spokesperson for jogging to the office. “When I was run-commuting,” she says, “people would recognize me and be like, ‘Oh, are you the Instagram girl who runs to work?’ ”
As more companies reached out to her with sponsorship and partnership opportunities and her influencer status grew, Hood realized she could actually make a living that way—meaning she could quit the very job that she’d been run-commuting to. She remembers thinking, “Well, I like this corporate job—it’s not like I would never come back, but let me just take this chance on myself.”
So far, it’s working out: On March 15, Hood will be running her ninth official half marathon, the DC Rock ’n’ Roll Half Marathon—only this time she’ll be leading its ambassador program. She also has a side business as a photographer, and she works as the manager of social-media accounts for several local businesses, including Pacers, the running store that also organizes the PNC Alexandria and DC half marathons.
These days, Hood’s social feeds are much less focused on the run-commuting aspect, partly because she no longer run-commutes to the office and partly because, although that content proved popular, there’s probably a cap on the audience. As Hood herself puts it, “I don’t think that the typical person is run-commuting.”
This article appears in the March 2025 issue of Washingtonian.
