Vanquished Texas Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Beto O’Rourke on Thursday shared an extended blog post about his morning jog around the nation’s snow-sprinkled capital.
“I woke up after a good night’s sleep. Snow coming down in gentle big flakes. Salud was taking a shower, so I went downstairs to use the basement bathroom,” O’Rourke wrote on the social media blog Medium, referring to Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., one of his Capitol Hill roommates in Washington, D.C. “Came back up and put my tights, shorts, long socks, tshirt and overshirt on. Hat and gloves, my running shoes and was outside by 7:45.”
“As I passed the World War II memorial there was a guy in front of me, running next to the reflecting pool towards the Lincoln memorial. I took the other path, enclosed by an arcade of trees. I figured it would shield me better from the snow that was hitting the side of my face,” he continued. “I saw him stretch out his arms as he ran as though to embrace the snow, the pool, the morning, the [Lincoln] memorial that we could now see in front of us, life, and all the mystery of being alive.”
O’Rourke, who is about to wrap up his third term in Congress, is widely speculated to become a 2020 Democratic presidential contender. But he has sought to downplay anticipation he will announce his candidacy in the near future.
Last week, he lost a surprisingly close Senate race in his GOP-leaning state to Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz.
O’Rourke capped off the Medium entry Thursday with quotes from former President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, in which he talks about striving to finish his work binding up the country’s wounds following the Civil War.
