Seaside Sussex a social distance running mecca
Seaside Sussex County has become a social distance running mecca extending to Milton and Millsboro with a dash of Milford. My late brother Tom followed my thousands of posted running photos on Facebook and asked me, “What is with all the runners where you live? What do those people do when they’re not running?”
“Mostly drink,” I joked. “Perhaps they go out to dinner, spend afternoons at the beach or go boating or maybe play Whack-a-Mole at Funland?”
The beaten paths have been paved, interconnecting towns while avoiding Route 1 as well as cross-state traffic. The Seashore Striders and Races2Run coordinate most races on weekends, and there are often opportunities to run three straight days. Focus Multisports and Fusion also promote races.
Races are chip timed and results are immediate. Anyone with the expertise and a $700 iPhone can track a marathon runner by location and predicted time of finish.
Actually, training during the week has slacked from the running boom days of the ’70s, where high mileage and long, slow distance interspersed with killer track workouts was the way to go. The last 10 years have seen a more race-and-recover approach with the motivation to just get into a popular race where good times are defined as fun times.
Five kilometers remains the most popular distance, but everyone and their grandmother are also training for marathons. The most popular race distances in between are the 10K and 13.1 miles.
Regular runners, who tally 50 to 100 races per year, don’t run for a cause, but rather just because. A local social running group, the Certified Running Nuts, is a pack of goal-driven individuals with $3,000 of yearly disposable income in their NerdWallets to spend on fitness.
Fit families, from vacationers to self-avowed locals, aren’t looking for fun-filled, fatten-up, shelter-in-one-place inactivities. A Red, White and Blue 5K at the Rehoboth Country Club July 4 weekend attracted 300 runners from 37 states.
This is a far cry from the Pennsylvania Navy jokes of decades past: “They come down here for the weekend with a $5 bill and extra pair of jockey shorts and don’t change either one.”
Expect the happy trails, habitrails, bike paths and beaten paths to become more crowded until they present a social distancing problem.
Runner’s World magazine published advice in the ’70s suggesting, “The best places to run are beyond the signs that read, ‘No Trespassing’ and ‘Keep Out!’”
But whoever thought that would mean the beach and the Boardwalk?
