If you've walked the Clear Creek Trail through Wheat Ridge on a normal Saturday, you know the rhythm. A few cyclists heading toward Golden, someone's dog pulling toward the creek, the crusher-fines stretch near Miller Street quiet enough that you can hear birds you can't see. That rhythm holds for fifty weekends a year. This September, on two of them, it doesn't.
On September 6, the Wheat Ridge Half Marathon and 5K starts and finishes at Prost Brewing, the German-style biergarten that opened at Clear Creek Crossing on August 3. Six days later, on September 12, a second race, the Totally Rad 80s 5K, starts from New Image Brewing's production taproom on West 44th Avenue. Two races, two breweries, six days apart, both using the same seven miles of paved trail that residents walk every week without a bib number.
Here's the part that isn't obvious from a race flyer. The half marathon's own listings don't agree on where it starts.
A Starting Line That Moved
The current registration page for the Wheat Ridge Half places the start and finish squarely at Prost Brewing, 3801 Clear Creek Drive, with half marathon waves at 7:00 and 7:15 a.m. and 5K waves at 8:30, 8:45, and 9:00 a.m. The course runs an out-and-back to the east, 11.2 miles round trip, then a shorter out-and-back to the west to close out the distance, finishing back at Prost for a post-party that runs until 1 p.m., with free beer for runners 21 and older and a token for a non-alcoholic drink if you're not.
A separate race guide for the same event, updated earlier this year, describes something different: a start and finish on the north side of Anderson Park, a much shorter 4.1-mile eastern out-and-back, roughly 700 feet of elevation change, and a final 4.5 miles that run downhill. That's not a rounding error. That's two different starting points, a mile apart on the same trail, in two published descriptions of the same race in the same year.
The simplest explanation is also the most telling one. Prost Brewing didn't exist as a finish line until just over a month before this year's race. Race organizers, like everyone else writing about this stretch of Wheat Ridge in 2026, are updating their own materials in real time to catch up with a building that opened in August. If you're planning to run, walk, or just avoid the crowd that morning, trust the Prost address on the current registration page. If you're wondering why an old blog post or a cached search result told you something different, now you know why.
Six Days Later, a Different End of the Trail
The Totally Rad 80s 5K doesn't have that problem, mostly because it's simpler. It starts at 10 a.m. on September 12 at New Image Brewing's Wheat Ridge location, 9505 W 44th Ave. Worth knowing if you're new to the brewery's footprint: this is not the same New Image taproom you'll find in Olde Town Arvada. The 44th Avenue address is the production facility and pizzeria, a separate building with its own parking and its own crowd, and it's the one hosting the race.
Both events are part of the Colorado Brewery Running Series, a race circuit founded in 2016 as an expansion of a Minneapolis original, built around the idea that a 5K or half marathon should end at a taproom instead of a folding table. A portion of the proceeds from each race goes back to local nonprofits. The series has grown to dozens of brewery-based events a year across the Front Range, and this September it's put two of them on the same trail in the same city within a week of each other.
| Race | Date | Start/Finish | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wheat Ridge Half Marathon & 5K | Sunday, September 6 | Prost Brewing, 3801 Clear Creek Drive | Half marathon and 5K |
| Totally Rad 80s 5K | Saturday, September 12 | New Image Brewing, 9505 W 44th Ave | 5K |
Put the two addresses on a map and you get a rough read on how this year's trail activity is distributed: one race anchored at the far western end near Clear Creek Crossing, the other along the 44th Avenue corridor closer to the trail's older, more established midpoint.
The Trail Has Always Had Two Personalities
None of this is new to the Greenbelt itself, only to how loud it gets. Wheat Ridge's Clear Creek Trail runs seven miles of paved path through roughly 300 acres of preserved open space, with four public parks offering direct access along the way. Anderson Park, at 4355 Field Street, has long functioned as the trail's practical hub. The Colorado Mountain Club documents a 25-mile loop that starts and ends there, stringing together the Clear Creek Trail heading east, the Ralston Creek Trail heading west, and a chain of connector paths and bike lanes through the Van Bibber Creek corridor before looping back.
Head the other direction, into the stretch between Miller Street and Youngfield Street, and the trail changes character entirely. A parallel conservation trail on the south side, surfaced in crusher fines and closed to bikes, draws heavy use from older adult walkers looking for a quieter pace. Bird observations in that section date back to the 1800s, and it's home to the Ute Ladies' Tresses Orchid, a federally listed threatened species. This is the same trail that will have a finish-line beer garden at one end and a race timer's air horn at the other, twice this month.
That's the part worth sitting with if you use this trail regularly and aren't the least bit interested in running a 5K. The Greenbelt has always had a quiet half and a busy half. What changed this year is that the busy half now has more than one address.
What This Means If You're Out There Most Weekends
A few practical notes if you're planning a walk, ride, or dog outing around either Saturday morning:
- Aid stations on the half marathon course are spaced every 2 to 2.5 miles, and runners are permitted to carry their own hydration packs and refill at stations, so expect more foot traffic and coolers near those points between roughly 7 a.m. and 1 p.m. on September 6.
- The 5K wave on race morning is untimed and welcomes dogs, running strollers, and kids under 12 for free, which means a noticeably different crowd on the trail between 8:30 and 9:15 a.m. than the half marathon field earlier that morning.
- If your usual route runs through the Clear Creek Crossing area near I-70 and Highway 58, plan around the Prost Brewing lot and the trailhead nearest it on September 6 morning.
- If your usual route passes New Image's 44th Avenue taproom, expect the same kind of morning crowd on September 12, just six days later and a few miles east.
- The conservation stretch between Miller and Youngfield isn't part of either race course based on current listings, so if you're looking for the trail's usual quiet, that section is your best bet on both mornings.
None of this requires signing up for anything. It just means the trail's calendar has two new fixed points this fall that didn't exist as fixed points before this August.
The Anchor Points Are Shifting, Not the Trail
The Greenbelt itself hasn't changed. Seven miles of pavement, four access parks, a conservation corridor with its own quiet residents. What's changed is which buildings sit at its edges and what happens there on a Saturday. Anderson Park is still where the 25-mile loop starts. Prost Brewing is new to that map. New Image's 44th Avenue taproom has been part of it longer than most residents realize, since it's easy to assume the Arvada location is the only one.
If you live along this stretch and you're the kind of person who already has an opinion about which mile marker has the best shade, these two mornings in September are worth putting on the calendar, whether you're running or just working around them.
Want more of what's actually changing in Wheat Ridge, told by someone who spends time on the ground here rather than rewriting a press release? Let's Connect.
